The Easiest Authentic Southern Cornbread Dressing Recipe

Better than your Granny’s cornbread dressing?! Ok, well maybe just the next best thing. Holiday dinners with my family are built around what most consider to be just a side dish – dressing. Chicken dressing is the glue that brings the ham together with the mac-n-cheese, the strong bond that makes the greens and turkey have true meaning. This easy cornbread dressing recipe can stand up to Granny’s for sure, and it is easy enough to not scare anyone away from attempting to successfully recreate it. I’ll hush now. Let’s get cookin’! 

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Ingredients

• 32 oz chicken broth
• 1 can cream of chicken soup
• 1 can cream of mushroom
• 3 sticks/ribs of celery, chopped
• 1/3 cup onion, chopped
• 1/3 cup bell pepper, chopped (optional)
• ground sage
• garlic powder (opt)
• salt & pepper
• Self-rising corn meal mix (or however you choose to prepare unsweetened cornbread)
• 1 egg for the final mixture
• eggs per cornbread instructions
• milk per cornbread instructions
• vegetable oil per cornbread instructions

Directions

Prepare cornbread

Prepare Cornbread by following the directions on the package, prepare 2 large or 3 medium pans of cornbread. (pans pictured above made 2 large pans of dressing)

Let cornbread cool. With your hands or with a food processor, crumble cornbread completely, thoroughly, and smoothly into a large roasting pan or aluminum pan. My granny would freeze and save leftover cornbread starting early in the month – eating cornbread was nearly a daily thing back then.  

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Related: Cake for dessert? Make this Vintage Pound Cake Recipe

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Sauté the Vegetables

In a pan on the stove, use some oil to sauté the chopped vegetable until they are soft and the onion is translucent.

Prepare cornbread dressing mixture

Preheat oven to 350 °

Begin by mixing in 1/2 can of cream of mushroom and 1/2 can of cream of chicken and all of the chopped vegetables into the crumbled cornbread, and mix well.

Next, pour 1/2 – 3/4 of your chicken broth.  Fold and stir until the consistency is even all over. Once this is folded in completely to the mixture, if the consistency isn’t smooth or slightly chunky, continue to add the creams in. If necessary, add more broth. You want to mixture to be smooth – no huge chunks, but definitely not runny with liquids. Once the mixture has reached a smooth but thick consistency add in sage, garlic powder, salt, pepper. For safe measure, add in 1/2 tsp of sage at a time. For the risk takers (like me), just sprinkle it on and season to taste. Your mixture should never become green from adding too much sage, and it should never be over salted. Too much seasoning is indeed, a bad thing. Test taste your mixture.

After seasoning to taste

Lastly, stir one egg and add it thoroughly throughout the entire mixture. This helps to hold it all together.

Bake

Smooth the top of the mixture to an even level. Cover (with lid or foil) and place in preheated oven for 1.5 hours, until golden brown on the top and lightly browned on the edges. While the dressing is cooking, Do not stir the mixture after it has started baking. Taste and check the texture of the dressing if necessary, but do not stir.

After removing from the oven, let the dressing sit – do not eat it immediately. It is still very hot and continues to cook from its internal heat at this point.

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There ya have it! This recipe was complied from lessons on the art of cooking cornbread dressing by my sister, my Aunts, cousins and my friend Jasmine. It takes a village. We hope y’all enjoy!

What is one dish that is just absolutely necessary at your family holiday gatherings? Let me know in the comments below!

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