Southern Cornbread Dressing is deliciously moist and wonderfully seasoned with sage, onions, and celery. It’s a classic that makes it to the Thanksgiving table year after year.
Thanksgiving is quickly approaching and it’s time to start planning that Thanksgiving menu. This year I want the food to be extra good and special since this is the first year my son has been away at college. I miss him dearly and I know he misses my home cooking. (Note: This post was originally published November 10, 2015. But my son is still coming home for Thanksgiving 😊)
You cook for your boys mamas, and they’ll always want to come home to see you. 🙂
The Thanksgiving side dish that my kids look forward to the most is the dressing.
What Is Dressing?
Dressing is what southerners call stuffing. Typically dressing is made with cornbread. Variations on cornbread dressing are many and varied. Depending on the region of the south, ingredients like pecans, sausage, crawfish, or oysters can be added.
Thanksgiving Dressing Recipe
Probably the most looked forward to part of Thanksgiving dinner, besides dessert, is the dressing and it’s not uncommon for us to have more than one kind. I personally really love this Andouille Sausage and Cornbread Stuffing.
This Southern Cornbread Dressing is a more traditional southern dressing made with crumbled cornbread along with lots of onion, celery, and sage. It’s savory, moist, and delicious.
How Far In Advance To Make The Cornbread
You should make the cornbread a day or two in advance. You want the conrbread to be somewhat dry and stale. This will allow it to absorb more liquid and flavor.
Recipe Tip
Since we typically fry our Thanksgiving turkey, I solely use canned broth to make dressing, but if you have turkey drippings, you could add them to the dressing and it will taste even better.
Along with cornbread dressing we love to have Cheesy Green Bean Casserole, mashed potatoes, and Broccoli Casserole for Thanksgiving dinner. And this year I think I’ll add Savory Sweet Potato Casserole to the list. You can never have too many casseroles! I also always make these Yeast Rolls and Southern Sweet Potato Pie.
Equipment Needed
- Cast Iron Pan– You will need a 9 to 10-inch cast iron pan for baking the cornbread. A 9-inch cake pan or baking dish can be used instead.
- Baking Dish– a 9×13-inch baking dish is a good size.
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Watch the video below to see how easy it is to make Southern Cornbread Dressing.
Southern Cornbread Dressing
Equipment
- 9 to 10-inch cast iron pan
Ingredients
Cornbread
- 1 cup self-rising cornmeal, I use Martha White
- 1/2 cup self-rising flour, I use White Lily
- 3/4 cup buttermilk
- 2 eggs
- 2 tablespoons Vegetable oil
Dressing
- 8 tablespoons butter, (1 stick)
- 3 medium onion, chopped
- 4 stalks celery, chopped
- 1 1/2 teaspoons dried sage
- 1 teaspoon poultry seasoning
- 3/4 teaspoon salt
- 1/2 teaspoon pepper
- 3 pieces toast, crumbled
- 1/2 cup milk
- 3 eggs, lightly beaten
- 2 to 2 1/2 cups chicken stock or broth
- 2 tablespoons butter
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
- In a medium bowl, stir together all ingredients for cornbread. Pour into a lightly greased 9-inch cast iron pan or a 9-inch baking pan. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes. Before using, crumble into small pieces.
- Heat butter over medium heat in a large pan. Add celery and onion and cook until soft.
- Add sage, poultry seasoning, salt, and pepper to onion mixture.
- In a large bowl combine crumbled cornbread and toast.
- Whisk together milk and eggs and add to bowl. Stir in 2 cups of chicken broth.
- Stir in onion mixture. Mixture should be very moist. Add more broth if necessary.
- Transfer to a greased baking dish. Cut butter into small slivers and scatter on top of dressing.
- Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes, or until it turns light brown on top.
Notes
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
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I love boiled eggs in dressing. Wanted to make it for this Christmas!
I also grew up having boiled eggs in dressing. There doesn’t seem to be any recipes including eggs. I’m about as southern as you can get!
