<I felt the outside was not crispy crunchy inside>

I'm not sure what you mean by this.

When I make them, the inside is not really crispy, but it is somewhat crunchy. I guess it depends on the recipe you use. Mine have a crispy exterior and a crunchy interior, but that is because I put chopped celery in them. I generally only make them when I am deep frying fish, and I use leftover breading from the fish to make them, and I add a few ingredients, as needed. I always add chopped celery, chopped jalapeño, and chopped onion to the breading, as well as some baking powder, flour & cornmeal as needed, an egg, and some beer, if more liquid is needed. I usually also add some oregano. I don't have an exact recipe, as I use leftover breading to start with, and this generally also has egg, and so I might not need to add an egg, unless I want to make a big batch. To make a smaller batch, I add beer as needed for liquid instead of egg.

I also make sure to pay attention to the oil temperature and keep it at 375°.

One thing I've noticed is that they are not very good leftover and do not reheat well.

What do you put on your Hush Puppies when you eat them. I have only had them at fish places and they have ketchup. I just don't think that tastes right to me.

Sue

Lars, I think you misunderstood because a comma was missing. The outside was not crispy/crunchy, (while) the inside was dry.

I love hush puppies. I didn't have them till I moved to Texas, now I'm back North and haven't had them in 30 years. Or a decent corn dog. Now I'm Craving!

What ever you do to a hush puppy, don't make it sweet! I have popped into my mouth with anticipation too darned many pups that were like eating cake! Just don't do that!

Sugar does not belong in any cornbread, and this is really just fried cornbread.

I am out of Texas and the southern cuisines and it is in these modern times that the dominating taste of sweet has taken over cornbread and hush puppies.

I am old enough to remember when that was not so.

My supposition is that it came about with the popularity of mixes, whereas all the cooks in my life just made real cornbread. Those mixes are all sweet and it is so darned simple to just put together some cornbread. It is an easy as cooking can possibly be to make it real.

Use a good quality cornmeal and I always use buttermilk. Hush pups are just another version of cornbread with some onions or whatever you like chopped in.

What do you dunk a hush pup in? Hot sauce, of course.

What do you do with one that is sweet? Throw it to the pups. They will eat anything.

Lars - Both hushpuppies and fried fish reheat very well with just about 5 minutes in an air fryer set at around 325F.

Here are two recipes, from two different old Memphis cookbooks. As I recall, bacon grease was the preferred fat.

1 c. corn meal

2 t baking powder

1 onion, chopped

1 egg, beaten

3/4 T salt

3/4 c. milk

1/4 t salt

2 T melted fat (I'm sure that's not enough to be 'deep fat)

Mix dry ingredients thoroughly and gradually add milk, blending well. Add beaten egg, then chopped onion. drop for teaspoon or tablespoon into hot deep fat and fry until golden brown. Serves 4 to 6.

Recipe#2

2 c white cornmeal

1 t pepper

2 c flour

1 medium onion, chopped

3T baking powder

3 c milk (scant)

2 t. salt

Stir dry ingredients together, add onion. Add milk until proper consistency to drop by half teaspoonfuls in deep fat until lightly browned. Yield 6-7 dozen.

I love jalapeños in hushpuppies.

I dunk mine in tarter sauce ... unless I’m having the stick kind (my favorite), then I dunk them in a little bit of butter.

Basic recipe, but I leave out hot sauce:

https://www.tasteofhome.com/recipes/quick-jalapeno-hush-puppies/

Well, I like my cornbread and hush puppies sweet!! Gasp. I can't help with the making because I've never tried to make hush puppies. The best ones I've ever had were at an old caboose restaurant in North Myrtle Beach in the late 80's/early90's. (Wish I could remember the name.) They were served with whipped honey butter. I've also seen them served with honey. Some like it sweet.

Found two more recipes in the White Trash Cooking and another by the same author, Ernest Mickler. Both are about the same as the ones I posted above, one using buttermilk, neither with wheat flour. A variation called "coastal" adds some chopped bell pepper. None are sweet. I associate sweet cornbread with Texas or northern variations, not Southern.

When I was a kid, our Dachshund was named Hush Puppy.

No, sweet cornbread is not a thing in Texas. At least not native Texans.

I’ve never in my life heard of sweet hush puppies.

