Cornbread Tamale Pie Is the Greatest Recipe of All Time

Could cornbread tamale pie—a quick and spicy chili topped with cornbread—be the greatest recipe of all time?
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Alex Lau

You know those recipes we hold near and dear to our hearts because they are really the greatest ever of all time? Well, we're using this new series as an opportunity to wax poetic about them. Today, BonAppetit.com staff writer Rochelle Bilow gets nostalgic about cornbread tamale pie (whatever the heck that is).

Most little kids are picky eaters to the nth degree. As a youngster, I was no different. Grocery-store salami on white bread (no condiments, thanks) with the occasional canned tomato soup stand-in was where it was at, and no matter how you tried, you couldn't convince me otherwise. If it was spicy, peppery, salted, challenging, or otherwise flavorful, I wanted no part of it. Until. Until my mother made cornbread tamale pie.

What is cornbread tamale pie, besides the most delicious thing there ever was? This question is perhaps better answered by addressing what it isn't. It isn't a pie. It definitely has nothing to do with tamales. There is cornbread involved, happily, but beyond that, the name's origin is anyone's guess. It's a relatively spicy mix of browned ground beef, onions, bell peppers (eat it, haters), and tomato sauce, all smothered in a cornbread batter and baked in the oven. Obviously, it is the best thing ever to come out of an oven because it involves both meat and carbohydrates, and is baked in a cast-iron skillet to boot.

I have a storied history with cornbread tamale pie, and for that, it will always hold a very special place in my heart. My mother made it for dinner one night when I was a child of three or four, and she was expecting to split the portion between my father and herself—it was doubtful, she figured, that my sister and I would want any. She figured wrong. We housed that stuff, then continued to request it for dinner for weeks to come. This was a perplexing development for my mother, because not only did the cornbread tamale pie resemble a salami sandwich in no discernible way, it was spicy. Not vindaloo-level spicy, of course, but it had a solid hit of red pepper flakes and was not shy on flavor. Plus, there was meat in it. And vegetables. There was an disconcerting lack of cheese, refined flour, and sugar. I wasn't supposed to like this thing.

And yet cornbread tamale pie remains, in my heart and mind (and also everywhere else because obviously I am right) the Greatest Recipe of All Time. Here's how you make it:

First, get out your cast-iron skillet. If you don't have one, steal one from your parents' attic. That is what I did, and I honestly don't think they even know it's gone yet. Then, brown some ground beef in that pan. Remove the ground beef and add chopped onions, green bell peppers, and a hit of red pepper flakes. This is not the time for Aleppo pepper, harissa, or imported dried whole chiles. This is the time for a shaker container of red pepper flakes, so embrace it and add 'em in. Once the veggies have softened, add the meat back in, along with a can or two of diced tomatoes. Simmer it all together, then slather on your favorite cornbread batter.

You're going to want to bake this until the cornbread topping is deeply golden and a little crusty—the whole point of this dish is breaking through a crunchy exterior to get to the spicy, saucy chili (it is, essentially, a chili) underneath. But the very best part of the pan lies between that upper crust and the meaty sauce: the layer of cornbread that abuts the tomatoes. It's drenched in sauce and soggy, but, you know, the good kind of soggy. Like when you use a piece of bread to mop up the last bit of a ragu. That's where the magic happens in cornbread tamale pie, and it still gets me. Every single time.

This dish is the definition of a G.R.O.A.T.: unfussy, intuitive, and life-changing. Also: Who doesn’t like cornbread?

Something sweet to sip on while you eat: