Johnny Cakes with Jimmy Kennedy

Hey, everybody. Jimmy Kennedy. Here with Go Outside and we’re ice fishing again. And it is cold and windy today. Thank goodness we got a shanti. We’ve had good luck fishing and we’ve been eating pretty well, too. And we’re going to wrap this up with Johnny Cake. And Johnny Cake. I didn’t really hear about this much growing up in the South.
You know, we had pancakes and grits and that kind of thing. And we did have hoe cakes, which is another name for Johnny Cake or Journey Cake. But I was I moved up to New England. I heard about them all the time. And basically all it is, is a cornmeal pancake. It’s just cornmeal and water, a little bit of milk, a little bit of salt, pepper.
Some people put baking soda, baking powder and different things. There’s a lot of different recipes, but the original traditional recipe was really just white cornmeal and boiling water. That was it. Maybe sugar, salt and pepper. And there’s a lot of history behind this cake. Like, where did the name come from? Johnny Cake could have been from Journey Cake or the Shawnee Indian Shawnee cake.
And like I said, this hoe cakes, they’re called a lot of different things but basically it’s just a very simple pancake. And you could see why this was good, like back in the days of the days of ole when people had to travel by horse or whatever, all you needed was cornmeal. You had a bag of cornmeal. You can make these anywhere.
You would just take some water from the lake and boil it and you could have them. You know, they travel well to once you make these cakes and cook them, you could put them in your saddlebags or in your backpack or whatever and have them forever. So, you know, this this recipe has a lot of tradition and a lot of history behind it.
And it’s the easiest thing in the world to make. You just boil water. But we want to add a little milk, salt and pepper to it. And I’ve got the water. I got my cast-Iron heated up, too, so we can make this pretty quick like. So I got some boiling water. Just wisk that into the corn mill.
Typically it’s white cornmeal, but I really like this stone ground yellow cornmeal. So we’re going to use that just kind of pour that in slowly and whisk it in Oh, yeah. And I had a little milk this will thicken up here a little bit with salt and pepper we’re just going to let this sit for a second.
Let it thicken up, guys. Get things, get nice and hot. We’re burning some butter but that’s all right, so we got our Johnny Cake batter here, and it’s just about right right now. We’ll have the recipe on the website but it’s cornmeal and water, a little bit of milk, salt, pepper. That’s really all it is to it.
Just like make it a pancake. Just put a dollop on there.
You can make them any size. You know, we’re going to keep them very small. The day may have to make a fish. I don’t know what I would go with these four for now. We’ve got a super hot pan of cooked all right, guys, I think we got some Johnny Cakes. Yes, a very simple cornmeal pancakes all it is makes things are delicious.
Super easy. We can make a bunch of these and have them for days. All right.
So I’m here a little cool there. We can enjoy it.