Posted on 11/30/2009 8:32:09 AM PST by Patriot1259
This Thanksgiving I took on the daunting task of making my mother-in-law’s cornbread dressing. This isn’t just ordinary dressing; this is my husband’s very favorite dish. This is “Mamma’s Dressing”. There are entire family stories surrounding this dressing. The outcome of holidays has been determined by this dressing. Forget the presents, forget the company; it was all about the dressing. No pressure.
(Excerpt) Read more at thecypresstimes.com ...
lol — good old canned cranberry sauce. It feels zero shame about being shaped just like the can.
Oh, bless your heart! Just sounds horrible. Guess you didn't have any "comfort food". That's a shame. Hopefully you have some favorites now.
No, not odd at all. I don't really think about my childhood when I eat them, just that they always taste good to me. Not sure they improve my mood, and definitely NOT my weight.
You bet, now that I love cooking for my wife...........spicy? No problema, muy picante, por favor.........
Lucky wife, wish my husband enjoyed cooking.
It’s the Devil’s world, that’s why.
Now, I am hungry. Post that recipe will ya? Or FReepmail me if it is an old family secret, just between us two OK?
Memories of a failed marriage and dead relatives fade away when you think of the Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners of the past and the good times.
Bake a couple of nine-inch cast-iron pans of WHITE cornbread accd'ing to the package directions--buy the cornbread mix. Do not add eggs. Do not add sugar. (sugar, eggs, yellow cornmeal make CAKE not BREAD) I have found that stale cornbread makes a better dressing, so you can also save up the spare cornbread if you already make it often. Nine inch pans give a good balance of crisp crust to tender insides.
Break up the corn break into crumbs. Let some of the crumbs be a little bigger than others, to add textures.
Chop large onion. Grate up a handful of garlic cloves. Fry up a whole pound of bacon and save the drippings. This year I added a package of salt-cured country ham, also cooked. (For those of you who don't know what this is, it is like the dry-cured Italian pancetta, except the American version is much better.) When bacon and ham are cooked, cool and cut into small pieces.
If you have it, chop up fresh parsley. About half a cup. Also some sprigs of thyme and sage. Salt and pepper to taste. Go easy on the sage, depending on your taste.
Mix all this together in a bowl. Add the bacon drippings. Start pouring in some high-quality meat broth a little at a time. Work with hands until you can just make a ball of it. Press the mixture into cookie sheet pans that have been sprayed with Pam. Cook at about 375 until the top turns tan and crispy.
Cut like brownies to serve on a plate.
To do this right, you must have excellent gravy (the kind you get when you cook your stock with lots of bones in the pot) to pour over the sections of dressing. The idea is to maintain a balance of some of the crispness of the bread and bacon with the moistness of the gravy.
I have added and tried many things over the years. Turkey meat doesn't really work, nor do mushrooms. I was surprised, because I love mushrooms. What works in this is the mealy texture of the cornbread with the smoky goodness of bacon with the bite of onion.
It’s nice to put things inside the bird to flavor it—since modern turkeys are so bland and dry. Try putting apples and lemons. That flavors the drippings and the bird, and helps to hold its shape. But I still maintain the idea of putting stuffing into that cavity is disgusting.
Well, texgal, see my recipe above.
Mashed potatoes and gravy - brown gravy, cream gravy it doesn’t matter.
The mashed potatoes MUST be whipped - if I want ‘firm’ potatoes I can fix them boiled, scalloped, hashbrowned or baked so why bother with mashing them. Mashed only comes one way for all you people who think that’s trendy.
(I guess restaurants serve lumpy ‘mashed’ potatoes to prove the taters are real and not flakes out of a box.)
...The mashed potatoes MUST be whipped...
I don’t like any lumps in mine either. MUST be made with cream and REAL butter. But I still use a potato masher. I can whip them things better than an electric beater!
When I was younger my favorite “comfort food” dinner was my mom’s meatloaf, mashed potatoes and (don’t laugh) lima beans. She had a way of cooking the frozen lima beans until they broke down and developed a kind of creamy texture. Now that I cook for myself, I’ve pretty much figured out the meatloaf and mashed potatoes, but I can’t quite get the hang of the lima beans. I’ve experimented with cooking them for at least 40 minutes in just enough water to cover them. The results were pretty close to my mother’s, but they weren’t exactly right. I’ll keep experimenting with them.
