The cornbread is by far the most difficult part of the cornbread dressing. Once you have that down, it's smooth sailing to Dressing Town. We never called it stuffing in my family because it never went in the bird. Every Thanksgiving morning, I would wake up to the smell of celery and onions sweating in a skillet. Once I got into the kitchen, I would find my dad crumbling up cornbread in our biggest mixing bowl while chicken broth heated on the stove.
I called him to get his recipe for cornbread dressing. It was surprisingly seat-of-the-pants cooking. When I asked him how much liquid to add, he told me "just enough until the mixture makes that sucking sound when you mix it." That is really the crux of family recipes. They're ways of cooking that you've done and seen done so many times that you don't need to know how many cups. You just cook it until it tastes good, like you remember it.
The minute I started sweating onions and celery for our early Thanksgiving, I was immediately transported to the kitchen I grew up in. I also knew exactly what it should taste, look, and smell like each step of the way, since I had seen it done so many times before. Here's an approximation of the recipe, but my advice to you is to make it like you like it. Add, take away, and make it your own. You'll know when it's right.
