Monte Cristo Skillet
As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
With all the goodness of a classic Monte Cristo sandwich, enjoy this easy Monte Cristo Skillet recipe to make Monte Cristo flavors easy and accessible for the whole family!
This Monte Cristo Skillet was the Grand Prize Winner of the 2006 National Cornbread Festival. It caught my eye because I recently had my very first Monte Cristo Sandwich and absolutely loved it. Southern Living sent me to Charleston to do some presentations for the Taste of Charleston Festival. Have you ever been to Charleston? Oh my goodness gracious, is that a beautiful town! With every sight and sound I became more determined to bring my family back there someday so I could experience it with them (it is hard to enjoy a trip without the folks you want to share it with beside you).
As I’ve started traveling from time to time I’ve taken a queue from my adventurous counterparts at SL and started making it a point to try something new in each place if possible. In Charleston, I had my first Monte Cristo Sandwich and it was right up my alley. I ate it in the cafe of a beautiful hotel right downtown. The flavors were a unique combination for me: Ham, cheese, battered and toasted bread drizzled with a sweet fruit preserves and sprinkled with confectioner’s sugar. It was part lunch, part breakfast, part sandwich, part dessert, and all the way good!
So when Martha White offered to guest post I got to nosing around for what recipe I thought would appeal the most to everyone and as soon as this skillet came before my eyes, my heart just settled on it.
This recipe is quick to throw together and feeds six people. I like strawberry preserves with mine but feel free to use whichever you like best.
What You’ll Need to Make the Monte Cristo Skillet:
- Martha White Cotton Country Cornbread Mix
- cooking spray
- chopped cooked turkey
- chopped cooked ham
- shredded Swiss cheese
- eggs
- milk
- mayonnaise
- honey mustard
- salt
- pepper
- currant jelly
- powdered sugar
How to Make a Monte Cristo Skillet:
Prepare the cornbread batter according to the instructions on the package.
Bake cornbread mix in a 10 1/2 inch cast-iron skillet.
The cornbread will be thin and should look like this when baked.
Remove the cornbread from the skillet, and cut it into cubes when cooled. Wipe out the skillet with paper towels and spray the skillet generously with non-stick cooking spray.
Heat the oven to 350 degrees. Place the cornbread cubes in the bottom of the cast iron pan.
Top the cornbread cubes with the turkey, ham, and Swiss cheese.
In medium bowl, whisk together eggs, milk, mayonnaise, 1 tablespoon mustard, salt and pepper until well blended.
Pour evenly over ingredients in skillet. Bake 30 to 35 minutes or until set and lightly browned.
Melt the currant jelly by warming it slightly in the microwave. Add one tablespoon of the honey mustard and whisk until blended.
Remove the Monte Cristo Skillet from the oven.
Cut it into wedges…
…sprinkle with powdered sugar…
…and serve with the currant jelly/honey mustard mixture! ENJOY this delicious cast-iron-skillet recipe!
Ingredients
- 1 6 oz. package Martha White® Cotton CountryTM Cornbread Mix
- Crisco® Original No-Stick Cooking Spray
- 1-1/2 cups chopped cooked turkey
- 1/2 cup chopped cooked ham
- 1-1/2 cups shredded Swiss cheese
- 4 large eggs
- 1 cup milk
- 2 tablespoons mayonnaise
- 2 tablespoons honey mustard divided
- 1-1/2 teaspoons salt
- 1/2 teaspoon pepper
- 1/2 cup Smucker's® Currant Jelly
- Powdered sugar
Instructions
- PREPARE cornbread mix according to package directions, except bake in a 10 1/2-inch cast iron skillet (cornbread will be thin). Remove cornbread from skillet; cool and cut into cubes. Wipe out skillet with paper towels; spray generously with no-stick cooking spray.
- HEAT oven to 350°F. Place cornbread cubes in skillet. Top with turkey, ham and cheese. In medium bowl, whisk together eggs, milk, mayonnaise, 1 tablespoon mustard, salt and pepper until well blended. Pour evenly over ingredients in skillet. Bake 30 to 35 minutes or until set and lightly browned.
