Alabama · Side
Alabama Cornbread Dressing
- Intermediate
- 1 h 30 m
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
Leads with richness that coats and comforts.
Ingredients
- For the cornbread: 250g cornmeal, 60g flour, 1 tbsp baking powder, 1 tsp salt, 2 eggs, 400ml buttermilk, 3 tbsp bacon fat
- 4 slices day-old white bread, torn
- 1 onion, diced
- 3 celery ribs, diced
- 55g butter
- 1 tbsp sage
- 1 tsp thyme
- 3 eggs
- 1L chicken stock
- Salt and pepper
Equipment
Skillet
The skills inside
Sweating aromatics: soft, never browned
Allergen screen
Found: gluten · dairy · egg · celery
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Bake the cornbread in a hot cast-iron skillet and let it go stale overnight; crumble it with the torn white bread.
- Sweat the onion and celery in the butter until soft.
- Mix the crumbs, vegetables, sage, and thyme, then stir in the beaten eggs and enough stock to make it wet and loose, wetter than seems right.
- Spread in a buttered dish.
- Bake at 190C for 40-45 min until set and browned on top. 45 min
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the technique it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Sweating aromatics: soft, never browned 198 recipes
- No colour anywhere: tipped under the light the pieces are translucent to pale gold, with no tan edges, no brown tips, and no browned flecks suspended in the fat.
- The pan is quiet: a low steady hiss, not a crackle. A crackle means the moisture has gone and browning has already started.
- The largest piece pressed against the side of the pan collapses without resistance and with no crunch left at its centre.
- The fat is still clear and loose in the pan and the pan floor is clean: nothing caught, nothing browned on to deglaze, because there was never any fond to build.
- It tastes sweet and mild with no raw allium bite at the back of the throat, and none of the roasted sweetness that belongs to the next technique up the heat scale.
Where it goes wrong The heat was too high and nothing covered the pan, so the pieces took colour before they softened; the finished dish carries a roasty sweetness where it wanted a clean one, and the pieces are still firm at the centre under browned edges.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Chenin Blanc (Vouvray sec)
- Also Right
- Cru Beaujolais
- From the Taps
- Farmhouse saison
- Zero-Proof
- Cloudy apple juice, chilled
Pork loves fruit and gentle sweetness: orchard-note whites and low-tannin reds flatter it where heavy oak flattens.
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