With this warm weather and Memorial Day just around the corner, we’ve got a lot of great opportunities for porch sitting, grilling out, and getting creative with new side dishes such as this Layered Cornbread Salad. This salad is brilliant because it has the sweetness of cornbread paired with the creaminess of ranch dressing and tons of fresh veggies. You can’t believe how much people will love this gorgeous layered salad.
One of the best things about this salad is that you can make it using the veggies listed in the recipe or just make it with what you have on hand. I’ve made this salad a dozen times and it’s never been exactly the same because I’ve never been in exactly the same mood when making it.
When making this salad you want to start with the cornbread because it will need to bake and then cool before crumbling to add it to the top of the salad. I was raised on Jiffy Cornbread and don’t really see a need to explore other cornbread options because it’s got that perfect amount of sweetness that just does it for me. But you are definitely welcome to use another cornbread if you hate perfection–I mean if you prefer something else. You can bake the cornbread in a 9×9 dish or in muffin tins. I love using the mini-muffin tins because it allows the cornbread to cool more quickly. And a girl does not have a lot of time to just sit around and wait for her cornbread to cool. Am I right?
In the past I’ve always made one large batch of this salad to serve for a group, which is totally what I recommend for Memorial Day cookouts! But this time I decided to make individual jar salads so they’d be portable and easy to take for lunch. Either way, you won’t regret it. The ingredients I’ve listed below make one large salad or about 6 medium (12 ounce) jar salads.
- 1 box Jiffy Corn Muffin mix (8.5 ounces)
- 1 egg
- ⅓ cup milk
- 1 package grape tomatoes, quartered
- 1 ten ounce package frozen corn, defrosted
- 2 cucumbers, diced
- 2 orange bell peppers, diced
- 2 cans pinto beans, drained and rinsed
- Ranch dressing
- 2 cups cheddar cheese, shredded
- 1 jalapeno, thinly sliced
- Mix cornbread and bake according to package directions in either a greased 9x9 dish or muffin tin. Then set aside to cool.
- While the cornbread is baking, defrost the corn and dice the tomatoes, cucumbers, and bell peppers. Also drain and rinse pinto beans.
- If assembling jars, divide your ingredients into sixths. Start layering the salad in the jars or large bowl starting with tomatoes. Then add the corn, cucumbers, orange bell peppers, pinto beans and cheddar cheese.
- Crumble the cornbread and add as the top layer to the salad.
- Cover and refrigerate salad until ready to serve.
- Serve with generous amounts of ranch dressing on top of the salad or add ranch to individual servings. Garnish with jalapenos for some heat if you please!
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