Soup Beans and Cornbread, my childhood memories

When I was growing up we ate every type of bean you ever saw but it was always a side dish. When Lea and I moved to this area, the Appalachian region in Tennessee the first time when she was 3, I was introduced to Soup Beans and Cornbread as a meal. Soup Beans is NOT bean soup, it is beans cooked to where the liquid is thickened but with enough liquid until its a little soupy so that you use the cornbread to sop it up.

Now I was never the skillet cornbread type growing up. We didn’t like that kind of cornbread until I was almost grown and my mother started adding sourcream to it which made it sweet and delicious and then we loved that cornbread. But our nornal nearly daily bread I grew up eating was in pancake form, which must’ve come from a husband  my mother married from Alabama. We didn’t add syrup or anything like that to it, we ate it for lunch or dinner with butter. We ate it with beans, greens, soup, chili etc. It was an easy bread to make and we tore it up. We ate both the white and yellow cornbread patties though the yellow was preferred. It didn’t matter really though, we devoured them all. They were stacked up after frying in a little oil and slathered with butter-(margarine but we called it butter). Butter was always at the table so we could dose it with more butter until it was dripping and would eat sometimes 4 or 5 of them each. A picture of what they look like can be found at http://pinoycook.net/cornmeal-pancakes/

They are called Corn Patties, Corn Pancakes, and lord knows what else, but after going to the Soup Bean and Cornmeal luncheon-(the skillet cornbread is traditional here) with Lea on Sunday I had a hankering for some pinto beans and cornbread patties from my past. Here is my recipe for Soup Beans and Cornbread…

Soup Beans

1lb Pinto Beans or Navy beans
Seasoning Meat-(Bacon, Salt Pork, Hambone, Hamhock etc.)
1 large Onion, chopped up and divided in half
Salt, Pepper, Bay leaf-(optional)
Cajun Seasoning***-This is my way to make soup beans

In a pot, add your seasoning meat with enough water to cover, cook down, break up the pieces of meat. Take the beans and place the clean beans-(meaning that the bad beans or rocks have been removed and the beans have been washed off), into the pot. Cover with enough water that it covers the beans, then add 1 to 2 cups more! Add half of your onion, and some of your seasonings. Cook on medium until boiling, lower the temperature and cook for several hours until the liquid has thicken but with enough to be soupy. Adjust seasonings and add other half of onions. Now its ready to serve.

Cornbread Patties

3 cups self rishing Cornmeal
2 cups milk
2 eggs
1/4 cup shortening or half of stick of butter melted*-the butter is the preferred method for more flavor but we’ve eaten it both ways.

Mix together all ingredients, the mixture should be thick like pancake mix. In a griddle or frying pan, add a small amount of oil, and when the oil is heated, pour mix into pancake shapes, flip when brown and fry on other side. Stack each pancake after spreading a dap of butter on each one. Makes 12 or more cornbread patties.

Hope this helps!!!