Cornbread dressing is a staple for every Thanksgiving (and sometimes Christmas) holiday celebration-but this recipe, yeah, it’s knock-your-socks-off good.
What Y’all Need to Make the Cornbread Dressing (or Stuffing as Y’all Might Call It):
- 1/2 Loaf of Stale Bread – must be stale, or you need to toast it
- 2 Batches of Cornbread, baked thoroughly, hopefully crumbly – can also be stale
- 1 Bunch of Green Onions, chopped
- 1 Large Yellow or White Onion, chopped
- 1/2 Bunch of Celery, chopped
- 4-5 Boiled Eggs, peeled and chopped
- 5-6 Raw Eggs
- 4 cups Chicken Broth, cooled
- 2 cups Heavy Whipping Cream
- 1/4 cup Ground Sage
- 2 tbl Salt
- 1 tbl Pepper
- 1 and 1/2 stick Butter
What Y’all Need to Put this True Texas Cornbread Dressing Together:
- Pre-heat your oven to 450 degrees-0r 425 degrees…whatever your cornbread recipe called for
- Crumble the bread and cornbread together, mixing well.
- Mix-in the green onion, yellow or white onion, celery, salt, pepper, and 1/3 of the sage.
- Smell it, y’all. If it’s starting to smell like dressing, you’re on the right track.
- Pour in the raw eggs, heavy whipping cream and 1/2 of the chicken broth. Mix well. If the mixture is not soupy, the consistency of your cornbread before it was baked, pour in more chicken broth until it is.
- Now taste it, ya hear? If it needs more sage to taste a little sage-y, pour more in. If you think it might need some sage-pour more in. Sage is the spice of Cornbread Dressing. Keep pouring.
- Use your stick of butter to coat the entire pan (or pans-or muffin cups or whatever) you’re cooking this Cornbread Dressing in. By coat, I mean: “really get that pan covered all over with a thick layer so your dressing doesn’t stick”.
- Mix-in your chopped boiled-eggs very gently-you don’t want them breaking-up as you stir!
- Ok, you can taste it one more time-but that’s it!
- Pour your dressing-mix into your pan, leaving a bit of room for the dressing to rise-or don’t leave room, but if you don’t, it’ll spill over in the oven and your house will smell like burned dressing for weeks.
- Slice your remaining butter into pats, then distribute them across the top of your dressing-mixture as orderly as possible with many inches between-add more butter until you feel that your dressing will be buttery-good, but not so many as to drown it (please, no more than 2 sticks will be necessary or you’re killing the poor dressing).
- Bake for 25 minutes.
- Check your dressing for wiggly-center or toothpick-gooey every 10 minutes following the initial 25.
- Upon no wiggly-center and clean toothpick test, pull your dressing out of the oven-I also prefer browned edges, but that’s between you and your dressing.
- Eat. Or freeze. Or put it in the fridge for tomorrow. But it’s ready…mmmm….
Tips for Making this Texas Cornbread Dressing Recipe Your Own:
- Pop the top and clean-out a pumpkin. Put your cooked dressing in that to make an awesome presentation as well as awesome stuffing-er, dressing.
- If you want a lot of edges with browned fabulous crunch, cook your dressing in muffin cups.
- The more stale your bread, the better the dressing will taste-something about the starch being released or crystallized in the stale-ing process…
- Use real butter-no, margarine is not interchangeable in all recipes.
- Be very chunky with your chopping. Half the deliciousness of dressing is the chunks of onion, celery and egg. The other half is sage.
- Generosity with the sage will make for a better dressing-also generosity with the salt. Something about the salt bringing out the flavors…I don’t know. It’s just better if there’s more sometimes…
