Faith Hill's Holiday Favorites

Edna's corn bread dressing with gravy

Serves 10
Prep time: 30 minutes
Total time: 2 hours

3 tablespoons butter-flavored Crisco
1 to 1 1/2 cups Martha White Self-Rising Yellow Corn Meal Mix
1 raw egg
1 1/2 cups buttermilk
1 3-pound whole chicken
A small bunch green onions (scallions), chopped
3 ribs celery, chopped
5 hard-boiled eggs
32 ounces cream of chicken soup (preferably homemade), divided
1/2 teaspoon dried sage
A dash all-purpose seasoning (Faith uses the Kroger brand)
1 large carrot, grated

To make the corn bread:
Preheat oven to 500°F. Melt the Crisco in a cast-iron skillet over medium heat.
Meanwhile, combine cornmeal, raw egg, and buttermilk in a mixing bowl and stir until it reaches the consistency of pancake batter. Add melted Crisco to cornmeal mixture and stir again. Sprinkle a little dry cornmeal in the skillet and pour batter on top.
Bake corn bread for about 20 minutes or until the top is golden brown and a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Cool corn bread in pan on rack. (Corn bread can be made up to two days ahead. Cool completely, cover, and store at room temperature.)

To make the dressing:
Remove the chicken gizzards and liver from the chicken cavity. Wash the chicken inside and out in cool running water. Place whole chicken, gizzards, and liver in a pressure cooker and cook for 20 minutes. (If you don't have a pressure cooker, roast the chicken, gizzards, and liver in a 350°F oven until chicken reaches an internal temperature of 165°F (about 20 minutes per pound). Once cooked, set the chicken, gizzards, and liver aside to cool. Save the liquid that accumulates in the pressure cooker to add to the dressing. Preheat oven to 350°F. In a large bowl, crumble cooked corn bread and add onions and celery. Chop 3 of the hard-boiled eggs, add to the bowl, and stir. Add 16 ounces of cream of chicken soup, sage, all-purpose seasoning, and the liquid from the cooked chicken and stir. If the mixture seems thick, add a little hot water to thin it. Set aside about 1 cup of the mixture to use in the gravy. Place the rest into a 9- by 11-inch baking pan and bake for 35 to 45 minutes or until golden brown on top.

To make the gravy:
Chop the reserved chicken gizzards and liver and the remaining 2 hard-boiled eggs. Slice the meat from the whole chicken and chop enough so you have about 1 cup of meat. (Freeze the remaining chicken to use in other dishes.) In a large saucepan, combine the remaining cream of chicken soup, reserved dressing, gizzards, liver, eggs, and chicken and stir. Add grated carrot and a little hot water until the mixture is the consistency of gravy. Place on the stovetop and bring to a boil, then reduce heat to a simmer and cook for 5 minutes. Serve a portion of the cooked dressing topped with gravy alongside roast turkey.

Make it healthier:
"With a few simple tweaks, you can cut the calories, fat and sodium in this dish considerably," says Kyle Shadix, R.D., chef-nutritionist and managing director of Nutrition + Culinary Consultants in New York City. First make sure you remove all of the skin and any visible fat from the chicken before adding it to the gravy mixture, as that's where most of the fat and calories are in chicken. Next, remove 2 of the yolks from the hard-boiled eggs you add to the dressing and from one of the eggs for the gravy. Finally, use 1 cup of cornmeal mix (not 1 ½ cups). With these changes, you bring the calorie count down from 688 to 442 and trim the fat from 41 to 14 grams. The saturated fat is also reduced by more than half. (Note: Don't worry about trans fat in this dish; Crisco has been reformulated to contain 0 grams of trans fat.) Another adjustment to make to this recipe is to cut the sodium. One serving has 1,431 milligrams and most of that comes from the baking soda in the cornmeal mix. You can't really change that, but you can reduce the sodium in other ways: use low-sodium cream of chicken soup and no-sodium buttermilk, and the count drops to 925 milligrams per serving.