Better than your Granny’s cornbread dressing?! Ok, well maybe just the next best thing. Holiday dinners with my family are built aroundwhat most consider to be just a side dish – dressing. Chicken dressing is the glue that brings the ham together with the mac-n-cheese, the strong bond that makes the greens and turkey have true meaning. This easy cornbread dressing recipe can stand up to Granny’s for sure, and it is easy enough to not scare anyone away from attempting to successfully recreate it. I’ll hush now. Let’s get cookin’!
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Ingredients
32 oz chicken broth
1 can cream of chicken soup
1 can cream of mushroom
3 sticks/ribsof celery, chopped
1/3 cup onion, chopped
1/3 cup bell pepper, chopped(optional)
ground sage
garlic powder (opt)
salt & pepper
Aunt Jemaima’s self-rising corn meal mix (or however you choose to prepare unsweetened cornbread)
1 egg for the final mixture
eggs per cornbread instructions
milkper cornbread instructions
vegetable oilper cornbread instructions
Directions
Prepare cornbread
Prepare Cornbread by following the directions on the package, prepare 2 large or 3 mediumpansof cornbread. (pans pictured above made 2 large pans of dressing)
Let cornbread cool. With your hands or with a food processor, crumble cornbread completely, thoroughly, and smoothly into a large roasting pan or aluminum pan. My granny would freeze and save leftover cornbread starting early in the month – eating cornbread was nearly a daily thing back then.
Related: Cake for dessert? Make this Vintage Pound Cake Recipe
Prepare cornbread dressing mixture
Preheat oven to 350 °
Begin bymixing in 1/2 can of cream of mushroom and 1/2 can of cream of chicken and all of the chopped vegetables into the crumbled cornbread, and mix well.
Next, pour 1/2 – 3/4 of your chicken broth. Fold and stir until the consistency is even all over. Once this is folded in completely to the mixture, if the consistency isn’t smooth or slightly chunky, continue to add the creams in. If necessary, add more broth. You want to mixture to be smooth – no huge chunks, but definitely not runny with liquids.Once the mixture has reached a smooth but thick consistency add in sage, garlic powder, salt, pepper. For safe measure, add in 1/2 tsp of sage at a time. For the risk takers (like me), just sprinkle it on and season to taste. Your mixture should never become green from adding too much sage, and it should never be over salted. Too much seasoning is indeed, a bad thing.Test taste your mixture.
Lastly, stir one egg and add it thoroughly throughout the entire mixture. This helps to hold it all together.
Bake
Smooth the top of the mixture to an even level. Cover (with lid or foil) and place in preheated oven for 1.5hours, until golden brown on the top and lightly browned on the edges. While the dressing is cooking, Do not stir the mixture after it has started baking. Taste and check the texture of the dressing if necessary, but do not stir.
After removing from the oven, let the dressing sit – do not eat it immediately. It is still very hot and continues to cook from its internal heat at this point.
There ya have it! This recipe was complied from lessons on the art of cooking cornbread dressing by my sister, my Aunts, cousins and my friend Jasmine. It takes a village. We hope y’all enjoy!
What is one dishthat is just absolutely necessary at your family holiday gatherings?Let me know in the comments below!
Wow, that looks amazing! We always have dressing (I still call it stuffing though we don’t stuff it) and my family ALWAYS has LeSeur Very Young Small Early Peas. I think we just like the name. (But they taste great too!) Pinning this.
Reply
Addiesays
Thanks, Kirsten! I haven’t had those peas before, but I love peas so that sounds like a yummy tradition!!
Reply
Nelda Andersonsays
The Dressing Recipe is very similar to the way I make Dressing. I make a large Roaster full. I crumble the cornbread the same. But then I toast it with my oven broiler stirring occasionally to insure all is toasted. This prevents Soggy Dressing. I use a lot of chicken broth and add a fair amount of chicken for even better flavor. I use about three eggs depending on the amount I’m making. I make it pretty soupy with the broth and just a tiny bit of milk. Adding onion and celery precooked in broth that I use. Also a small amount of onion for a slight crunch. Cook until firm but don’t overcook which would make it dry.
