Cornbread is a mainstay of many meals, especially in the south. Made using unprocessed corn as a sweetener, cornbread is easy to make in large quantities, tastes good, and contains a lot of calories for its mass. But how do you reheat it?
Cornbread can be reheated in many different ways. The oven, the microwave, the air fryer, basically anything that can get something hot can warm up cornbread. Just be sure to store it properly and reheat it before it dries out. The last thing you want is to be eating dry, crumbly cornbread.
So, to start with, you will want to know the most common method of reheating cornbread: The oven.
The Oven
Reheating cornbread in the oven starts with preheating it to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. You will also need a pan to place the cornbread on. Place them on the pan while leaving some space between the pieces of cornbread as well to give them room to breathe. Cover the cornbread in tin foil before you put it in the oven.
The tin foil will allow the cornbread to be heated evenly, as the tin foil will create a sort of miniature oven inside your oven. Many ovens only heat from the bottom up, which can make small treats like cornbread heat disproportionately more on the bottom side than the top side. You do not want half-baked cornbread.
Heat your cornbread for ten to fifteen minutes. Ten minutes is when you can start checking it out. Give it a poke, a sniff, whatever makes you feel like you can perceive its progress. Do not put too much stock into these checks, however. It is done when it is done. Just be patient, and never leave it there for more than 15 minutes.
If you want to be totally safe, turn your oven off after about 11 or 12 minutes, but leave the cornbread in there. If the cornbread is not done yet, then the lingering heat inside the oven (and inside the tin foil wrapping) will almost always get it there. If it is done, then the heat leaving the oven over time will keep it from drying out.
Do all this and your cornbread should come out of the oven as good as when you first made it.
The Microwave
The microwave trades the accuracy of the oven for expediency. There are very few settings to adjust in a microwave, and even if you do have a dedicated “preheat” setting, the cornbread will probably turn a little floppy in the process. It will still taste delicious, but it will not be as good as new.
That being said, here is how you reheat cornbread in a microwave: Start by placing it in or on a microwave safe container. Then, cover the cornbread. You can use plastic, another container, a plate, whatever you have on hand. Just be sure to never, ever use tin foil. Microwaves do not like tin foil.
Then, set the microwave to 30 seconds. That might not seem like long, but it does not really take too long to get cornbread warm. Part of the reason corn is so widely used is that it is a conductor of thermal energy. This is what causes it to be useful as a supplement to fuel. It also means it heats rather quickly.
After a short 30 seconds in the microwave your cornbread should be good to go!
The Air Fryer
Air fryers are less common than ovens or microwaves, but the people that have them will stand by them till the end times. They are quite useful for reheating food, as they use air pressure as much as heat to cook things.
In physics, air pressure and heat function very similarly insofar as how they affect matter. This means that an air fryer can cook something with less risk of it being burned. The drawback of the air fryer is usually that it is not as good at cooking certain foods as an actual oven. You do not need to worry about that with cornbread.
Start by preheating your air fryer to 320 degrees Fahrenheit. Most air fryers have their own nonstick surfaces inside them. But if you want to be safe, go ahead and put your cornbread on a pan. You will not need the tin foil this time though.
The most important thing to note is that you will only need to leave the cornbread in the air fryer for about three or four minutes. After that, the surface of the cornbread runs the risk of hardening under the pressure.
In Conclusion
Cornbread is practically a delicacy in the American south, and for good reason. At one point in time, it was the sweetest thing anyone would ever eat. While there have been many sweeter foods since then, it has retained a certain charm due to the fact that it has so many other characteristics, such as its texture and warmth.
But whether you are from the south, north, or somewhere else entirely, if you enjoy cake but want it to be a bit more mellow, then cornbread will serve you well. Just be sure to store and reheat it safely afterwards.
