A Kentucky Tradition from the Belle: Spoon Bread

Missy Tippens

I made an old favorite from my childhood for Thanksgiving: Spoon Bread!

I imagine some of you haven't even heard of it.  The way I remember first having spoon bread was at Boone Tavern in Berea, Kentucky. Boone Tavern is on the campus of Berea College. I was reminded of it recently when I passed by Berea while attending my uncle's funeral in Frankfort.

Berea College was the South's first interracial and coeducational college. As their sign says: "Charging no tuition, Berea admits promising Appalachian student with limited economic resources. All students work in campus jobs, such as serving at the college's hotel."

Our family would visit there when I was a child, and we would eat in the hotel. I remember students being the waiters. And I remember, especially, the spoon bread!

Click here for the recipe from the Kentucky Living Magazine website.

Basically, it's just white cornmeal, milk, eggs, melted butter, salt and baking powder.

You cook the cornmeal with the milk into a thick oatmeal-like (grits-like!) consistency. Then you let it totally cool. Once cool, you add it to the eggs and melted butter, etc.

The recipe requires 15 minutes of mixing! So I made it in my stand mixer so I could let it go while I did other things.

You can see it starts out as a glue-like blob.

But it gets smoother and smoother.

Once it was finished in the mixer, I baked it in a buttered Corningware dish.

Here it is fresh out of the oven. You want to wait until the last minute to bake it because it's served hot, spooned out of the dish, with creamy butter. And you want that butter to melt!

I love this dish! I hadn't had it in many years and really enjoyed making it for Thanksgiving. I hope you'll give it a try. I think you'll love it like I do!

Missy Tippens was born and raised in Kentucky. These days, she lives outside Atlanta with her husband and daughter (and middle son for another week or so). You can find her books at www.missytippens.com.