A few months ago, I searched the archives looking for my jalapeño cheddar cornbread recipe. I’d made it dozens of times and wanted to send the link to a friend.
That’s when I realized that I’d never actually published the recipe.
Instead, I’d been riffing on a decade-old brown butter skillet cornbread with maple syrup and whole wheat flour.
Adaptable and forgiving, that brown butter cornbread is the kind of dish that’s easy to make your own. Most of the 500-ish comments are of the “I made this recipe but substituted X for Y” variety — and the changes generally work just fine (except for the cooks who leave out the butter entirely, but that’s on them).
To make my jalapeño cheddar cornbread, I just use the brown butter recipe as a template. Instead of half a cup of maple syrup, I stir in a quarter cup of honey, which is a less sweet and more classic pairing with the spicy chiles. And I usually nix the whole wheat flour, whose nutty flavor is a bit too delicate to come through with all the jalapeños in the batter.
Another change is adding cheddar. Rather than whisk it in, I sprinkle it on in two additions, arranging a layer of cheese in the middle and on top. This helps the cornbread keep a light, fluffy texture and allows the cheese on the surface to get a little brown and crunchy.
As for the jalapeños, I’ve made this cornbread with chopped fresh chiles and jarred, pickled chiles, and both versions have their charms. The fresh jalapeños have a grassy, almost herbal character with a forthright sting. The pickled ones are tangier and more acidic, with a gentler bite. Sometimes I even mix the two for a rounded, complex character. For a milder flavor, you can remove the seeds from the fresh ones and use the lesser amount. You don’t need a lot of jalapeño to get the point across.
By the time I sent my friend the link to my old cornbread and my notes on adapting it, I knew this jalapeño cheddar version deserved its very own recipe. But feel free to change it up — just don’t leave out the butter.
