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Southern Cornbread Sticks (with Video)

By Chula King · September 6, 2019 · Updated April 9, 2021 2 Comments

Southern Cornbread Sticks are crispy on the outside, and moist and tender on the inside. They are a snap to make and are perfect with soups and stews. They are also delicious on their own. What’s even better is that they are just as good the next day when reheated.

Southern versus Northern Cornbread

Both southern and northern cornbread are made with cornmeal. Other than that, the two types of cornbread tend to be different with respect to whether or not flour and sugar are added to the batter. Southern cornbread is typically made with little or no flour while northern cornbread is made with equal parts of cornmeal and flour. This gives northern cornbread more of a cake-like texture. In addition, southern cornbread generally contains little or no sugar. This allows the corn taste to shine through. Northern cornbread on the other hand tends to include a fair amount of sugar resulting in a much sweeter cornbread. The preference between southern and northern cornbread often boils down to personal taste.

In the south, there are numerous variations of basic cornbread. Hushpuppies are made with a basic cornbread batter, but are fried rather than baked. Hoecakes are fried cornbread pancakes. Cornpone is often cooked in a cast iron skillet and contains little or no milk, eggs or sugar. These variations aside, southern cornbread often has jalapeños or creamed corn added. Whatever the variation, southern cornbread is both delicious and versatile.

Ingredients for Cornbread Sticks

I used the following simple ingredients for these delicious cornbread sticks, inspired by a recipe on the Genius Kitchen site: Unsalted butter, buttermilk, egg, yellow cornmeal, all-purpose flour, Kosher salt, baking soda and a touch of cayenne pepper. You can certainly omit the cayenne pepper if you want. I also used some vegetable oil to brush on the pan.

The Wet Ingredients

First, I melted the butter in the microwave. Then, I added the buttermilk. Because the buttermilk was cold, the butter somewhat solidified. Therefore, I heated the butter/buttermilk mixture in the microwave for about 45 seconds to warm it a bit. I didn’t want to heat it too much – just enough to remelt the butter. After that, I added the egg and whisked everything together.

The Dry Ingredients

For the dry ingredients, I whisked together the cornmeal, flour, salt, baking soda and cayenne pepper in a medium bowl until everything was well combined.

Making the Southern Cornbread Sticks

First, I added the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients. Then, I stirred everything together, just until the ingredients were combined. I didn’t want to overmix the batter.

When the batter was ready, I placed the cast iron cornstick pan into a preheated 450° F oven for about 5 minutes until it was hot. Next, I removed the pan from the oven and brushed it with a little vegetable oil. After that, I added the batter to the hot pan using an ice cream scoop. As an aside, if you don’t have a cornstick pan, you can use a regular muffin pan.

I popped the pan into the 450° F oven for 18 minutes. After 18 minutes, the cornbread sticks were golden brown and perfectly cooked.

I removed the pan from the oven. Then, I let the cornbread sticks cool for about 5 minutes before removing them from the pan. I repeated this with the remaining batter.

I ended up with 12 absolutely delicious Southern Cornbread Sticks. They were crispy on the outside, and tender and moist on the inside. They were perfect with my Vegetarian Chili and Creamy Fresh Tomato Soup (stay tuned!). The heated leftovers were just as good as the fresh out-of-the-oven cornbread sticks. Yum!

If you like cornbread, you should also try my Louisiana Skillet Cornbread, Honey Cornbread Muffins and Southern Hushpuppies!