I wager that anyone from the South grew up on cornbread dressing. It seemed to be a special dish usually served at Thanksgiving, Christmas, or special occasions. I’m not sure why it wasn’t more of an everyday meal. It’s a simple food, mostly bread (cornbread), and fairly easy to make. In fact, the starting point for dressing was usually leftover cornbread and biscuits. Cooks might make a little extra bread if they knew they were going to make dressing. Given it’s simplicity, you would think it would all taste about the same. It doesn’t. Some cooks just have a knack for making good dressing. Pretty good dressing is pretty good. But, really good dressing is a thing of beauty and a treat for the palette. Southerners love their dressing, and usually turn their noses up at stuffing made by northerners. Stuffing may be good to eat, but it ain’t dressing.
Around our family, Ann’s mother, Juanita, is the queen of making dressing. We usually request some when we visit. She definitely gets chosen to make the dressing when we have family gatherings. In recent years, she has begun adding some store bought stuffing mix to replace some of the bread. She says the seasoning in the mix adds a nice flavor. We watched her make a batch of dressing recently and jotted down some notes as she went along. She doesn’t refer to a recipe anymore. Thus, some of the measurements are approximate.
The cornbread and biscuits were made the day before. I’m not providing a recipe here for either. You can use the cornbread recipe on the bag of cornmeal. Don’t add sugar to the cornbread. Any biscuit recipe will probably do. I recommend this one. Don’t use canned biscuits or “light” bread or rolls. If you can’t make cornbread and biscuits, bless your heart. Learn to do that first, then you can graduate to a more complex food such as dressing.
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