Good to know that sweet is not Texan! Now, I do like sweet cornbread, but it's more like cake, not real cornbread, but it can be good. Real corn bread and genuine pone (the sticks in the cast iron mold) is a treat. And sweet hush puppies? No way!

Sushi, I am noticing more and more in restaurants — sweetened butter or honey butter for cornbread served. Sometimes I’m in the mood for that, sometimes not! I agree, it’s like eating cake.

I miss my Mema’s cornbread in her old cast iron skillet! It was heavenly. :)

The only time I've had hushpuppies is when Long John Silver fish and chips places were around. So good! I'd always wanted to try making them, but never did.

When I make cornbread, it does not have flour in it, but I do add flour to hush puppies - otherwise they come out too hard, especially when reheated. BTW, I do not have an air fryer to reheat them, and so that is not an option. If I have leftover fried fish, I reheat it in the toaster oven, wrapped in aluminum foil, at 250° - generally for five minutes. I've reheated hush puppies the same way, but they still came out hard.

I never add sugar to cornbread (or flour), but I sometimes do add fresh or frozen corn, and that does give it a slightly sweet flavor, but nothing like what sugar would. I am also out of (i.e. from) Texas.

Since I make hush puppies only with fried fish, I serve them with tartar sauce and/or a "Louis" sauce that I make for Crab Louis. This sauce has chili sauce (which I make myself), horseradish, lime juice, and mayo. I do not stock ketchup or use it for anything, except for Okonomiyaki sauce, and so I buy the Okonomiyaki sauce instead. I don't dislike ketchup - I just never get around to using it. I guess a bottle of ketchup would last me two or three years, based on how often I use it.

I don't care for sugar in my cornbread. I do remember a restaurant that served really sweet corn muffins that I liked, was there a Kenny Roger's restaurant? I seem to remember a country singer's name. I liked them, but I ate them as dessert.

Marie Callander's restaurants had sweet cornbread, and they sell it as a mix, too. I like it fine, but like I said, it's not cornbread, but cake.

I would rather have butter on my hush puppies than hot sauce or tartar sauce. Usually at Captain D's I don't take the hush puppies but ask for their bread stick instead.

Sue

Sweet cornbread is what folks from up north are accustomed to. My hubs is out of New Jersey and it has taken me a lifetime to persuade him not to put honey on his real Texas made-in-an-iron-skillet cornbread, even when we are having it as cornbread and beans.

Corn muffins are sweet cakes. If that is what you like, eat that. But, for cornbread that goes with the meal, it is totally inappropriate.

Cornbread and corn muffins are NOT the same thing and are NOT interchangeable. Hush puppies are a variation of cornbread.

Adding a bit of flour to the cornbread lets it remain still authentic cornbread, but sugar takes out of the realm of authentic southern cornbread.

Some, such as Lars, use only cornmeal. I use 1 part flour to 3 parts cornmeal. Both ways it is good.

So many people in our modern times don't make their own cornbread and they buy one of these sugary mixes. Sweet has overtaken so much in our diets. Sugar shows up in the most wrong places in much of what America eats. These mixes have been sold for so long now that many people have never had real cornbread and they think that what they are eating is the real thing. The taste of sweet has become so pervasive.

If you want real cornbread, get yourself some good corn meal and do your own. It is sooooo simple!

Real cornbread lovers will even forgive you if you bake it in a cake pan, just as long as you don't put sugar in it,

There is a difference between cornbread that originates out of the coastal low country and that which went west to Texas with the folks that stopped for a while in Alabama, Mississippi. Low country cornbread tends to be flatter.. whereas, further west it tends to be baked in a somewhat thicker version. Low country will tend toward using buttermilk and further west it tends more towards sweet milk. I use buttermilk because I use buttermilk in all of my cooking.

Old fashioned country cornbread gets poured into a hot skillet of bacon grease that has been sprinkled with corn meal. You get your oil in the skillet hot, sprinkle some cornmeal onto the oil and them dump your mix onto the oil so that you hear the sizzle. Into the oven, and turn it out upside down onto a plate when it is done. You should see a nice crispy corn crust on it.

I don't use bacon grease. I use peanut oil. Many old time cooks kept that little bucket of bacon grease right there near the stove. My mom did that, but I never have.

