With the last two weeks being about beans, that leaves a lot of leftover cornbread. There are a few different things you can do with cornbread instead of just heating it up and eating it again the next night.
I like to save my cornbread in the freezer and when I get enough I make crockpot dressing:
Crockpot Dressing
1 Whole chicken
1 8-inch pan corn bread
8 slices white bread
4 eggs
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp. pepper
2 cans cream of chicken soup
2 Tbsp margarine
onion to taste
Boil, debone chicken. Reserve liquid. Break up breads. Beat eggs and add to mixture. Add onion, salt, pepper, sage, soup, marg., and celery. Fill cans with chicken broth. Mix all. Cook 4 hours on low or 2 hours on high.
This is the original recipe. If you're like me, then you see recipes more as suggestions instead of rules and tweak them to suit you and your family.
I use chicken breast tenders out of the freezer that I have already batch cooked in the crockpot and shredded. So all I have to do is toss it in with the other ingredients. Most of the time I don't even use chicken, I use cooked, crumbled, and drained hot breakfast sausage. Again I like to already have it cooked and stored in the freezer too.
In place of the chicken soup, I make up a white sauce and add in a rounded teaspoon of chicken base paste. The chicken broth I substitute with water and chicken base. I substitute the sage with poultry seasoning. Generally I leave out the celery because I don't keep it stocked, but I use cooked onion.
If that sounds like too much work then you might like Skillet Dressing. It's great when you get to craving dressing and the holidays are too far off. Plus, its made on top of the stove and doesn't heat your house up in the summer.
Skillet Dressing
1/2 cup crushed corn bread (day old and crumbled)
1/2 cup cooked rice (opt)
2 hard cooked eggs chopped
1/2 c. chicken broth
1/4. chopped celery
2 Tbsp onion
2 Tbsp butter/ marg
1 tsp minced parsley
1/4 teas. poultry seasoning
salt and pepper to taste
In a bowl combine the first 4 ingredients and set aside. In a skillet, saute celery and onion in butter until tender. Add the cornbread mixture and seasoning, mix well. Cook over medium heat until lightly browned.
Agian you can adjust measuremaents to suit you and omit ingredients that you don't like or don't have on hand.
A very simple and quick recipe and yummy too.
If you are not a dressing sort of person you might like Cornbread Salad. It's a great side and a way to dress up plain cornbread.
Cornbread Salad
1 package cornbread mix
9 slices bacon, cooked and crumbled
1/2 cup drained sweet pickle relish
1/4 cup sweet pickle relish juice
1 green bell pepper, chopped
2 large tomatoes, chopped
chopped onion to taste
1 cup mayo or to taste
Bake cornbread according to package direction; cool. Crumble cornbread into a seving bowl/add remaining ingredients, stirring until thouroughly mixed. ( May be prepared ahead and refrigerated to serve the following day. )
I do a few things different on this. For one I don't make my cornbread from a package. I'd never heard of such a thing until this recipe. I didn't know they existed. I also use leftover cold cornbread for this instead of fresh. My guys don't like raw onion, so if I do include onion I saute it in butter first. This is a good way to use up your garden produce of peppers and tomatoes. If it isn't garden season then I just omit the pepper. I don't like buying extra things at the grocery store just because a recipe lists it. If it doesn't affect the taste then I leave it out.
It's a pretty accompaniment, it's different, and very tasty. You may win over picky eaters with this one on shock value alone. :)
Happy Frugal Eating!
