Old fashioned Southern cornbread dressing uses either homemade buttermilk skillet cornbread or Jiffy corn muffin mix! This dish is loaded with beef, pork, poultry seasoning, and sage for a sausage-like flavor. Easy to make and freeze in advance, it’s a must-have holiday side for Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter!
Dressing or stuffing is one of those side dishes most people agree is a delicious necessity at the holidays. But what exactly that looks like may be different on each family’s table!
I grew up eating and adoring boxed Stovetop stuffing, sometimes with a few extras thrown in like pecans or cranberries.
Then I was introduced to my sister’s in-laws’ unique sourdough sun-dried tomato artichoke stuffing and I was hooked! I made it for years.
But most recently, when I had my first Thanksgiving dinner years ago with my own future in-laws, I tasted their traditional Southern cornbread dressing and just couldn’t get enough.
Really, I’ve almost never met a dressing or stuffing I didn’t like. But this one is my favorite du jour (my husband’s favorite too!) and boy is it good!
About Southern Cornbread Dressing
I’ll admit, when I first saw a pan of my in-laws’ Southern cornbread dressing, it didn’t look that appealing to me. It was basically a solid brown mass you cut into pieces like a cake. But the flavor blew me away! (side note: yes, it’s very difficult to photograph brown foods so they look appetizing! Hopefully I did a decent job!)
So what is cornbread dressing anyway? Think of it a bit like refried beans, except it’s rebaked cornbread instead.
You bake the cornbread; crumble it up and add all kinds of meat, veggies, and herbs; mix in some broth to keep the mixture moist, and rebake it. It becomes an entirely different, delicious dish with little in common from the original cornbread it came from!
What’s in this cornbread dressing?
I’ll start with an overview of what makes up this cornbread dressing before going into a bit more detail about each component. This recipe includes:
- Cooked, crumbled cornbread, along with a couple other bread-like ingredients (saltines and breadcrumbs)
- Diced, soft-cooked vegetables: onions, bell peppers, and celery
- Ground meat: here I’ve used a combination of beef and pork
- Plenty of herbs and seasonings (poultry seasoning, plus a bit of sage to make the meat taste more sausagey!)
- Chicken broth, to keep everything moist and bind it together for baking
When all those ingredients come together, it’s a truly delicious harmony of flavors in a tender, sliceable format (yes, a bit like cake).
And when you add some turkey gravy on top? Fuggedaboutit! SO good.
This dressing starts, of course, with cornbread. The more flavorful the cornbread is, the better your dressing will be.
I recommend starting with a full recipe’s worth of this skillet buttermilk cornbread — some of the most buttery, flavorful cornbread I’ve ever had!
If you’d like a bit of a shortcut, though, two boxes of Jiffy cornbread mix, baked according to their directions, will do the trick.
This cornbread dressing contains three — yes, three — bread-like ingredients. Of course, there’s the cornbread, but it also contains crushed saltines and breadcrumbs.
Saltines or breadcrumbs, crushed and mixed with a liquid, are often used as a binding ingredient in meatloaf. I imagine they function similarly here, to help keep the dressing together instead of crumbling apart.
Rather than mixing the saltines and breadcrumbs with the liquid separately before adding it to the cornbread crumbles, you can just mix all the breads together at once with the veggies and then moisten with broth at the end.
Added to the cornbread mixture is a mirepoix of onions, bell pepper, and celery. A mirepoix is a mix of diced veggies cooked in butter or oil for a long time, without browning, until soft. It’s used as a base to infuse flavor into your recipe.
While a traditional French mirepoix uses finely diced onions, carrots, and celery, the Creole version is called “the holy trinity” of ingredients and swaps the carrots for bell pepper (usually green, but you can use whatever color you like in this recipe).
You want to cook the vegetables until very soft. They’re there for flavor, not texture, so “tender-crisp” is not the goal here. I’d hate to run into a crunchy bit of celery in the middle of my cornbread dressing.
While some people go crazy with a turducken for the holidays, I prefer to keep my turkey traditional and add in any “bonus meats” elsewhere in the meal. My in-laws use ground beef in their dressing, but I decided to mix it up with a combination of ground beef and pork.
The pork adds flavor and has a higher fat content than most ground beef, so your meat will stay tender and moist as a part of your cornbread dressing. It will not, as my mother once infamously said of ground beef, turn into “dry little balls of meat rolling around in your mouth.” Ew.
I like to combine the meats together in a bowl before cooking, rather than throwing each meat together in a pan and then browning. This makes it truly a beef-pork blend, rather than simply alternating pieces of either beef or pork.
BEST SOUTHERN CORNBREAD CHICKEN AND DRESSING Recipe! How to make Chicken and Dressing| Soul Food
FAQ
What does cornbread go well with?
What is the difference between cornbread dressing and stuffing?
Do Southerners eat stuffing or dressing?
What goes well with cornbread dressing?
Spices: Spices like poultry seasoning, black pepper, and extra sage give cornbread dressing its classic flavor that complements a turkey dinner so well! Chicken broth: broth adds so much flavor to the dressing and gives it moisture. You could also use chicken stock or turkey broth. Toasted bread: This adds extra binding and flavor.
What can be used as a substitute for egg when baking cornbread?
Aquafaba might be used as a substitute for the egg when baking cornbread. Aquafaba is chickpea water that has a similar function to eggs.
Is cornbread dressing good for Thanksgiving?
Cornbread dressing is a popular Southern baked side dish often served for Thanksgiving. It consists of cornbread that is mixed with broth, spices, herbs, vegetables, meat, and eggs. It is savory and flavorful and goes great with turkey and gravy. What’s the difference between my two dressing recipes?
What is Southern cornbread dressing?
Southern Cornbread Dressing is a classic dish; honestly, it’s the show-stopper for Thanksgiving. Made with biscuits and cornbread, seasoned with sage, onions, and celery, this dish has been a family favorite for many years. If you love this classic dressing you must check out our Sausage Biscuit Dressing.