Reply
Joycesays
This is a fantastic recipe for cornbread dressing, I can’t wait to try next month for thanksgiving
Reply
Addiesays
I hope you enjoy it! I’m excited for some dressing this time of year, too!
While both styles generally use the same ingredients -- cornmeal, flour, eggs, and baking powder -- the variance lies in the flavor and texture. Northern-style cornbread tends to be sweeter, moister, and cake-like compared to its Southern counterpart.
The most common theory is a change in cornmeal itself. Until early in the 20th century, Southern cornmeal was made with sweeter white corn and it was water-ground. When industrial milling came along, that changed. The steel-roller mills used yellow corn that was harvested before it was ripe, so it had less sugar.
So stuffing is cooked inside the bird.Dressing is cooked outside the bird, usually in a casserole dish. Additionally, dressing, especially in the American South, is often made with cornbread instead of pieces of a baguette or plain ol' white bread.
Avoid bland dressing by making sure to include plenty of onions, celery, and herbs in your recipe. Now is not the time to go easy with the sage, thyme, and pepper. The dressing should taste different from your cornbread.
The thing that distinguishes Southern cornbread from, say Yankee cornbread, or any other cornbread one is likely to eat outside of the southern states, is that it is savory, not sweet, and it is made mostly with cornmeal.
Southerners, on the other hand, tend to prefer white cornmeal. Many people believe that it is because, in the old South, families used white cornmeal as it more closely resembled “fancy” European wheat flour. In any case, today it remains a main component in traditional Southern buttermilk cornbread.
The exact nutritional profile of cornbread can vary depending on the specific recipe and ingredients used. However, cornbread generally contains high amounts of carbs, phosphorus, and sodium in each serving. One piece of cornbread prepared from a commercially prepared mix contains ( 2 ): Calories: 198.
Cornbread can help you control your blood sugar levels.
Cornbread is made with whole grain cornmeal, making it an excellent choice for people trying to control their blood sugar levels as eating whole grains has been linked to better blood sugar control.
Cornbread is delicious and a great accompaniment to any meal. However, it is not a good idea if you are a diabetic. The high starch and cornmeal contents are carbohydrates which are broken down into sugar in the body. Sugar is extremely dangerous for people with diabetes, so it is best to avoid it.
Why is my Cornbread Dressing gummy? Adding too much liquid can result in a gummy-like texture. Baking it longer, using less liquid, and more stirring can help avoid a gummy texture.
"A dry stuffing or dressing is usually dry after baking simply because the recipe lacked enough moisture or fat," confirms Bridget Lancaster, executive editorial director at America's Test Kitchen.
If your cornbread dressing is mushy, be sure you baked it in a wide enough pan. Plenty of surface area will help the top crisp and the bottom bake completely. Also, be sure you measured your ingredients properly and didn't add too much liquid.
I suggest adding a little at a time, say 1 cup of broth for every 4 cups of dry mix. Give it a good stir, then let it sit for a minute. The stuffing should be moist but not wet. If there is a puddle of broth at the bottom of the bowl, you've added too much.
Eggs: Two lightly beaten eggs help hold the dressing together and add moisture. Water: You can add a few tablespoons of water, if you'd like, to achieve your desired consistency. Seasonings: This turkey dressing recipe is seasoned with salt, pepper, rubbed sage, and garlic powder.
The texture was coarse and crumbly, while the taste was plain and bland. Up until that point in my life, I had only consumed sweetened Yankee cornbread and was completely unaware of the savory Southern variety.
In case you were wondering, Sally is, of course, from a Northern state— Maryland, specifically. This recipe includes large amounts of sugar, honey, and melted butter, which distinguishes it from the Southern cornbread recipe.
There are cornmeal puddings served with sweet sauces, but no Southern cook would risk the spoiling of her cornbreads by sweetening them." In 1937, the Times reported that "cornbread in Kentucky is made with white, coarsely ground cornmeal. Never, never are sugar and wheat flour used in cornbread.
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