Simple Cornbread Dressing

This is a picture of a personal triumph. I finally made cornbread dressing! I mean I finally made cornbread dressing that didn’t go in the trash can.

For years I hopelessly tried to make a dressing that is at least “close enough” to my mother-in-law’s cornbread dressing. She grew up in Alabama, where they make such dishes. I grew up in Maine… where they… don’t.

She’s given me the recipe (one of those “some of this, a little of that” recipes) but I still couldn’t get it right. (When I say I’ve tried it for years I mean I tried it at Thanksgiving for three  years in a row. So, really I had only tried it a few times. But when you ruin Thanksgiving three years in a row it feels like a lot more failures than just three!

Finally, all of that changed.

It happened when my in-laws dropped by to take us out to dinner. (Which is kind of an odd occurrence since they live in Michigan and we live in Tennessee; a story for another time.) I mentioned the trouble I was having with this dressing and I ended up with two very important pieces of information. (I just have to say right here that I’m very thankful that I have in-laws who are nice to me.)

I applied what I learned, and voila! cornbread dressing that could be served from Granny’s table.
Um… well… maybe not quite that good but it’s a fine stand-in for when we can’t be there.

Here’s how it’s done:

Bake a batch of corn bread and let it cool.  (I stopped trying various recipes and started using a mix and leaving out the sugar.)
Chop your boiled  eggs, celery and onion.

Break the cornbread, along with a few pieces of any other kind of bread, into small pieces and put it in a large bowl.

Add the sage and chicken broth. It should be pretty moist. It will dry out some as you bake it. I also found that preparing it to this point the day before worked out really well. I think the flavors combined better and it gave me one less thing to do on Thanksgiving day.

If you’ve never made dressing because you thought it was complicated, give this a try. It’s really easy now that I know what to do!

triumphant at last!

Simple Cornbread Dressing

 

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Ingredients

• One batch of corn bread (prepared as directed minus the sugar)
• 2 boiled eggs-peeled and diced
• 4-5 stalks celery-chopped small
• 1 medium onion-copped small
• one can chicken broth
• 1 TBSP dried sage
• salt & pepper to taste (taste it first to see where you stand with the salt that’s was already your broth)

Instructions

1. Bake a pan of cornbread and allow it to cool.
2. Boil, peel, and chop two eggs.
3. Chop the onion and celery into small pieces.
4. Break cornbread and 2-3 slices of any other kind of bread into pieces in a large bowl.
5. Add the eggs, celery, and onion.
6. Add your sage and chicken broth.
7. Stir to combine. It should be very moist.
8. Bake on 350°for 25-30 minutes.

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