There’s a part of me that thinks I must have been an old Southern lady in a past life. Despite growing up in Miami where Cuban food is the more typical comfort food, I have a deep and profound love for all Southern food. I could eat grits with every meal. Fried chicken and waffles is, in my opinion, the greatest food combination ever invented. Just the thought of biscuits makes me happy and I’m obsessed with all things cornmeal. I mean seriously obsessed. I truly believe that cornmeal makes everything better. Waffles? Add some cornmeal! Biscuits? Make them cornmeal! Shortbread? Sure why not, throw some cornmeal in there! Chocolate pudding? Ummmmm…….maybe don’t add cornmeal to that one, but you get my point.
One of my favorite cornmeal dishes is Cornmeal Pancakes. They are my go-to weekend breakfast, especially if people are in-town visiting or coming over for breakfast. These pancakes are huge crowd pleasers. I’m telling you people – it’s the cornmeal! It’s magical stuff. I went through a lot of recipes before finding the perfect one. You would think that a great Cornmeal Pancake recipe would be easy to find, but I’m oddly picky about my pancakes. Every recipe I found seemed to have some kind of problem. The pancakes were either too thin or they weren’t cornmealey enough or they were too sweet. I was about to give up hope until one day, while looking at The LA Times online, there it was…….the absolute perfect Cornmeal Pancake recipe.
This recipe is everything I could ever want in a pancake. They’re thick, fluffy, and delicious with just the right amount of cornmeal. Another testament to the greatness of this recipe is that I only made one very slight tweak to it. I like my pancakes to be really cornmealey (shocker – I know), so I use half regular cornmeal and half coarsely ground cornmeal. The coarse cornmeal adds a little bit of crunch to the texture and makes for a really great hearty pancake. Pancake batter is one of those things that gets better the longer it rests. The best thing is to make it the night before and let it rest in the fridge overnight. I rarely have enough forethought to do that, but even just setting it aside for 30 minutes will make a difference.
These pancakes are phenomenal with a little butter and some maple syrup. If you really want to up the awesome factor, fry up some turkey sausage to go on the side. You really can’t get a much better breakfast than that!