 What's up folks, we're back in the kitchen today. Welcome to woodworking against the grain. I know I keep calling this channel woodworking but about half the time we're cooking but we're going to do some of both as we go along. Today we're making hot water cornbread. The reason we're making hot water cornbread is because we've got this big pot of pinto beans boiling here and everybody knows that you eat cornbread with pinto beans but some middle of August I don't really want to turn the oven on 425 degrees so we're going to make some hot water cornbread and fry it and not heat up the whole kitchen. Well we've got in this bowl right here so far it is a cup and a half of good white corn meal. About two tablespoons of flour, a teaspoon of salt, a teaspoon of baking powder, a teaspoon of sugar. We've got that sifted together and mixed in there real good. What we're going to do now is take this boiling water we've got right here. This got about a tablespoon of baking grease in it. You want to season your water. You can put baking grease or ham broth or whatever you want in there. Or you can use just plain water. It's really up to you. I like to put baking fat in mine because it flavors the cornbread well. What we're going to do is pour this boiling water over this dry mixture, stir it in good and that's actually doing most of the cooking when we do that. And then we're going to make some patties and put them in some hot grease and we'll have them to go with these pinto beans here after awhile. We're going to add just, you don't want to add your water too much at a time because you get too much in there. You can't take it out. But if you add it slow to you get the right consistency of this, actually what you're making here is bread though. If you don't put too much in it to start with, you don't have to worry about it being too thin. So just kind of take your time. Add a little bit of hot water. Stir it in there some and if you see that that's not quite enough then you add a little bit more. You see that's still got quite a bit of dry stuff there. We're not quite there yet. This recipe is probably close to 100 years old with my grandmother's hot water cornbread recipe. And what I'm making here won't be near as good. It's what she always cooked. She didn't usually fry her. She usually broiled it in about a 500 degree oven and it was some of the best stuff you ever put in your mouth. I see we've got this coming together pretty good right here. Still got just a little bit of dry. I'm going to add just a maybe just a quarter cup more and see how that does. You don't want to get this batter too thin because it doesn't do well. You want to get that stirred in. You're actually cooking this cornmeal right now with this bowl and water going in here. You want to kind of get that stirred in. Do you got something that's a little bit thicker than the consistency of what you would make cornbread if you were going to bake it. This is a little bit thicker than that because it's not really not really pourable. We're going to make some patties out of this and then we're going to fry them in some hot coconut oil. That looks to be just about right. You could probably get by with a little bit more water in that and we're going to call that good for right now. Alright we've got our cornbread batter made up here and pretty much cooked. What we're going to do now is we're going to make these out into some patties before we fry them. What I've got going on here, I've got on two pair of good clean latex gloves because this stuff's really hot. Now I'm rubbing some coconut oil on these gloves so this stuff doesn't stick to them. That's a good little trick. Now you can let this cool if you want to and you don't have to have these gloves but it's hot right now. We want to get this show on the road. We're just going to make and you can make these just whatever size you want to, whatever shape you want to. We're going to make them just kind of about like that right there. They won't all be exactly the same size and the second time you make this recipe you're going to want to double it because you're going to eat a lot more of them than you think you will because they're really that good. My grandmother used to put cracklings in them sometime. I don't know if y'all anybody left around knows what cracklings are or not but it's pig skin that's been boiled and you can put that in this recipe as well and something might have tasted to eat and we're going to have some pinto beans later or this hot water cornbread and probably some turnip greens. That's a meal fit for a king right there. Once we get these kind of padded out here I've got my coconut oil already warming up over here and this stuff is pretty much cooked already so you don't have to fry it for a really long time. We're just going to fry it long enough to brown it good on both sides and then we're going to call that good. Now once y'all as you watch these videos to subscribe to my channel and give me a thumbs up if you like these videos because if nobody likes them I'll just quit doing them or really no point in continuing something nobody wants to see but if you do enjoy them give me a thumbs up and subscribe to my channel. Alright we got our coconut oil pretty warm here. I've got these laid out on some wax paper so they're easy to pick up. You want to be careful setting these in this grease. Don't burn your hand. Give them a little room to swim in there. Don't cry out them too bad. We'll probably cook these in about two different batches and we've got eight pieces here. We'll do four and all to be just about right. I want to explain something y'all about this rack over here. A lot of people ruin stuff they fry because they try to drain it on a paper towel. You don't want to take your chicken or your steak fingers or whatever you're frying. Don't take them out of the grease and put them directly on a paper towel. Put them on a rack above some paper towels whether the grease will drain through but air can get all the way around whatever it is you're cooking. That will keep it crispy the whole time it's draining and cooling and it won't end up soggy like it will if you put it right on top of a paper towel. Don't do that in the morning. We've got one side of these just about done so we're going to roll them over now. Let the other side brown. See how golden brown it is and that's going to be 50 right there. That's going to be some good stuff. Be very careful when you're frying these things because this old is hot and you don't want a big old skull on yourself. Over here in this other pot we've got some good pento beans to go with this cornbread. See how brown those are those are just about right. There's some good pieces of ham in there. My wife put these on last night and she's the queen of bean cooking so I already know how good those are going to be. Alright we've got our first batch good and brown here. We're going to go ahead and take these out of the grease and put them on this rack to drain. Now the bit there's two ways to eat hot water cornbread. By itself or with something. Either way it's just as good. Now you can put butter on these and it's good. You can pour honey over it and it's good or you can pour gravy over it and it's good. Really doesn't matter and it's also going to be awesome with this pento beans use on top of it. So once you learn how to make this you're going to find all kinds of uses for hot water cornbread. Now we're going to put our second batch in this grease. Get it brown and we'll just about have this little shore done. Remember to be careful putting that in there because it's hot. Last thing I want you to do is burn the grease. The grease police will come and get me if you burn your finger. You want this grease to be about 350-360 degrees when you put these in just like your frying chicken or frying fish. About a good 350 temperature will give you a good crust on that. Alright we've got our last batch done here coming out of the grease. We're going to let them set over there and drain and cool for a little while. Y'all try this recipe at home sometime. Let me know how it turns out for you. I'm going to take part of this one right here. It's cooled a little bit. Just mirrored just a little bit of butter on it maybe. If I can get it off the knife. Taste of it. If I can't get it off the knife. And say thanks for watching. Come back to see us.