I never had much interest in cooking when my mom was alive (one of my greatest regrets), but now that she’s gone I’ve really thrown myself into learning how to cook. I like learning how to fix the dishes that she made, because it’s as if I’m making some kind of connection with her. That’s a great part of the “comfort” for me.
Thank you very much. It is making me hungry just reading about it.
LOL! Yup, you're right! That's exactly the reason.
Oh, no! I left out something important. When I said don’t add eggs, I meant to make the cornbread itself. But with the drippings and the broth, also add in one egg per pan of bread you use. Dang it. This is one time I really wish I could go back and edit a post. It will not set up properly without the egg.
Me too. In large quantities.
For us it is more the latter than sick/blues because we are extremely happy and healthy. But we, almost every day, eat the home-cooked meals that we grew up on ... meat with gravy, peas or beans of some sort, homemade bread, etc., etc. Tonight it will be pork roast done on the rotisserie, candied yams, purple hull peas, mustard greens and cornbread (most all of it home-grown as well). That is the usual stuff around our home.
What is road beef and is the truck totaled after the hit? ;-)
Are you talking about green lima beans? If so, Camelia packages dry green lima beans and you can put them in the crock pot with some water, fatback and spices, then walk away for a few hours. The longer they cook, the more they break down as you describe. Pretty darn good.
We enjoy all of the colors of lima beans ... one of them at least once a week. I always grow enough for a year or so of eating.
Hate cornbread dressing. Nasty. Never had my bread stuffing with red peppers, though; sounds interesting.
Chopped cashews make it good, too.
Meatloaf, mashed potatoes, and gravy.
In college, after a broken romance, Jiffy chocolate cake mixes eaten out of the box with a spoon was popular in our dorm. Sounds pretty horrid now!
Yes, I was talking about green lima beans. The approach you described sounds really tasty. Maybe a crock pot is the way to go in order to get that texture I’m looking for. I have been thinking about getting one...hmm, perhaps a Christmas present for myself? When I get one, I’ll definitely try lima beans your way.
A small 3-quart oval crock pot is perfect for a pound of dry beans (which is the standard package size). I found the dried green limas at WalMart recently and it was the first time I’d ever seen the green ones in dried form. I had dried some small white limas and some larger speckled variety, but I always freeze the green ones for some reason. But the dried make a richer pot liquor than the frozen.
LOL...Guess road beef is what the moose was looking for when it got stunned by the beeber.
Well, these computers are really neato and I was able to cut and paste it the Microsoft Word without a hitch.
Thanks again.
I meant I’d like to change the post in FR. Somebody might use that recipe without my correction, and the dressing will just be crumbs without the eggs.
I know. I was just joking around. It reads deliciously and I suspect it will turn out that way in reality.
I had never really thought about the pressure cooker. Mine is 20-something quarts ... can’t imagine how many beans it would cook at one time!
You left out the canned sweet potatoes.
I'm bad for burning things that take a long time to cook, and I haven't had good luck trying to make beans in a crock pot.
Bless yer heart!!! ; )
LOL. I was just blessin’ his heart for not being able to enjoy cornbread dressing! Cornbread dressing IS real dressing! : )
I am best at cooking things that take a long time, but that is the kind of food on which I was raised. What you are most familiar with is usually easiest.
Yep, I have the molasses too, but I utilize mostly in breads and cookies. In Louisiana, we are more likely to use kettle-cooked cane syrup, which is just as dark but not quite as strong. ;-)
Molasses cookies. They and a glass of whole milk have cured many a bee sting, stubbed toe or hurt feeling.
I put the cooker (brand Fagor, not cheap! $140) on, put the rice and lentils in with hot tap water and turned on the burner without putting on the lid yet. Then I went about finding and putting in seasonings. (grated garlic, onion powder, "better than bullion" ham flavoring) By the time I got that done, the water was simmering. Then I put the lid on and it took about two minutes more for the little yellow button to pop up which starts the pressure timing. At that point, you back off of the burner to low setting.
Ten minutes later, I release the steam, turn off the burner and move the cooker to a cool burner. In about five more minutes, the yellow button falls and you can open the cooker. I guess, all told, about twenty minutes including prep and waiting for the pressure to let off. You can do it faster by running cold water on the cooker.
This looks to save money, too, since everything cooks so fast. This is why pressure cookers are popular in Europe. You don't use much electricity. It'd be interesting to know how it compares with the crock pot, another favorite tool of mine, in energy consumption.
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