One of my mother’s signature dishes that she is known for in our family and extended family and friends is her Southern cornbread dressing. There’s nothing Stovetop stuffing about this one, no way! Made from simple ingredients and crumbled up cornbread, it’s an easy, yet deliciously satisfying side dish for Thanksgiving and Christmas. We have it every single year. I grew up on this stuff.
This was a good opportunity to take notes and write down another one of mom’s recipes that resides in her head. This is yet one more recipe that my sister, niece, and I have never made. So, now I get to document it for all of you too. I’m not sure if everyone will love this, but we sure love our dressing in the South made this way. It’s a big hit in our family and tastes delicious!
Start with a medium iron skillet to cook the cornbread in. You’ll want to drizzle a little oil (I prefer canola) in the bottom of the pan and heat it in the oven while you whip up the cornbread batter to pour in. This makes for a crisp crust!
Iris’s Southern Cornbread
1 & 1/2 cups self-rising corn meal (mom uses white) (just found out from mom that self-rising cornmeal has salt in it). I did not know that!
1/2 cup self-rising flour (just found out from mom that self-rising flour has salt in it). I did not know that!
1 egg
1 & 1/4 cup buttermilk
Stir together and pour into iron skillet. Heat oven to 400* and bake 30 min. or until golden brown.
You can bake up the cornbread ahead of time and set aside to cool.
Chop up 3 stalks celery.
Slice and chop one large onion.
Chop well
Saute celery and onion until soft.
Break up cornbread in small pieces in a large pan.
Add 2 to 3 slices of wheat bread (or white if you’re feeling crazy!). 🙂
Take a large spoon and start breaking it up further, until it’s crumbly texture.
Of course, I used Knorr’s Homestyle chicken concentrate Homestyle Stock in this recipe and added the celery water as well as any chicken broth that the chicken was cooked in to add to the water. We used one chicken stock concentrate from Knorr and 4 cups water/broth mixture.
Begin pouring in the stock and you’ll need 3 to 4 cups. Add until heavily moistened. When you bake this, a lot of the broth will cook out, so you want to keep it moist. We added approximately 4 cups chicken stock.
Add sauteed onions and celery. Add 1/2 tsp. sage (optional, if you don’t like this herb).
Mix well with a big spoon. The mixture will be very wet and soupy and that is what you want.
Pour it all into a large baking dish. This is a large flat French cookware piece.
Then add pieces of cooked chicken, again optional, but I love it best with chicken added. You won’t need any more than 1 chicken breast or even dark meat chicken, cut up and added.  Press it down into the dressing.
Ready to bake.  Bake at 400* for 45 minutes and you’ll have this!
Golden brown Southern cornbread chicken and dressing.
Mom made a little gravy for this too and it was really good!
So, I have to know? Do you other Southern girls make dressing like this?? It’s really not hard to make now that I’ve watched her do it. Really pretty easy to put together and it feeds a lot of people.
Classic Southern Chicken Cornbread Dressing
Bake cornbread recipe (above) set aside
Chop celery and onion (3 stalks celery and 1 large onion)
Saute in saucepan until soft.
Cook 1 chicken breast in water, debone and chop or any other chicken piece you have.
Crumble up entire cornbread into large pan. Add 3 to 4 slices wheat bread (or other bread) to the mix. Press down with a large spoon to break it all up into smaller crumbles.
Add sauteed onion and chopped celery back to the pan.
Begin adding broth, approx. 4 cups. You’ll want the bread all covered and very moist. Soupy texture.
Add 1/2 tsp. sage (optional)
Mix well. Pour into large baking pan
Bake at 400* for 45 minutes.
Eat and Enjoy!
Let me know if you’ve made a Southern cornbread dressing recipe like this before or if you think you might try it out! I’d love to hear! Also enjoy those leftovers!Â
I grew up in South Carolina, and my mother made a similar dressing with the exception that she always put cream of celery or cream of mushroom soup in hers as well as some melted butter. She always had me taste it to see if it had enough sage, and in my opinion, the more the better!I think it’s wonderful that you are writing down your mother’s recipes. Her hands won’t always be there to guide you in cooking those family dishes. Count me in your giveaway. I’m messy in the kitchen and need a new apron!
Rhonda –
My husband & I make cornbread dressing every Thanksgiving and then again at Christmas. It’s a tradition at our house. We got a recipe from a friend of mine about 15 years ago and have made same dressing as long as we have been married. (about 15 yrs). My family loves it and my 2 daughters can’t wait to eat it. But, this looks very similar, except we don’t use any meat in ours. I think I may try your recipe except no meat. We like our meat on the side…LOL
Lisa – we always had both – meat in the dressing and on the side – never too much!
Lisa, my mom usually makes 2 versions of this too, with and without chicken. I happen to love it stuffed with chicken pieces, so we went with that one.
Thank you so much for sharing this recipe and the pictures. It brought tears to my eyes remembering my mother and my grandmother making dressing for almost every occasion we had – didn’t have to be a special holiday – just whenever we got together. My dad can’t eat onions, so they always made 2 seperate pans of dressing – one with onions and one without.