- MELT currant jelly by warming slightly. Add 1 tablespoon honey mustard; whisk to blend.
- REMOVE skillet from oven. Cut in wedges, sprinkle with powdered sugar and serve with currant jelly and mustard sauce.
Christy,
I’d love to come to see you this weekend at the cornbread festival, but I’m currently bedridden with divertictus.
Am IMissing you daily recipes or are you too busy to send them daily anymore.
We Unaers are so proud of your success!
shirley
My skillets all came from Mom, and Grandmother. I have one that Grannie’s broke and is welled back together. It was one of the first skillets she got as a newly wed in 1900.
Everyone that is afraid of “Seasoning” Don’t be. You can not hurt cast iron; if it gets sticky wash really well grease with crisco and put in 250 oven for 2-3 hours on a cookie sheet. Comes out brand new.
Cornbread, fried anything and the best pineapple upside down cake you can make comes from this one pan.
Born and raised in Alabama and could not live without my skillets!!
WOW, 1900! I bet that is one of your most prized possessions. I would love to see it sometime. If you happen to follow me on Facebook I would love it if you could post a picture of it sometime. I am so impressed. Of course I love antiques and heritage.
I have my grandma’s cast iron skillet that is only used to make cornbread (and sometimes fried eggs). I have a friend who unknowingly used her husband’s grandma’s skillet to cook something else in and he told her in no uncertain terms that it was only for corn bread!!! We still laugh about it. I love mine!!
Hi! I too am a dummy when it comes to cast iron. I remember my mother having one when I was a kid but I dont know what happened to it. I did not grow up in the south but I live in FL now and my husband was born and raised in FL. I felt brave when I read this post and I went out and bought an iron skillet and and an iron dutch oven.I feel like I am missing out on so much without cooking in iron.
I am so sad I cannot find Taste of the South magazine here. I really wanted that issue with all the cast iron recipes and such. Anyone know where I can get a copy of that? Thanks.
My mother always fixed dessert for my daddy who had an insatiable sweet tooth. Homemade pies (she had a pie recepie that would turn into chocolate, lemon or coconut meringue depending on what she had), cobblers, fried pies, pound cake both vanilla and chocolate and banana pudding. But my favorite was the pineapple upside down cake she made in an iron skillet. The skillet she used for this was very deep. I can still see her mixing up that batter (I always got to lick the bowl) and the smell of that cake as she flipped onto a plate from that old iron skillet was just heavenly. I haven’t had one in a long time but I can almost smell and taste it now just thinking about it……..
I can smell it too Lisa!! I love Pineapple upside down cake as well.
My mother has my dad’s mother’s BIG ol’ iron skillet ~ and a few others. The one I’m talking about is about 4 inches deep and probably 12 inches across. Well, there are a LOT of us at Thanksgiving dinner. She had always made her delicious gravy in that skillet. One year, she went to pour the hot, just made gravy from the skillet to a couple of cute little pitchers (gravy boats do not work on our table ~ take up too much space!)…just as she went to pour it out, her wrist gave out under the really heavy weight of it all and HOT gravy went right down her legs. Right there in the kitchen, she shucked off her pants! Right in front of my boyfriend who I had only been dating a few months! Luckily, she was smart enough to do that and she avoided being scalded! But, to this day ~ 12 years later, he asks me if my mom has done any encores to the panty dance!
Just this weekend I picked up a cast iron 10 1/4 inch skillet.
I’m still a little “scared” about the cast iron cooking bit but I thought I should really give it a “whirl”, I mean there are so many people that seem to LOVE cooking with cast iron (for years and years, generation to generation) so I put my big girl panties on and found a Lodge brand that said it was “pre-seasoned”. I figured the first part of the seasoning thing was already done for me …… now I just have to keep it that way.
Now I will be looking forward to trying some of these recipes and then maybe making some of my own (in my dreams) using this pan.