This post is sponsored by Suriny Rice Bran Oil.
There are a few keys to a good savory griddle cake.
First, I like my griddle cakes to have some crunch to them. I want a nice crust on the outside that’s lightly browned and can hold up any toppings I decide to pile on.
Second, I like to freshen up the flavors of the traditional cake with a slightly spicy salsa. You can practically make a meal out of these corn griddle cakes by topping them with some sour cream (or Greek yogurt) and a few big spoonfuls of the salsa in this recipe.
Adding sweet corn and green chiles to the batter? Well, that just makes sense. Let’s dig in!
Corn and Green Chile Griddle Cakes
Equipment
Ingredients
- ¾ cup cornmeal
- ¼ cup all-purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1 teaspoon sugar
- ½ teaspoon baking soda
- ½ teaspoon salt
- ½ teaspoon chili powder
- ¾ cup buttermilk
- 1 large egg
- 3 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
- 1 cup sweet corn
- 4 ounces green chiles
- ¼-⅓ cup rice bran oil, for cooking
- Sour cream, for serving
Salsa:
- ½ red onion, chopped
- 1 cup sweet peppers, chopped
- 1 cup cherry tomatoes, chopped
- 2 scallions, chopped
- 2 tablespoons cilantro, chopped
- ½ teaspoon salt
- 1 lime, juice only
Instructions
- For salsa, combine chopped ingredients in a medium bowl and add lime juice. Season with salt and set aside until needed.
- Stir together dry ingredients for griddle cakes in a medium bowl.
- Add buttermilk, egg, and melted butter. Stir until combined and then fold in sweet corn and green chiles.
- In a large cast iron skillet, heat rice bran oil over medium heat. Once hot, add batter in ¼ cup amounts. Let fry for about 3 minutes per side. Gently flip.
- When cakes are done frying, remove and let dry on a paper towel.
- Serve griddle cakes with sour cream and big spoonfuls of pepper salsa.
Nutrition
Did you make this recipe?
Corn Griddle Cakes
The Salsa
Before we get too deep in the griddle cake situation, let’s talk about the salsa. It involves some chopping, sure, but is so very worth it. The flavors are really fresh and delicious. To be honest, I could eat this almost like a salad or with some chips.
It goes so awesomely with the sweet corn and green chiles.
The peppers I used for this salsa are the tiny little sweet peppers that come in a bag. If you can’t find them though, just use a mix of red, orange, and yellow peppers. Probably 1/2 a pepper of each would do the trick just fine.
Griddle Cake Time
This is a really simple batter to mix up. Start by stirring together your dry ingredients in a bowl.
Then add the wet stuff (buttermilk, butter, and egg). Finally fold in the delicious add-ins. Try not to over-mix the batter.
What’s Rice Bran Oil?
To be honest, I had never used or heard of rice bran oil before the people at Suriny contacted me and asked me if I wanted to try it out. I said sure, why not?
Rice bran is the coating between a rice kernel and the rice husk. It’s frequently discarded when making white rice so it’s great to have a use for it.
I cooked with it for a few weeks and found it to be a really great oil to use in all kinds of things. It emulsifies easily and has a light, almost sweet flavor so it’s great in salad dressings and stuff.
Because it has a high smoke point, it’s also great for frying. Much better than olive oil and I found that my food absorbed less oil (unscientific observation).
I added a few glugs of the oil to my cast iron skillet and fried my corn griddle cakes for about 3 minutes per side until they were a perfect golden brown.
Here’s the problem with Suriny oil: It’s so new in the US, that you might have a hard time finding the stuff!
You have two options if you want to give it a go:
1) Ask your grocer to carry it! If you give your grocer this info, they can order it:
Ok. But seriously though.
How good do these griddle cakes look?
Leave a comment if you’ve ever cooked with rice bran oil!
It’s a new thing for me, but I love cooking with it so far and have no idea why it isn’t more popular here in the US.
Felicity
We love rice bran oil! It’s great for cooking because of the high smoke point. It’s fabulous for getting a crunchy crust & as you mentioned, the food doesn’t seem to get greasy. I must admit I haven’t used it in a salad dressing though. Will give that a try :-)
Nick
To be honest, I think I like it better than olive oil for salad dressings. I’m not sure why, but it emulsifies really easily and has a mild flavor so it’s easy to taste herbs/lemon that you might add to the dressing. Give it a shot for sure.
Matt
Those look delicious. What would happen if you tried making these like a pancake? ie, not using oil, but just spooning it onto a non-stick griddle?
Nick
I think it would work fine Matt. Even when I’m making pancakes though I add a little fat to my griddle (generally butter) and I would recommend the same though on these. You probably want some fat, but you could cut it way back without too much concern I think.
leah
Okay, I think I want to make these for 200 for a fundraiser party I’m catering. I feel like they would be perfect “vehicle” for pulled pork with a smoked persimmon BBQ sauce….eh? I’d have to use regular canola oil, of course. But do you think they’d hold up well in a warm chaffing dish for up to an hour? Do you think the batter would hold well if I mixed it the day of, or should I keep wet and dry ingredients separate until I’m ready to make them? I’ve never cooked for so many, I’m nervous!!
Nick
Hey Leah! Good luck! I’ve catered large stuff like that a few times and it’s a wild ride… I’ll do my best to help..
I THINK the cakes would be fine in a chafing dish for an hour or so, especially if you are serving stuff on them. They might lose a bit of their crunch but would still be great. To be honest, I would test this out. Just make a small batch and see how they are after an hour or so.
On the batter, because it has leavening stuff in it (baking soda/baking powder), I wouldn’t recommending mixing it more than an hour or so before you cook them. The batter would just completely deflate. But of course you could mix wet/dry separately and then just toss them together at the end.
I hope you have some good helpers. Sounds ambitious! Good luck!
leah
Hehe, i do have some good helpers. They will probably be made to order (dinner isn’t all at once…it’s like a festival type setting so I can manage the timing a little better- everyone wont be eating at the same time). Good call about not mixing it together too soon. Maybe I will make batches in 50 (4 batches each of wet and dry, held separately), so that every hour or so, if I need to, I can mix the two. Or what if I added the leavening stuff separately? Either way, it IS ambitious, but I couldn’t stand to have just another boring BBQ plate for sale! Thanks for your input, I have made 3 separate corn cake recipes in an attempt to find the right consistency that could support the pork w sauce, and yours , by far, seems to have all the right components to it. I’ll let you know how awesome it turns out!
leah
they turned out great!
Dick Both
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