Why It Works
- Because oil contains more fat by volume than butter, combining olive oil and butter adds both moisture and richness, producing a flavorful, tender crumb.
- A gochujang-honey glaze highlights the cornmeal’s natural sweetness, giving the cornbread a spicy, deeply savory note.
I have a long, loving relationship with cornbread. I will eat it any which way—sweet, Northern-style, or unsweetened as they do in the South—and I am always the one who finishes off my friend’s courtesy slices when we’re dining at a barbecue joint. I’m clearly not the only one who deeply loves cornbread: Whenever it’s on the curriculum of the cooking class I teach, it often disappears faster than anything else we’ve prepared that day. And whenever I bring cornbread dressing to Thanksgiving, it’s the first side to go.
Though it’s not widely known, Korea also has a deep connection with cornbread. In the 1960s, when South Korea struggled to recover after the Korean War, the US provided food aid in the form of cornmeal and powdered milk (among many other foods) in the hopes of shaping Korean taste buds and turning the country into a future export market. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, South Korean schools served oksusu-pang—a tough, gritty, oval cornbread—something that has now become incredibly nostalgic for many Koreans.
“Its seemingly unappetizing trait of being hard and rough in texture is what made the bread so unique,” Nicole Choi noted for Roads and Kingdoms in 2015. “Today, the search for this elusive cornbread is ubiquitous among a certain generation of South Koreans,” including the famous food blogger Maangchi, who shared a recipe for oksusu-pang on her site in 2015. While my version differs in texture and flavor from how many in Korea remember it, I think about the dish’s historical significance constantly—and the freedom I now have to build on it.
Serious Eats / Melati Citrawireja
For this version of my cornbread, I decided to incorporate fresh scallions and gochujang, a sweet, spicy paste made with chiles, rice flour, and soybeans. I’ve had friends tell me this cornbread is like a savory, fluffy Johnnycake with a both kick and umami from gochujang, a fermented chile paste.
Though the cornbread has some sugar, it isn’t overly sweet, and a gochujang–honey–butter glaze gives it a pleasant, salty-sweet edge. I like to garnish with toasted white sesame seeds and sometimes serve the cornbread with toasted sesame oil, which provides a welcome nuttiness. It’s a great addition to accompany roast meats, fish, or vegetables at dinner, and it makes an excellent gift for those who love a spicy baked good.
Serious Eats / Melati Citrawireja
