Try Bobby Flay’s Cast Iron Pan Cornbread | TODAY

This week on Today Food, we're all about kitchen tools you cannot live without. Bobby Flay is here. He stars in the Food Network special series, Chopped, Beat Bobby Flay Tournament, premieres tomorrow night. Bobby, good to see you. Good to see you. The kitchen tool you cannot live without is? Cast iron pan. Why? Love them. First of all, they don't cost a lot and they can last for generations if you take care of them. And they're wonderful to cook with because it gives you lots of good sear on whatever you're cooking. We've got two recipes using them. You've got one in the oven right now. But let's talk about cornbread, traditional, wet first then dry. Is that how you do it? Well, you mix the dry and the wet. So you're going to, separately, so you have some eggs and some milk and some butter. This is obviously going to be the wet ingredients. And I have some dry ingredients, some cornmeal, a little bit of flour, baking, some baking powder, and then a little bit of salt and sugar. All at once? Yes. Yeah, put it all in. And then the great thing about cornbread is it can kind of take a beating. You kind of just mix it all together just until it kind of forms a batter. You don't want to mix it too much, right? You don't want to mix it too much. Just until it, keep mixing that, Matt. Okay, go ahead. And then I'm going to take my cast iron pan, and this is key, that I warmed up in the oven, made it really hot. I'm going to take a little bit of butter, I'm just going to brush the butter right on top of the pan, and then we're going to take that batter that's good, Matt, and we're going to pour that right into the hot skillet. And what's going to happen is you're going to get this really nice crust on the outside of the cornbread, so you get a good contrast of texture. Okay, it looks like this over here, which is beautiful. 18 minutes. All right, you've got cornbread. Take the cornbread now and make another recipe for me, okay? Which way are we going? You go that way, I'll go this way. Okay. You call it dressing because it's alongside the bird? Because I cook it on the side. I cook it in, I'm going to cook it back in the cast iron pan. Okay. Now if you want to make stuffing, you put it in the bird, which is totally fine, it's up to you. Here are the ingredients. Yes, exactly. Not much. So we have mushrooms, and then I call these the Thanksgiving vegetables, carrots, celery, onions. You can put a little garlic in there if you want as well, a little bit of butter. Those are cremini mushrooms, but any kind of mushrooms you can find will work perfectly fine. Okay. So we have these, so we saute those for a little while, and I'm going to add some eggs to this, and then some herbs, a little bit of fresh thyme, oregano, and some parsley, and then we're going to add the cornbread. Now this is the cornbread that we had the day before. Really important, Matt, is you should let the cornbread stay out so it dries out, otherwise it's going to be too moist. Okay. Okay? So we're going to pour this right into our vegetables, and this is going to start to make up that flavor profile for the dressing. Now, one of the most important ingredients in any Thanksgiving meal is chicken broth, and we need a lot of it, because it is really going to drink up a lot of this. The cornbread soaks it up? The cornbread soaks up a lot of the broth, and so once you think you have enough, add more. Okay. And this goes what? Right into the skillet? Right into the cast iron pan, and we bake this in the oven for like 40 minutes, and you can see how crusty it gets. Okay? That looks so great. And that's the cast iron doing its job. With either turkey or chicken, a little cranberry sauce on the side. There you go. Cast iron skillet. That's the tool you can't live without. Absolutely. Bobby, thank you for these recipes, and to sign up for our Today Food Club, head to today.com slash food. Hello, Today fans. Thanks for checking out our YouTube channel. Subscribe by clicking that button down there, and click on any of the videos over here to watch the latest interviews, show highlights, and digital exclusives.