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 lost my mom 10 years ago and wish I had written down her delicious cornbread dressing recipe. Thankfully I have her iron skillet that belonged to my grandmother. My MIL also made a scrumptious cornbread dressing. Unfortunately she can no longer cook, so it is up to me to make the dressing this year. Last year I “chickened out” and bought store made dressing from the grocery store. This year I believe I will try your recipe because it doesn’t seem intimidating. Blessings to you and your family this Thanksgiving!
Thanks for the great recipe for the cornbread dressing…
Love the apron and would love to sport it on Thanksgiving.
I felt like I was watching my mom making the dressing and I could almost hear Daddy telling her to add more sage. I miss them so. Thanks again, Rhoda, for the memories.
I would love to win one of the aprons and the cook book. Also your dressing recipe is exactly what I make, what my mother and grandmother made. We also used any leftover biscuits with the light bread too. When I had my first Thanksgiving with my inlaws up north, I nearly gagged on their dressing. They bought a loaf of “seasoned dressing bread”, but the broth, onions, celery in it and baked it. Gag! No cornbread for them! I need to bake some cornbread to have some leftover for my T’giving dressing.
Wow! Brings back so many memories of my Mother and Grandmother making ‘Chicken and Dressin’ ‘. This recipe is very similar, but with eggs and salt and pepper added. Leftover bread and biscuits were saved up for weeks in advance and used in the dressin’. Everything was used, so the broth from boiling the chicken was used as well.
Thanks for the memories –
Barbara in TN
I adore the photos showing your mom’s hands! I love cornbread dressing. Your recipe is almost the same as my mom’s, except she would add beaten eggs and poultry seasoning. I’m so glad she taught me the recipe before she passed away. Now I make it for my family every Thanksgiving. The smell of it cooking brings back such wonderful memories of helping mom. I loved to crumble the cornbread. Have a blessed Thanksgiving with your family.
This is the dressing I grew up with as well. Oh, I am so ready for Thanksgiving!
Love the apron, and would love to win it.
Yes, Barbara M., my recipe is VERY similar but I’ve always added at LEAST one stick of REAL butter (melted), salt, lots of pepper, poultry seasoning and mix in beaten eggs right before pouring into the casserole. (we also saved the heels from the loaf bread to crumble into the mix) With our large family I have to double the above recipe – so that’s at least SIX eggs. Yum. Already tasting it in my mind. 🙂
Hi Rhoda,
I find the similarity between your southern recipes and our northern ones fascinating!
The northern version of this recipe would skip the cornbread and use mashed potatoes and bread, lots of poultry seasoning and sage to your liking.
I definitely will be trying Knorr stock at Thanksgiving.
Come on over next Tuesday and link up to everything Thanksgiving!
Thanks so much for posting your mom’s dressing recipe !!! I never got my grandmother’s recipe but I think this one will be close. I loved your mom’s sweet hands….it takes me back to when I watched my grandmother cook and of course it was all deliciousness that no one could compare to. I can’t wait to try this for Thanksgiving !!!
My family has always made a dressing very similar to this. We add melted butter and no chicken. And you are correct when you say it needs to be very moist before baking. You got my mouth watering….
I would love to win! And this looks delicious!
Forgot to tell you – Love the pictures of your Mom’s hands cutting up the celery and onion. I would so scarpbook those pictures – at least frame them. Reminds me of family and love.
That recipe looks so yummy! Would love to win the cookbook!
This sounds and looks just my my Mom’s dressing and sadly none of us have the recipe. I will be making this. Thanks to you and your Mom for the recipe.
I make my dressing the same way your mother does minus the sage. This is the same exact recipe my mother used. She has been gone 21 years and I still miss “her” dressing. Thanks so much for sharing this and your mother’s demonstration. Those are precious hands.
Great job on the chicken & dressing. Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter just wouldn’t be the same without it. My grandmother taught me to make it in HUGE quantities – she had 6 kids and raised my brother and I; so of course, at the end of family gatherings, we ALL wanted “Dressin” to take home to our own freezers. I can remember it taking a whole weekend to make 10 or 12 pans of dressing at one time. I’ve tweaked her original recipe to make it a little healthier (i.e., skinless/bonelss chicken breasts instead of a whole chicken; olive oil in the cornbread pan instead of bacon drippings, etc.) but the process is still the same and is a precious one I’m teaching my daughter.
I’m in! Recipe looks great, I will have to try it. Thanks Rhoda!
Love ‘chicken and dressing’ as we say! Thanks for sharing! But really what I love most are the photos of your mom’s hands! They show all the love she puts into her meals and her family’s joy! This really touched my heart!
I love cornbread dressing too! I have been saving leftover cornbread and rolls/white bread and stashing it in the freezer for dressing. My recipe is half and half. My grandmother also puts chicken in her dressing but the best addition is chesnuts! Yum!