Cornbread Dressing
Yes, it is August. With August, most Southerns know football season will soon be upon us and before you know it you will find yourself Christmas shopping and getting ready to prepare the family holiday menu. Should cornbread dressing only be served on the holidays? A big pan of chicken and dressing now and then will usually tide us over but there are times I want to serve dressing as a side to a roasted chicken (aka baby turkey). If you can plan ahead, it can be really simple. Just pull a vacuum sealed pack of crumbled cornbread from the deep freezer along with stock saved and frozen from roasting a chicken or preferably a hen. When I don't have a supply in the freezer, I just make a big skillet of cornbread (Just double the recipe.) No chicken stock? I love chicken flavored "Better than Bouillon" to make broth. Just add 1 tsp. of the base per cup of water and you'd think it was the real thing.
In a large bowl, finely crumble 7-8 cups of cornbread.
Hard boil, peel and chop four large eggs. I like to use my egg slicer and cut both ways.
Chop 1 small sweet onion.
Combine cornbread, eggs, onions, 1 tsp. each of salt and pepper and 2 tsp. poultry seasoning.
Mix the dry ingredients well before adding the broth. Start with 3 cups of chicken broth. Add more if necessary.
Before pouring this in the casserole dish, I like to take my spoon and smooth out the mixture. If moisture comes to the top, it's right. It took me fixing this several times to get a good visual of what to look for. You don't want it soupy, but if there isn't enough broth, it'll be too dry.
Give a quick taste to see if you need to add additional seasoning.
I am the chicken & dressing maker at our holidays too! Pretty much like yours I add a little poultry seasons & sage and just before it goes in the oven I put chunks of butter thru it!
ReplyDeleteThe added butter sounds yummy!! I will have to give that a try. Thanks for following Shannon!! ---Denise
ReplyDeleteCould you do or have you done a post about the food sealer? We are looking for one and want an expert opinion. I bet others do, too.
ReplyDeleteThat is a great question Claudia. I have not done a specific post about a food sealers. We use the Food Saver brand which can be bought at our local big box store.
ReplyDeleteThe specific model is: FoodSaver V2470 Vacuum Sealer, FSFSSL2470-015
This runs around $100 (online)-$120 (in store).
We tried the vertical model: FoodSaver Vacuum Sealing System, FSFSSL3425-P15 which runs around $139.00.
We gave it away to one of our kids who doesn't buy and package food in bulk like we do.
It might have been a fluke, but we had more problems with sealing. As expensive as the bags are, you don't want that to happen.
We are on our third or fourth one in thirteen years. They do not last forever. I think we are not the norm though.
They are worth every penny you spend! What you save in not throwing out leftovers alone will make up for the cost. For example, we make huge pots of stews, soups, chili's and sauces or cook up big pots of veggies. These items are portioned out into freezer bowls so they will take on a shape. Within one or two days, we pop out the frozen item and vacuum seal them. Be sure to mark what the item is and date it. One night Andy got out a pack of what he thought was chili and it ended up being spaghetti sauce. :-)
I love getting out a frozen block of soup, heating it (some items can be cooked in the bag in boiling water!) and enjoying food that tastes as good as fresh.