Grandma's Corn Bread Dressing

This is an excellent recipe, if you are familiar with southern cornbread but never cooked it and want to try with a basic recipe. If you are new to making it, here are some things you DEFINITELY need to know: 1) "Dry Corn Bread Mix" means "corn meal mix" - not Jiffy or any brand that is sweet. Any of the Aunt Jemima versions are perfect. Sweet dressing does not have the traditional southern taste most folks are accustomerd to. 2) Sage is delicious but is like any other herb -- personal preference rules, because it is VERY strong. If you are not used to sage, cut the recipe amount in half, and add your sage to the recipe before the eggs, so you can taste as you go along. 3) The more you stir and mix this recipe, the more dense and gummier it gets. So if you like a lighter, fluffier dressing (almost "stuffing" like), you should only add as much liquid as needed to reach the consistency that you want. 4) For non-vegetarians, add meat to this dish! Almost any meat will go well: cubed or shredded turkey ham or chicken, sausage, ground beef, bacon. Try your favorite. 5)BE CAREFUL if you use poultry seasoning - some blends have salt. Reduce the recipe salt if needed.

Be sure to use a cornbread mix that doesn't include sugar. In the Oklahoma area, Shawnee Mills mix is sugar-free. Jiffy Cornbread Mix DOES contain sugar. If you can't find a sugar-free mix, buy a bag of cornmeal and follow the instructions to bake your own cornbread from scratch. The dressing won't taste right otherwise. My grandmother used a similar recipe, but added 2 or 3 chopped hard-boiled eggs to the dressing mixture before baking. The amount of sage you need depends on personal taste and how long ago the jar of sage was bought and opened. Add sage by single teaspoons (BEFORE you put in the raw, beaten eggs), stir well, and taste test after each teaspoon. This will ensure you get a perfect pan of dressing!

I made a few modifications to make it more like my Grandma's recipe - increased celery to 1 cup, added 3/4 cup chopped bell pepper, 1/2 tsp. poultry seasoning + large pinch of sage, 1 tsp. salt, 1/2 tsp. pepper, and used the entire mix of cornbread instead of 3 cups as it says (Jiffy brand comes in 8 1/2 oz. boxes). Wow, what a hit with my crowd! Thanks for the recipe!

This was wonderful...but I had to make some changes. The original recipe calls for making ALOT of cornbread and then only asks you to use 3 cups of it, which would have only made 1/2 a pan of dressing anyway. I doubled the amount of cornbread (since there was more than enough there) and doubled everything else too. I also added one can of cream of celery soup. It was YUMMY!! :)

This turned out a lot better than I expected. My Mamaw is the only one in the family who makes dressing, but this year I'm not going to be home for it. I decided to strike out on my own and give it a try. I have a couple of tips to add. I increased the chicken stock by about a 1/4 cup and be sure you use a glass or light colored baking dish. The dark baking pan will dry this out. Also, I broke the rules and used Jiffy (with sugar) for my cornbread. I have to say, I like the added sweetness. It isn't as sweet as most other brands so it still came out pretty good. It's not the same as Mamaw's, but I don't have left overs either.

This has been the best version I have found, made it for my office party and they went gaga, the key is to chop onions and celery in proceesor so find that the dressing is smooth. Highly recommended!

This is really similar to the recipe that my grandmother passed down to me. You can also substitute the chicken stock for the pan drippings if you are also cooking a turkey. When prepared with the drippings it is delicious and full of flavor.

This recipe is wonderful! To change it up a little though, I only added 1 beaten egg. And then I added 1 can of cream of mushroom soup. The soup held the dressing together, made it perfectly moist, and added a really nice flavor to it!

I love this recipe! I was looking for one that was similar to my mother's. She never had a written recipe, and this was almost identical! It'a simple and easy enough to add extra ingredients for variations. Will definitely make this a Thanksgiving staple.

Don't make the mistake I did, using the same amount of ground sage as this recipes calls for in dried sage. I may try it again, but not soon.