Dressing

My grandmother's dressing was so yummy that we had it not only at Thanksgiving but every time the extended family came together, which would happen throughout the year. This is probably my favorite dish that Granny Beulah made for us. Turkey isn't even necessary with this dressing. I love it served with cranberry sauce (the jellied kind that comes in the can) and granny's giblet gravy (this recipe is also in the cookbook). After our family get togethers, Granny would often send home a large plate of dressing with me, which I would snack on for the next couple of days. Paul is going to write about this dish, since he was the one who cooked it last night. Enjoy!

In Granny Beulah's words:

"Boil chicken until done. Remove from pot. Cook biscuits, cut open, put in another pot. Pour chicken broth over them. Place lid on pot. Let steam, then mash up. Add a little meal to the mix. Add a st. of butter or margarine, eggs, & chopped onion. Mix up a pinch of soda with broth in a cup, pour in mix. Pour into a greased casserole dish. Bake at 350 until top is as brown as you want it.

Chicken -
Eggs (6-10)
Meal (1-3 tablespoons)
Onion 1/4 to 1/2 cup
Margarine (1 to 1 1/2 st.)"

(Paul) I'd never made dressing before in my life, but I remember Granny's dressing, and that memory is about all I had to guide the amounts of broth, eggs, and corn meal that I ended up using. Granny's dressing is quite a bit lighter than most dressing, much more like a quiche, so the number of eggs you use is important, I think. I ended up using these amounts:

• 48 oz. Swanson chicken broth
• 10 (from a 12-ct bag) Pillsbury "Gran's" Buttermilk Biscuits (frozen)
• 8 eggs
• 3 tablespoons cornmeal
• 1 smallish onion
• 1 stick sweet cream butter
• 1 teaspoon baking soda

I'm just going to note what I did, rather than telling you how to do it, because we're going to need a few tries to get close to the real deal, and we welcome any tweaks you find that work better!

As it turns out, the first line in the recipe, "Boil chicken until done," assumes that you're going to use that chicken for something else, and only the broth to make the dressing. Since we were just aiming for the dressing for now, we just used store-bought broth. It didn't seem to make too much of a difference in the taste, at least to us.

Also, we'll probably do this recipe again using biscuits made from her recipe, but we didn't have all those ingredients handy. I just baked the biscuits according to the instructions on the bag and cut them up straight out of the oven.

As the biscuits were baking, I diced the onion the way I usually dice onions, which gives you about quarter-inch pieces, but Ashley said that Granny Beulah chopped them much more finely, so the onion in our dressing was a little crunchier and more noticeable than it would have been in hers.

Also while the biscuits were baking, I scrambled all of the eggs together. I wasn't completely sure about this, but it turned out right, I think. In hindsight, you could use 7 eggs, or maybe even 6, and be okay, depending on how dense you want the dressing.

After the biscuits were done, I cut them in half and threw them in a large saucepan. NB: You need a really big saucepan. The one I used, the biggest one we have besides the huge chili pot, was almost too small to hold all the ingredients.

Then, I added the broth (leaving about 2 tablespoons to use in dissolving the baking soda) and brought it to a low boil, with lid on.

As soon as it began to bubble, I reduced the heat and mashed the biscuits up with a spatula (they were really mushy by then) until the mix looked about like a pudding.

Then, I added the cornmeal, eggs, butter, and onion. I mixed the baking soda separately with the 2 tablespoons of broth, then poured that in, too. Once all that was mixed well, I poured the mixture into our Pam-coated pans. It made enough for two of the pans in the picture. We froze half of it and ate half of it over the course of a few meals.

The finished product: Granny Beulah's Dressing!