I am pleased to see so many of you here on this forum that appear to be eating and enjoying the real cornbread.

I don't make hush puppies because I really don't fry things. Sometimes I will put fresh corn into my cornbread, or chopped chilis or some chopped onions....at times.

My cornbread always arrives at the table missing one very small little piece along the edge. That is the cooks part, that little edge of corny crust.

Someone asked about what to dunk hush puppies in and I replied that I use hot sauce. The truth is that they were never intended to be dunked in anything, really. That idea of dunking fried things into a sauce and eating them like that is a modern inspiration. Traditionally, they just got eaten with, usually, the fried fish and tended to not be served as dunk worthy snacks. Lars has the right thing going when he makes his from the leftover fish fry.

corn pone is a very basic poor mans cornbread that is, basically, a fried corn meal mush, of sorts.

If your cornbread is in the shape of a stick, it is still cornbread but it is baked in a corn stick pan.

I have several cast iron pieces with little cornstalk shaped hollows for baking corn sticks. I don't use them too often because they are so labor intensive to clean with all of those little crevices in there. I will oil them up and sprinkle corn meal into the baking pan, just as I do my regular corn bread in the iron skillet before adding the corn bread batter.

Corn pone serves much the same purpose as hardtack. It is heavy and travels well out to the fields for those who worked the crops.

"Hoecakes" were actually baked on the end of a hoe, presumably, out in the fields.

Names for things are regional and interchangeable. NorthEast here and no one I know puts any sugar in their cornbread. Grew up Chesapeake Bay Eastern shore. Corn pone is a warm soft wet cornbread. Cut into squares from a casserole pan. Similar to a Italian polenta. (or next day pan fried grits)

Hard tack is rock hard dry brick of a bread that needs an overnight soak for a Fish-n-Brewis. A hearty cod chowder.

I have the cast iron fish, corn, and bears I use for cornbread as they have lots of crispy edges.

Hush puppies here are cornbread balls fried. I don't fry but having them years ago with fried catfish...dip whatever is in the provided fish side container. Usually a tarter sauce-ish dip.

My mom grew up poor, depression era east Texas on a hard scrabble farm where, if they did not raise it, they did not eat it, generally. The exception might be flour and oil and sugar and a few things like that.

Corn pone was a carry out food. Meaning that you could carry it out to the fields. It was a heavy cooked hunk of corn mush with not much more than some salt and bacon drippings.

Apparently some do refer to corn sticks as being "pone".

Pone is what they ate when times were tough. Cornbread was the preferred in better times. Momma made pone for us a few times just so that we could know the difference between having something good like cornbread or having to settle for what there was in lean times. She certainly knew lean times in her lifetime.

Cornbread is so wonderful. What a shame that so many people just buy a sweet mix for it.

You can get some of those cornmeals that are milled down in the Carolinas that are absolutely wonderful. I used to buy a few pounds of those at the Publix when we went to see the kids in Florida. The last time I was there they did not seem to be carrying them anymore.

One of the mills is not too far off of I95 but was not open the day that we were passing through. Maybe another time................in the future, post Covid.

As the OP of Hush Puppies had intended to get back sooner than this. Funny how everyday life gets in the way of fun stuff. Nothing serious just stuff.

Yes Lars, bpath was right I failed to put a comma in.

sushipup1 I tried you first recipe you posted, the batter was to thin to scoop (sure it was pilot error) so I added a bit more cornmeal, then some more, and about a Tbsp of flour, dropped off and fried. They were great, I thought texture was what I had in mind. Added the onion, and in part of batter added chopped celery as Lars did. Both batches was great.

Now today I did another batch and again batter was to thin, added extra cornmeal, lots of chopped onion. Again the completed fryings were more the texture I had in mind. I am on my way to good Hush Puppies. I do have an Air Fryer, but I rewarmed the leftovers in my toaster convention oven, very satisfied with results. Serve with Ranch dressing, or the Spicey Ranch dressing.

Sushipup....A Dachshund named Hush Puppy, how cute.

I have wore many pairs of the Hush Puppy shoe brand, as far back as 1957, (yep I am old old). The greatest work shoe ever.

Todays Hush Puppies

Sorry about huge picture. Have a new iPad, I do not have control of it yet. Different format than my other 5 yr old iPad, but like the Hush Puppies I will win.