vegetable oil or cooking spray
1 tablespoon butter
2 cups yellow cornmeal (stone ground is best)
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
2 cups buttermilk
2 eggs
1 tablespoon mild vegetable oil
Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Spray cast iron skillet (or other baking dish), add butter, put into oven to heat. Mix remaining dry ingredients, in separate bowl mix remaining wet ingredients - then combine wet and dry mixtures stirring just until combined. Put batter in hot skillet and cook until browned and crusty - probably just under 30 minutes.
Been doing that for 40 years or so.
Let me say, first, that crumbly cornbread isn't necessarily a bad thing. In fact it is often prepared and then crumbed - into stuffing, into soups and stews and chilli, into buttermilk, into a host of dishes.
I personally would never just add jalapenos to that basic cornbread mix for jalapeno cornbread. If nothing else, I'd want to add some sweetness to go with the heat. I might want to include some cheese and/or corn (or creamed corn) and maybe some bacon or sausage crumbles in the finished product. A Google search will provide many recipes for jalepeno cornbread that incorporate these variations and more. Some are very good. You really should look through some of them before your next attempt at jalapeno cornbread.
Epicurious seems to have a pretty basic recipe here (excludes the cheese/corn/ bacon/sausage):
http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Jalapeno-Corn-Bread-2663You do need to mix ingredients in the right proportions - and cook the batter at an appropriate temperature to have good noncrumbly cornbread. It will dry out and become crumbly if it is cooked at a lower temperature for a longer period of time. You can buy a thermometer that is safe to use in your oven to monitor the temperature. They are not prohibitively expensive.
You do not need to soak the cornmeal overnight. While some cornmeal based polenta, scones and tortillas do use a brief soaking process (usually less than a half hour), soaked cornmeal is the stuff that makes mush - and a home remedy for toenail fungus.
http://www.cdkitchen.com/recipes/recs/102/Cooked_Cornmeal_Mush58307.shtmlhttp://www.livestrong.com/article/288513-how-to-soak-toenails-in-mush-for-fungus/For anyone here that has a real interest in cornbread, I'd recommend "The Cornbread Gospels" by Crescent Dragonwagon.
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