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Oct 10, 2023

The Flaky Biscuit: How to Make Tank's Cornbread Dressing

Every item on this page was chosen by a Shondaland editor. We may earn commission on some of the items you choose to buy. Shondaland podcast host and artisan baker Bryan Ford dishes out the musician

Every item on this page was chosen by a Shondaland editor. We may earn commission on some of the items you choose to buy.

Shondaland podcast host and artisan baker Bryan Ford dishes out the musician and songwriter’s favorite holiday side.

On the Shondaland Audio podcast The Flaky Biscuit, artisan baker Bryan Ford is cooking up morsels of nostalgia. From vending-machine classics to holiday staples, he’s re-creating dishes from his guests’ pasts in the hope of triggering joy-inducing memories today. In this week’s installment, Ford tackles cornbread dressing.

Are stuffing and dressing the same thing? While most layfolk use the terms interchangeably to describe that staple of a Thanksgiving meal, culinary experts would contend the former is cooked inside the cavity of a bird — stuffed, as it were — whereas the latter is baked separately like a casserole. Musical sensation Tarriona “Tank” Ball proffers an alternative distinction.

“We would never put sausage in our dressing. That’s like putting hotdog wieners into gumbo,” exclaims the New Orleans native, who fronts the Grammy-nominated band Tank and the Bangas. “Apples? And raisins?” she asks incredulously. “Now we know the true difference. Oh, my gosh!”

Ball reveals that raisins do not have a place in her kitchen, let alone in one of her most cherished meals. On the latest installment of The Flaky Biscuit, she has requested that host and artisan baker Bryan Ford re-create her mother’s dressing but unwittingly ups the ante by providing little inkling as to what that entails. This sets Ford on a quest.

“I’m assuming it was cornbread based,” Ford muses, a hunch deduced from their shared upbringing in the Big Easy. The guess is unsurprisingly correct because Southern tables tend to favor cornbread over regular bread for the iconic dish.

Ford bakes the cornbread from scratch, using a combination of cornmeal and flour moistened by butter plus buttermilk. It is then left to dry out overnight, a needed step to give it enough body to absorb the liquid that will subsequently be introduced. But as he freestyles his way through the other ingredients, from green onion sausage to chicken broth, his list comes up far shorter than that of Ball’s mother.

“I saw her cooking this year, and it was so much,” Ball shares. To start, she makes a turkey broth scented with crawfish heads, bay leaf, garlic, sage, celery, bell pepper, and green onions. Next come the heavy hitters to punch up the cornbread: gizzards, shrimp, shrimp heads, ground meat, and crab balls.

The union of land and sea produces a flavor profile that is all too familiar in Creole cooking. But what stands out is the sheer amount of labor involved. The gizzards are boiled; the shrimp heads must be sautéed then simmered; each crab ball is individually formed.

“[My mother] had to have other meals cooking to add to this to make it what it’s supposed to be,” Ball reveals. “That’s why it’s only cooked for Thanksgiving.”

Learning the details of Ball’s family recipe feels like a rare privilege. In some quarters, these closely guarded secrets are passed down only to the worthiest of the next generation. Even a New Orleans native like Ford is surprised by its complexity.

“I’m lost for words,” Ford admits, “because I’ve never heard of a dressing that intricate … sleeping on the culinary minds that are in the houses on the blocks around here.” The cooking is celebratory, reserved for special people at special times, and accessible only in homes by invitation only.

A good dressing demands layers of umami. Although Ford’s recipe does not incorporate any seafood or actual turkey like Ball’s family dressing, it does feature sausage. De-casing the link helps to melt the fat, which in turn permeates the entire dish with a gorgeous aroma.

For cooks with patience, there is the added option of rendering the fat, which involves cooking animal fat slowly until all its internal moisture has evaporated. This purification process transforms pork fat into lard or chicken fat into schmaltz.

“My sister does a pretty good dressing with duck fat,” Ford says. “But I gotta be transparent. I skipped the duck fat because to render duck fat takes a few hours.”

The search for the ultimate dressing recipe may well be a futile endeavor, as each family has tricks and tips that make the dish unique. For Ball, her mother’s dressing represents an abiding taste that defines her Thanksgiving holiday. “It’s consistent,” Ball says. “Every year. Every year, it’s going to just taste good.”

Prep time: 1 hour and 15 minutes. Bake time: 30 minutes. Yield: 1 casserole dish.

Ingredients

For the cornbread:

For the dressing:

Instructions

Listen and subscribe to new episodes of The Flaky Biscuit at iHeart, Apple, or wherever you get your favorite podcasts.

Gerald Tan is an ice cream-obsessed Washington, D.C.-based food writer, TV host, and author of Tok Tok Mee: A Portrait of Penang Street Food. Follow him on Instagram @boulangerry.

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