The Best Cornbread Dressing Ever

In the South you don’t have stuffing in your turkey you have a big pan of dressing – big difference!  We Southerners thrive on tradition and that certainly holds true with our holiday menus.  We like the same thing year after year and you never deviate from the favorites.  We pretty much have the same thing at Thanksgiving and Christmas.  Take for example the dressing.  My sister and I tried for years to master dressing making.  We had failure after failure of dry, thick, just awful dressing concoctions.  We tried all kinds of recipes, added everything including bacon (what isn’t good with a little bacon grease added).  They were all miserable failures!  Finally our stepmother shared her recipe with us.  She undoubtedly makes the best dressing and once we got the recipe and tried it ourselves, we discovered that we were over complicating it.  It’s really not that hard.  Our problem was putting in too much other bread or breadcrumbs.  Keep it simple and just use the cornbread.  Here’s the recipe.

Cornbread

 1 cup self rising flour

¼ cup sugar

1 cup self rising corn meal

2 eggs

1 cup milk

¼ cup shortening 

Mix all ingredients together and bake in a greased pan at 425 degrees for 25 minutes. 

 

Dressing

Crumble the cornbread after it’s baked and cooled

2 cups chopped onions

2 cups chopped celery

chicken or turkey broth

2 cans cream of chicken soup

2 tsp poultry seasoning

salt and pepper to taste

 

Saute the onions and celery.  Add the cooked onions and celery, along with the water used to saute, to the crumbled cooked cornbread.  Add chicken broth.  It’s best if you can use fresh broth from your turkey if you’re making it on the same day.  Add cream of chicken soup and seasonings.  Add broth until the mixture is pretty soupy.  As it cooks it will dry out.  Pour into a greased casserole dish and bake at 350 for 30 – 40 minutes, until browned on top.