This is my mother’s recipe for what Yankees call stuffing. It should be served as a side dish.

Ethel’s Cornbread Dressing
courtesy of Jayne Loader, Friendship, ME & Cambridge, MA

Day one
2 quarts turkey broth
Turkey giblets and neck
1 skillet of your favorite cornbread
Sliced white bread

Pour turkey broth into a large pot and bring to a simmer. Add turkey giblets and neck. Simmer for one hour. Remove neck and giblets. Feed giblets to dogs. Strain broth (a coffee filter inserted into a wire strainer works well for this) and discard solids. Refrigerate.

Bake cornbread (I use Edna Lewis’s recipe from The Gift of Southern Cooking. Important: Southern cornbread has no sugar, so if you use another recipe, omit the sugar.) Toast equivalent amount of sliced white bread (Pepperidge Farm is a good choice and Wonder Bread is fine also).

Day two
Broth from day one
1 cup yellow onions, chopped
1 cup celery, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
¼ cup butter
Prepared cornbread and bread
Salt, pepper, and sage to taste
2 beaten eggs

Skim grease from broth and reheat to a simmer. In a pan, sauté onion, celery, and garlic in butter. When vegetables are golden, add to the simmering broth. When vegetables are soft, crumble cornbread and bread into large mixing bowl.

With a slotted spoon, scoop vegetables out of simmering broth and add to bowl. Ladle broth into bowl and stir. Keep adding broth by ladles until mixture is wet but not soupy. Reserve extra broth for gravy.

Season mixture with salt, pepper, and dried sage to taste (chopped fresh sage is nice, too; sometimes I add fresh thyme). When seasonings are correct, add eggs.

Pour mixture into buttered casserole dish, cover with foil and refrigerate. One hour before Thanksgiving dinner, place casserole dish in oven, which should already be at 400°. Remove foil during last 10 minutes of cooking. Serve hot.

MF&L Staff at Maine Food & Lifestyle magazine.