Cornbread dressing/stuffing

These 2 items are not the same...

Check 295 & 296 in the TD Recipie Book - those are some good ones.

River roads one has some good ones

I use a chicken and dressing recipe from a book called Mama Dip's Kitchen. Her name is Mildred Council and she has a restaurant in the Chapel Hill, NC area. I get requests to make this recipe at holidays. You should be able to find it at a local bookstore. In fact this book is just full of fantastic old recipes.

That's it river roads #1

This makes a large portion, can fill up two of the 9x13 baking dishes so adjust your ingredient portions as necessary.

Ingredients

3 boxes Jiffy cornbread mix
1 sleeve of Keebler Club crackers
2 med. onions
1.5 cups celery
1 dozen eggs
2 tablespoons sage
1 tablespoon salt
8 slices of white bread (you will need to toast it)
2 cartons of chicken broth
1 1/3 cups of vitamin D milk
1 stick of salted butter





Directions

Make the cornbread. Not going to post instructions here, the box has them if you aren't familiar with doing it. NOTE: use 2/3 cup of milk for each box rather then the 1/3 it says to use. Your cornbread mixture should look a little runnier than usual before going into the oven.





Put the dry stuff (toast, club crackers) into a food processor first, followed by the wet (onions celery) and mince as shown.









Your cornbread should almost be done, while it finishes continue the prep by whisking the eggs with the sage, salt and pepper.





When cornbread is done, pinch off pieces into a big bowl to help with mixing. You are going to mix it all up, so don't worry about this transfer being overly complex. Since canned chicken broth does not have can chicken fat in it, you will need to melt a stick of butter. Add in the egg mixture, onions, celery, club crackers, toast and melted butter. Begin to add the chicken broth.







NOTE: DO NOT ADD ALL THE BROTH AT ONCE, ADD IT SLOWLY AS YOU MIX ALL INGREDIENTS TOGETHER. The final mixture should very very mushy, so mushy that it literally slides out of the bowl into a baking dish.







Once in the pan ready for the oven, you should not have to spend much time forming the shape, so hopefully you've put enough broth into the mixture that you don't have to. Once all is settled in, put a few splashes of the broth on top (see below) and throw into over @ 350 degrees for 1 hour. Enjoy!

Lastly, this reheats very well so you can make a large amount and enjoy it later.





When it comes out, it should have small remnants of the broth on the top...it will absorb very soon. The inside will be very moist as well.

Make my cornbread recipe maybe the 2 cups of cornmeal and 2 cups of flour size. This will make two 10 inch skillets of cornbread. Bake in oven, starting early in the day. It will be easier to work with after it cools some, but I do not like the dressing made with day old cornbread

As soon as the cornbread cools off enough to break apart crumble it up into a mixing bowl.

Chop 1 1/2 cup of celery and 1 1/2 cups of onions and 2 teaspoons sage, Sauté the onions, celery and sage in 1 or 2 sticks of butter and add this to the cornbread,

Add 4-5 cups of rich chicken or turkey or duck stock. You want the dressing wet.

We boil 4-6 eggs and roughly chop them up leaving 1/2 inch pieces of egg and add to our dressing.

Taste the dressing and add salt and black pepper to taste. You may want a little more sage, but be careful. You can et too much sage in dressing and ruin it. Work the dressing seasonings by adding a little, tasting it and then a little more. You can always add more, but you can't take it out.

A lot of the flavor you want in the dressing comes from the richness of the broth and the species of bird you get it from (Chicken, turkey, wild turkey, Duck, game hens, rotisserie chicken, smoked chicken, smoked turkey, whatever) The dressing will be good regardless if your stock is rich, but few people manage to get really rich stock for their dressing. Sometimes, we will roast chicken parts with celery, onions, a little garlic a day or two ahead, re-roast roast the bones and do stuff like that just for the broth. If roasting chicken for stock, don't waste a drop of the deglaze when harvesting it out of the roasting pan. Better to dilute the deglaze to get all of it out of the pan and then reduce the stock.

Some people will add a little thyme and that is OK - maybe 1 teaspoon of chopped or powdered thyme. Taste a little first and decide If you want that taste in your dressing. Most of the time, we use it but have made dressing without it that was really nice. Thyme is one of the key ingredients in poultry seasoning and gives that seasoning a lot of it's taste. If you like, you can substitute 1 teaspoon of poultry seasoning for the thyme.

Probably more than you wanted to know.

I am truly sorry no one here ever had my Grandmother's chicken and dressing, chicken pulled apart and made together with this dressing in one of those Dark blue oval roasters (with the white specks). It was a taste from heaven.

Edited to add - I would make a smaller mix of this dressing and mix in lots of great big chunks of cooked country sausage if you want sausage dressing.

This would make a ton of sausage dressing if that is what you are going for.