Chicken & Cornbread Dressing

I love family dinners, so when Thanksgiving and Christmas arrive I am soo happy to cook for everyone. Nothing says comfort food more than homemade chicken and cornbread dressing around the holidays.
This recipe has been in my family for years and I hope you enjoy this recipe as much as my family does :)

            
This year we spent our very first Thanksgiving with my husband's family. We live in Texas and they live in Mississippi, so we usually swap Christmas or summer visits with them. My father-in-law fries turkey every year for Thanksgiving and I was very excited to experience fried turkey. I have never tried it before! Well, needless to say he did a wonderful job.

I was in charge of all the sides, so I decided to bring some of my family's Thanksgiving traditions to the table. One of my sides had to be the one and only, fabulous Chicken & Cornbread Dressing. I must say it was a big hit and I would love to share this recipe with you and your family!

Ingredients

6 slices of day old bread

1 pan of cornbread
A bunch of shallots or 1 large onion finely chopped
( I used 1 purple onion in this batch)

2 stalks of celery finely chopped

1/2 -1 red pepper finely chopped

1/2 cup of butter (or you can replaced the butter with olive oil)

3-4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
(of course you can use a whole boiled chicken and debone it if you like)

  2 to 3 cups of chicken broth (low sodium)

Additional 4 cups of chicken broth for boiling the chicken

3 boiled eggs

3 raw eggs

3/4 tsp poultry seasoning

1/2 tsp sage

1 TBS parsley

salt & pepper (to taste)

Directions

Boil chicken and reserve broth.

Prepare cornbread according to the package.

Sauté vegetables in butter or olive oil.

Shred chicken in to small pieces

Toast bread, remove crust, and crumble.

Boil eggs, remove shells, and smash with a fork until fluffy.

In a small bowl slightly beat 3 eggs.

In a large bowl combine bread and corn bread crumbles, sautéed vegetables, shredded chicken, boiled eggs, sage, poultry seasoning, salt and pepper, and raw eggs. Use both hands to combine all ingredients.

Transfer the mixture in to a 9x13 casserole dish or a foil pan. Then evenly and slowly pour 2 1/2 to 3 cups of chicken broth into the mixture. Trust your instincts, you want the chicken broth to cover about 1/2 the mixture. Your bread will soak up the chicken broth as it cooks. Cover and bake at 325 for 45min. Uncover and bake an additional 10 to 15 minutes for browning.

Enjoy!