Thanksgiving Week And Our Cornbread Dressing

My hat loving youngest grandchild. 

Our house was full to the brim last week. Five grandchildren, ranging from 22 months to 23 years old. Daughters. Son-in-laws. It was loud, messy, chaotic and wonderful. The youngest set was here for over a week. The others were in and out for several days. And to top it off, the day after Thanksgiving, we had 15 men on our roof replacing the shingles. It sounded like Santa and his eight tiny reindeers plus his reindeer B-team.

For almost all of my long life, Thanksgiving was a big extended family affair. I remember years when there were 40+ people heaping plates from a long line of casseroles. But because we always went to that house for Thanksgiving, my turkey cooking skills were in the "yet to be explored" category. Since the large family gathering came to an end a few years ago I've still not cooked the turkey. We had a Covid year when I cooked a turkey breast. One year a son-in-law took charge, brining and roasting an heirloom turkey. And the other son-in-law fried a turkey for us a couple of years.

But this year, it came down to me. After looking at so many ways to roast the perfect turkey—wet brine, dry brine, oven bag, slow roast, cook at a higher temp than usual, etc.—I decided to go with tried and true. I followed the Butterball instructions to the letter. And it worked perfectly. Their method is straight forward. Pretty uncomplicated compared to some of the other directions. If it's my turn again next year, I'll know this way works.

The dressing is between the turkey and the fork.

Our menu was like so many others for the actual Thanksgiving meal. Turkey, cranberry sauce, green beans, macaroni and cheese, sweet potatoes, deviled eggs and my favorite part, dressing and gravy.

There is a huge debate—where the right answer is always "the kind my mama made"—about dressing vs stuffing. Stuffing goes inside the turkey. Dressing is baked in a dish and served beside the turkey. And the debate continues...sausage or no sausage, oysters or no oysters, apples or no fruit. Here in the South, dressing is most often made with cornbread. Every cook has their own version. Both my son-in-laws have recipes from their families. Both are good. But this year I made dressing like my mother made it.

Like many good cooks, Mother didn't have a written recipe. But several years before she died, she decided to write down recipes for some of her favorite dishes. I am so glad. She didn't write them down as she made them, measuring as she wrote. Instead I remember her sitting at the kitchen table, writing down how she remembered doing it. So the directions are not specific like modern recipes. 

In the interest of preserving her "recipe" I'm sharing it here. This dressing is uncomplicated but it was delicious. I hadn't made it in years and was happy it was as good as I remembered.

This is in my mother's handwriting. 

CORNBREAD DRESSING

1 9x9-inch pan of cornbread (I used the recipe on the White Lily self-rising cornmeal mix bag)

1 egg

*1/3 cup celery, chopped fine

*1 medium onion, chopped fine

*a little Pepperidge Farm seasoned herb stuffing mix

enough chicken or turkey broth to moisten (and make it "mushy")

I added a few shakes of ground sage

Crumble the cornbread with your fingers so that there are no large pieces. The texture is a fine crumb. Mix all ingredients together, adding enough broth to make the mixture "mushy." Put into a greased 9x9 pan and bake for 25 to 30 minutes, until lightly browned on top.  

Notes:

*Double everything for a 9x13 pan. And the cooking time was nearly double, too. My double batch filled a 9x13 dish, plus a 1-qt dish which went into the freezer.

*Mother always stressed the importance of chopping the celery and onion fine. She said no one wants to bite into a big piece of celery. 

*I had a thought during the night! I did a reverse weigh of the stuffing I had left to figure out how much I used! It was right at 1 cup for a 9x9 pan of cornbread.

*It can be mixed the day before and refrigerated until it's time to bake. Adjust your time if baking straight from the refrigerator. 

 

And that's all she told me! Sometimes she added a little mashed cooked sweet potato to keep the dressing moist. (Instead of the can of chicken soup folks use now.) Last week I used the herb stuffing mix. How much you ask? About that much! I know you hate answers like that, but I can't tell you any more. 

And how much broth? For my double batch it was a little over a quart. I was using boxes of Swansons and I had to open the 2nd box. It always takes more than I think. 

A better question would be "how do I know when I've added enough?" My mother only said "mushy." I would add "but not soupy." Mine sloshed around a little in the dish when I put it in the refrigerator.

If you are brave enough to make this recipe that doesn't have precise amounts, remember that my mother never measured anything. So it's unlikely the amounts she used would have been exactly the same each time. And it always worked. I don't think precise is a requirement here.

As I sit here writing this a few days after our Thanksgiving feast, I am truly giving thanks for so many things. Let us all live in a season of thanksgiving all year long.