My family is from the South and the centerpiece of the meal on Thanksgiving is cornbread dressing. It's the ultimate comfort food for anyone who has grown up in the South. I'd like to compare your favorite recipe with mine. Here's my family's recipe:

Southern Cornbread Dressing Recipe

Ideally, I’d start with homemade buttermilk cornbread and my great-grandmother’s yeast rolls but when I'm lazy packaged products work almost as well. I’ve found Corn-Kits brand cornbread mix (packaged in East Texas) is the closest to true southern cornbread from scratch so that’s what I use. Just don't use a sweet cornbread recipe. Leftover frozen yeast rolls work great so I use those instead of white bread in the dressing.

Bake 5 packages of Corn-Kits brand cornbread mix as directed but add an extra egg for each package (10 eggs total). I bake this all in one large 10†X 13†dish.

Boil 2 Turkey wings and 4-5 Turkey necks in 4 quarts of chicken broth. Add plenty of salt and pepper. Simmer until meat is easily removed from the bone (about 2 hours). Remove meat (no skin) from bones and chop into small/medium sized pieces. Save broth for dressing!

1 medium onion - chopped
4-5 celery stalks – chopped
Sautee vegetables until soft in 1 stick of butter and a couple of tablespoons of olive oil. When vegetables are soft, melt another stick of butter in the pan with the vegetables.

In one huge bowl or two very large bowls, combine baked cornbread, 4-6 slices of dry white bread or 2-3 baked yeast rolls (diced), sautéed vegetables and melted butter, and 2-3 tablespoons of dry sage.

Add broth until the dressing has the consistency of lumpy cake mix. It will probably require 3-1/2 quarts of the broth to get the right consistency. Mix in the chopped turkey meat.

At this point, you’ll need to taste the mix and make sure it has enough salt, pepper and sage for your taste. I like plenty of sage and probably use 3-4 tbls total.

Add six beaten eggs to the dressing mixture.

Add a little (1-2 tbsp each) canola oil to 2-3 casserole dishes and heat in a 350 – 375 degree oven. When pans are hot, swirl the oil to coat the pans.

Fill dishes with dressing mixture and bake for about an hour.

This will serve 16-20 people.

Happy Thanksgiving to you and your families!
Forrest

Thanksgiving is one of the holidays I miss most in France. One of my best remembered Thanksgivings was in Durango, Colorado, with a bunch of Texans. There wasn't any store bought meat on the table. Venison and elk, pheasant and ducks, all hunted by the men around the table. It's the best holiday Americans celebrate.

Recipe for the dressing sounds good, that is just about the way we make it back in Mississippi. Hopefully I will be back there when I'm through in this dump of a State.

[quote]Just don't use a sweet cornbread recipe.[quote]
When you put sugar in cornbread it ceases to be cornbread and becomes cake.

Steve E........