Sausage Cornbread Dressing

This is a cornbread dressing recipe that I got out of a school cookbook.  I added a few of my own touches, but it is fairly easy to make and has great flavor.

Ingredients:

• 2 boxes of Jiffy cornbread, prepared, cooled, and crumbled
• ½ loaf of French bread, stale, cut into cubes
• ½ C. (1 stick) butter
• 1 C. onions, chopped
• 1 C. celery, chopped
• 4 garlic cloves, minced
• 1 bunch of green onions, finely chopped
• 1 lb. pork breakfast sausage
• 1 T. of Tony Chachere’s Creole Seasoning
• 1 t. sage
• 2 (15 oz.) cans chicken broth (you won't use it all)

Directions:

1. In a Dutch oven, sauté onions, and celery over medium heat in the butter until soft, about 10 minutes.
2. Add garlic and cook for 1 minute.
3. Add sausage and chop it up while it cooks for 10 minutes.
4. Add the green onions, Creole seasoning, and sage and cook for 3 minutes.
5. Add some cornbread, chicken broth, and then some french bread, alternating and scrapping the bottom of the Dutch oven often. (you might not need all the cornbread, I usually only use about 3/4 of the pan of cornbread and about 1 ½ cans of the chicken broth.  Keep adding until it feels like the proper consistency.)
6. Cook for 10 minutes and continue scrapping.
7. Remove the dressing from the heat and allow to cool slightly.
8. Place the dressing in a casserole dish or baking pan.
9. When you are ready to serve, bake at 350 degrees for 20 minutes or until golden brown.

Tips and Tricks:

• Make the cornbread the day before you make the dressing.
• You need a really sturdy spoon to stir this dressing.  It gets thick as it cooks, but it’s important to keep it moving.
• I have served this at a pot-luck dinner and skipped the baking step.  I put it in a crockpot and kept it warm for hours.  It still tastes great.