Merry Christmas & God Bless!
Me too!!! From Louisiana!!! we put boiled eggs in ours🥰 I boil my chicken, with chicken bouillon cubes. For my broth!!! We use giblet gravy over our cornbread dressing💞
We made this recipe yesterday. My family really love it. Thank you for sharing your easy to make. I love your blog.
Thank you for this recipe! I just made it for the first time and it is GOOOOD!!!!! Thanks again!
HI Friends…in the process of making, stage of a really big bowl filled with crumby crumbs. : ) Any advice on making the night before and baking the following day? Is this best served warm, fresh from oven or baked before and just reheated? Heck, I think leftovers always taste better. So…baking now does make sense. If you read this TGIVING eve and have advice, I would be grateful, and thankful. : )
It’s a very moist dressing, so you could possibly make ahead and reheat. It’d probably dry it out a little though. To maximize time and have fresh dressing, I’d mix in the cooked butter onion mixture to the cornbread crumbs. Refrigerate that overnight and the next day just add the wet ingredients to cook.
Your recipe looks a lot like mine, I love cornbread dressing the best.
Just wanted to remark on how you said in your ABOUT page, you don’t repeat your recipes.
I’ve perused your recipes, and it looks to me that you have worked on perfecting your dishs.
Just sayin…..
all sounds good to me. don’t usualy make dressing leave it to others. one dressing or stuffing a long lost friend used to make was great she used 1 dozen eggs beaten, 1 sleeve celery chopped,1 onion chopped,1 sleeve mild sausage, 1 sleeve saltines,1 box ritz crumbled. add your poultry sessoning(apprx. 1tsp.) and sage to taste also at least i stick buttermelted and chicken broth mix all put in baking dish 350 for 30 mins or so she was a great cook and even my grandfather liked this please feel free to tweak to taste. belive it or not the crackers did the trick agreed not cornbread dressing but good
I tripled the recipe and it filled 2 aluminum half steam table pans (each 11.5″ x 9.25″ x 2.5″ deep). I had to adjust the cooking times since I made so much. I cooked the cornbread and the dressing until they were browned on top. Pretty doggone tasty. Next time I plan to double the salt, sage and poultry seasoning for a little more “dressing” flavor. Thanks for the recipe!
Southern for sure. I add crumbled sausage and apple in mine also-fantastic!
Is their a way to make the box cornbread not so sweet ? Store by me is out of cornmeal
Use Albers cornmeal. Follow recipe on box but omit the sugar. It’s perfect every time.
Use CornKits. It comes in and envelope and has no sugar. Just add egg and milk. I think it’s much better than Jiffy.
martha white is not sweet at all
May not taste sweet to you but it has added sugar which imo is not necessary. I’ve had the mix and can taste it. Also some people (like my husband) cannot have processed sugar.
Agreed!
If you use box cornbread instead– how much or how many boxes do you use??
Honey, true southern dressing is NEVER sweet. We’re not making a dessert here. Buy self rising cornmeal or better yet find some old country boy to stone grind your cornmeal!
I laughed out loud when I read your reply! And you started it with “Honey” – you must be a true Southerner. Nope southern cornbread is NOT sweet. Boxed cornbread mix? Heavens! Make it from scratch, like a true southerner would. Bless their hearts.
Very much like my family recipe. I loved the “bless their hearts”. My grandmother
AlWays said that and now with almost grown grandchildren I find myself saying that very same thing!
That’s a lot of eggs for that little pan of dressing. Pretty good bit of onions and celery for the size as well. Just my opinion. But this looks more like my dressing than most recipes I’ve seen and pretty close in what ingredients I use. I don’t have a recipe, but I’m creating one this year. I can tweak it next year if I need to. No more stressing over exactly how much of what I need. I use all cornbread with eggs in the cornbread (about 6 cups I think for 2 pans) but not in the dressing.