Mexican Corn Bread with Ground Meat

Mexican Corn Bread with Ground Meat

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I enjoyed this casserole.  The taste triggered a memory for me but I couldn't quite recall it.  Perhaps this is something I actually ate growing up.  The hand writing on the recipe card is probably my mother's but might be my grandmother's.  I think it's funny that the instructions say to grate 1 1/2 lbs. of Long Horn cheese.  First of all - do they have Long Horn cheese outside of Texas?  Secondly - I guess this recipe was written before the bags of pre-shredded cheese were commonly found in grocery stores.  (That brought up another memory of how much cheese I grated as a kid.)

I chose to use a Poblano pepper instead of jalapenos because we don't like that much heat but I do enjoy Poblanos.  When I was a cashier at HEB in the late '80's we had to memorize produce codes and know what each type of produce was.  We had tests every week.  (Eventually I would be promoted to head cashier and be responsible for creating and administering the tests.)  This was way before produce had stickers and bar codes on each item.  We also had a lot less options and varieties.  Anyway - I always remembered the Poblano because it has a bit of an odd, wrinkly shape - like ears.  And Pablo Picasso cut off his ear.  

I put the vegetables to saute in a dry pan then added the meat when they got a little soft.  While it was cooking I gathered the ingredients for the corn bread layer.  The recipe didn't say to drain the meat but I did.  

I didn't have any bacon drippings so I used the meat drippings.  I didn't measure it but just estimated 1 TBSP in the large draining spoon two times.  When I looked at it in the bottom of the mixing pitcher it didn't look like two TBSP but I didn't add any more.

You'll also see that my corn meal doesn't quite fill the cup.  I had another bag in the pantry but didn't want to open it for just that much.  So I under-filled the milk measure as well.  

I did use the entire 2 eggs and can of creamed corn.

The batter was very thin.

It made a little more than 3 cups.  I split the ingredients across two pans so I could make a non-cheese version for my non-cheese eater.  So I figured 1/2 of 3 cups is 1 1/2 cups per pan.  Half of 1 1/12 cups is 3/4 cups so I aimed for 3/4 cups in the bottom of each WELL GREASED pan.  (In spite of the heavy greasing, I still felt like the bottom layer stuck to the pan.  It was easily scraped off with the spatula but it was definitely more stuck than normal corn bread.)

I tried to distribute the meat evenly over the layer.  It was not hard to do.

Since I only needed half the cheese I didn't measure - just covered the meat layer with pre-shredded Sharp Cheddar cheese.

I drizzled the remaining 3/4 cup cornbread batter per pan over the top of the meat or cheese.

Because I was busy shopping and delivering groceries during the Corona Pandemic, I made these the night before and refrigerated overnight.  I called home from the store and had them pre-heat the oven and told them to put the pans in without lids at 5 o'clock.

When I got home at 5:45 this is what I took out of the oven.  The edges look a little overdone but really were not.  I added sour cream on top of mine.