Traeger Smoked Cornbread

Smoked cornbread is the perfect pairing for any soup, stew, or chili you make on a Traeger or pellet smoker. You can throw it together in about 10 minutes and pop it on the grill right at the end of any cook. And this southern style cornbread is fluffy, moist, and cheesy with just the right amount of kick thanks to poblano pepper.

How to Make Traeger Cornbread

You can skip straight to the printable recipe card with the jump to recipe button above if you’re a cornbread making pro. But if you’re curious about ingredient substitutions and other recipe tips, read through the visual walkthrough below.

Mix wet and dry ingredients separately before combining.

Dry Ingredients

• Yellow Cornmeal
• All Purpose Flour
• Baking Powder, Baking Soda, and Kosher Salt

Pretty standard fare for a southern style cornbread. Sugar can help with browning and add some sweetness, if you’re into that. A tablespoon or two should be enough.

Wet Ingredients

• Eggs
• Buttermilk
• Cheese
• Diced Peppers
• Cream Corn

This cornbread is similar to a jalapeño cheddar cornbread, using poblanos instead of jalapeño to get a bit more pepper without all the spice. Feel free to use any pepper.

The cream corn provides a ton of moisture. If all you have is whole kernel corn or frozen corn, you may want to add a little heavy cream, milk, butter, or even cream cheese to the cornbread batter.

Heat a skillet on the grill or stovetop before adding a tablespoon of oil.

Adding the cornbread batter to a hot skillet ensures you get the signature crunchy, nicely browned crust.

Feel free to use any oil or fat. Rendered bacon fat or drippings are a southern style cornbread staple, but I actually used beef tallow.

Spoon the cornbread batter into the skillet.

I tested this Traeger cornbread in both a 12″ and 10″ skillet. The smaller skillet makes taller cornbread pieces while the larger skillet creates more crust due to the increased surface area. You can’t go wrong either way.

Smoke on the Traeger for 25-30 minutes at 425ºF.

I used Traeger Signature Pellets on the Pro 575 grill. The cook time across all test batches, regardless of skillet size, fell in the same 25-30 minute range.

You can also bake this cornbread on the Traeger alongside any stew or chili you have on the grill. In my smoked Texas cowboy stew recipe, for example, the stew cooks for 3 hours at 325ºF before going up to 425ºF in the final 30 minutes while the cornbread bakes.

Let the smoked cornbread cool before slicing and serving.

If you have the patience, let the cornbread cool for at least 10-15 minutes before slicing. To speed things up, you can transfer the cornbread to a cooling rack or out of the skillet after 5 minutes or so.

What to Serve with Smoked Cornbread

I mentioned my Texas cowboy stew recipe above, so here are some other pairing ideas for your smoked cornbread:

• Tex-Mex Chili with Taco Seasoning
• Traeger Chili without Beans
• Traeger Charro Beans
• Vegetable Beef Soup
• Traeger Pot Roast
• Smoked Chuck Roast Stew

Like I mentioned in the introduction, you can make just about any soup, chili, or stew recipe on the Traeger. I recommend cooking uncovered at a lower temperature in the 300ºF to 350ºF range for 3-4 hours. You can increase the temperature on the Traeger for the final 30 minutes to cook the cornbread.