Ditch Your Burrito Bowl, Cornbread Bowls Are The Future Of Comfort Food

Move over burrito bowls! You've been usurped by the new comfort food in town: the cornbread bowl. Basically, it's a bowl made of cornbread and stuffed to the brim with all the hot and savory foods you usually eat to warm up when the weather turns crisp. It's a comfort food container filled with down-home cookin'.

Aside from tasting delish, cornbread bowls are super easy to make. If you have a favorite homemade cornbread recipe, use that to create your cornbread bowl. However, it isn't necessary to make this comfort food concoction from scratch. Your favorite boxed cornbread mix works just fine, particularly if you know how to jazz up the packaged mix. For example, start with the boxed cornbread mix. Add ingredients, like eggs, a splash of milk and sour cream, spicy peppers, and a bit of honey or maple syrup to it to sweeten things up a bit. Then, prep the mix for the oven. To make it bowl-shaped, pour the mix into a round cake or a pie pan. Bake it until you can stick a toothpick into the center and it comes out clean. 

If you prefer plain cornbread, you don't need to do anything at this stage but allow it to cool for a few minutes. If you're a sucker for extra flavor, make up some melted honey or maple syrup butter or whip up a batch of your favorite compound butter recipe and brush it all over the top of the hot cornbread.

After it's cooled off, cut a round hole in the center with the tip of a knife or a flat spatula. Cut all the way down to the bottom of the pan, and then, pull the "cornbread hole" out of the center. Depending on your preference, you can slide the cornbread out of the pan and serve the cornbread bowl on a plate. Or make things easy by leaving it in the container you made it in.

Now, it's time to stuff it with your favorite comfort food. Try some spicy turkey chili or Brazilian stew with rice. Or fill it with some soul food items, like fried catfish, sauteed kielbasa sausage, collard greens, and saucy mac and cheese. Fried chicken strips, cream corn or green bean casserole, and a bit of rice pilaf fills the tummy nicely, as does your prized jambalaya with sausage, shrimp, and kidney beans.

You can also go in the opposite culinary direction, too, and turn your cornbread bowl into dessert by adding something sweet on top. Cornbread tastes great as the shortcake part of strawberry shortcake. Or fill it with some berry compote and top it with some Mascarpone cheese whipped cream to enjoy the berries of the season. Finally, if you really wanna be a rebel, make a cornbread bowl for your dinner and one for dessert. It'll be unforgettable deliciousness from the start of your meal until its good-to-the-last-bite finish.