Cornbread Salad

We Southerners love our cornbread. For the Simsboro First Baptist Church Thanksgiving meal, I made Cornbread Salad, an unusual dish that has become popular on the salad bars of all-you-can-eat seafood and catfish restaurants. If you like the tastes of raw vegetables, bacon, mayonnaise, pickles and cornbread, you will be unable to stop with one bowl of this unique salad.

Cornbread salad is featured in Flavored with Love by Jane Riley (my penname). My sister Ruth Ishee contributed it to the cookbook. She said I should take a big bowl of cornbread salad to the party. She was right. Several people wanted the recipe.

She suggested I dress it up by adding something. I made four batches and added one pound of frozen whole kernel corn (uncooked). Instead of four green bell peppers, I used two green bell peppers and two orange bell peppers.

Cornbread Salad

1 box (8½ ounces) corn muffin mix
1 egg
⅓ cup milk
4 medium tomatoes, peeled and chopped
1 medium green bell pepper chopped
1 medium onion, chopped
½ cup sweet pickles, chopped
10 slices bacon, cooked and crumbled
1 cup light mayonnaise
¼ cup sweet pickle juice

Preheat oven to 400°. Grease a 6-cup muffin tin. Blend the first 3 ingredients. Let the batter rest 4 minutes. Pour the batter into the muffin cups and bake 15 to 20 minutes or until golden brown. Allow it to cool, and crumble it.

Combine tomatoes, bell pepper, onion, pickles, and bacon. Toss gently. Combine mayonnaise and pickle juice. Mix the mayonnaise mixture with the vegetables. Arrange the vegetable mixture and cornbread mixture in layers in a large glass bowl. Cover and chill 2 hours. Toss lightly before serving.