Also the cornbread looks exactly like theirs too. Can’t help but love growning up in the South – especially Alabama.
Thanks again for sharing
I don’t use any loaf bread or sage in my dressing but the rest of the recipe is the same. I make it the way my mother and grandmother did. In my rather large Southern family, I have never seen anyone use loaf bread in dressing. I was taught that using sandwich bread was making “Yankee” stuffing :-). Thanks to your mom for sharing her recipe.
I love dressing like this! I’ve never made it but I’m fairly certain its about the same as my mom’s.
I don’t think you will ship that heavy looking cookbook all the way to Australia, but I just wanted to say this recipe looks wonderful & I can’t wait to try it. Also – your mother has amazing hands, I thought it was the best part of your whole post! 🙂
xx
Thanks, Mrs. BC! Everytime I post my mother’s hands, it gets the same response. Everyone loves her hands. I did chicken & dumplings this summer and almost every comment was about my mom’s sweet hands!
I think dressing recipes get everyone’s memories going & every family has their own version of dressing and stuffing. This happens to be the way my mom has made it for about 50+ years.
My Mammaw’s dressing is similar to yours, except that she uses turkey drippings and chicken stock, poultry seasoning, sage, and her onions and celery are chopped so fine that you barely get a crunch when we eat it raw!!!! Yes, I said we eat it raw! Several of my family members like to eat it raw which is before you put it in the oven to bake! Either way is fine with me!!! It will be a year ago that my Mammaw passed in Dec., but we were a huge but close family and all the women and little girls were always in the kitchen with her helping and I’ll never forget how to make things the way she does! I never had to ask for a recipe because like many she had them in her head, we just watched or made it while she told us what to do! Oh and it might help to let ya know that I’m a mountain girl! Born and raised in the Appalachia Mountains of Kentucky!!!!
Thank you for sharing this. It reminds me so much of my grandma who is now gone. Unfortunately by the time I asked her how to make this, her mind was not together enough to remember. I love the idea of tucking pieces of chicken in it. It could actually be a meal with the chicken in it. Looking forward to trying this recipe!
This is definitely the way i make it. It is the best. So glad you posted your mom’s recipe. I have not perfected it yet, probably want ever, but now I have some good tips that she used that I can add to mine. Thanks for sharing.. Would love the giveaway. Thanks so much..
Your post brings back soooo many memories of watching my Grandmother and mother make cornbread stuffing. Their recipe was a tad different, but the iron frying pan and your Mom’s beautiful hands just took me back in time about 30 years. Thanks so much for the memories!
Your mama’s recipe looks delicious. I will admit to being a cheater. I make mine with Stove Top stuffing (made with 1/4 less water than the recipe) on the bottom, torn up chunks of chicken layered on top with a can of mushroom soup mixed with 1/2 milk poured over the whole thing and then baked just til the stuffing is heated through. It is the lazy way to make it but it tastes good!
My paternal grandmother (from MS and AR) taught my mother (from Nebraska) to make cornbread just like this, except we leave out the celery. I now make it for my family, too (we currently live in southeast VA). We also add a bit of salt. When we lived in Pittsburgh and then Northern VA, my friends had not had cornbread dressing. They all liked it after trying it. I won’t eat anything but cornbread dressing.
Yum! I love cornbread dressing. Of course I make my cornbread with bacon grease saved specifically for cornbread. Your mom’s dressing recipe sounds delish! Thanks for sharing.
We WILL be having cornbread tonight. YUMMM
My grandmother always made the dressing but passed away 15 years ago. I guess it skipped a generation because my mother never made dressing, now it has become my job! My recipe is very similar to yours but I have recently started adding a can of cream of chicken soup. Adds just a little something:)
This is exactly how I make dressing, but I haven’t perfected my cornbread yet. I’m going to use your mother’s recipe for my Thanksgiving dressing. It looks like the perfect old fashioned Southern cornbread.
I love Southern Cornbread Dressing. Mine is pretty similar except I saute the celery and onion in butter, and then I add a can of cream of chicken soup to the dressing.
I would love to win the giveaway – the Knorr apron is so cute!
Rhoda,
Thanks for sharing a great classic southern recipe. As my children are starting to cook, I find myself having to write these down for them. That great iron skillet is a must for good cornbread. I’ve tried the Pampered Chef baking dish but the cornbread is just not the same as an iron skillet. Also, I’ve learned from experience that if the batter goes in too dry, the cornbread comes out very dry! Thank your mom for sharing her expertise with the younger generation. She is truly a Titus 2 woman!
This is how my Grama always made her dressing except she added about 3 eggs to it. I am the only one who makes it now. No one else ever watched her do it I guess and they always wanted measurements. Grama didn’t measure! Neither do I. The taste test is all that is needed. I did notice someone saying in a previous post that they ate it raw. I do to…used to make Grama so mad! She said I would rather eat anything raw than cooked.
I love seeing your Mother’s hands. I loved my Grama’s hands. So much work that they did and still crochet and quilt such beautiful things.