Cornbread Sausage Stuffing Recipe with Apples and Cranberries (2024)

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This Cornbread Sausage Stuffing recipe with Apples & Cranberries is a delicious side dish for Thanksgiving, Christmas, or Sunday dinner. Made with all the best stuff: cornbread dressing, sausage, celery, leeks, Granny Smith apples, and dried cranberries.

Cornbread Sausage Stuffing Recipe with Apples and Cranberries (2)

It’s almost here! Tomorrow is Thanksgiving — my most favorite of all the holidays. And with that,I’m bringing you my very last Thanksgiving recipe of 2013. After this, it’s onto Christmas! Oooh, I can’t wait. But for now, we still have Thanksgiving and, this year, I’m trying something new for our dinner.

Recently, someone asked me if I had a good sausage stuffing recipe. I told them that I didn’t, because my stuffing recipe is right there on the back of the Mrs. Cubbison’s Classic Dressing box. Yep! I make stuffing the same way my mom did. She made it with Mrs. Cubbinson’s and that’s how I make it too. I love it, my family loves it…it works. But, there is a part of me that feels like we’ve been missing out a bit. There are so many awesome ways to you can make stuffing and I’ve been wanting to try something new.

Then it dawned on me — I don’t have to make just one or the other, I can make two different stuffings. And that’s exactly what I’m doing. I’m making our old favorite from the back of the Mrs. Cubbison’s box, but I’ve also made aCornbread Sausage Stuffing with Apples and Cranberries. It’s pretty amazing, if I do say so myself and I think my stuffing-loving family is going to like having another option.

There is one dilemma with making another stuffing recipe. Every year, I’ve been cutting vegetables for my big batch of stuffing mostly by hand. Two batches means cutting even more vegetables. And my knives haven’t been as sharp as they can or should be. David sharpens them, but they never seem sharp enough. Last year, I even gave myself a blister while cutting the vegetables because of how hard I had to press down.

I don’t want a repeat of last year…I’d like to stay blister free and I’d like the whole process to be a smooth as possible. So, I bought an awesome electric knife sharpener! David and I headed over to cooking heaven — aka Williams-Sonoma — to buy it. Can I live here?

Once inside, I proceeded to drool on everything. Oh, and I picked out my new knife sharpener: the Edgeware Ceramic Edge Gourmet Electric Knife & Scissors Sharpener.I have provided you with a very helpful photo with big red arrows showing you where it was on display in the store.

The associate had to get me a boxed one from the back stock room and then I was on my way home to sharpen my knives. And if you think I was excited, you should have heard David “do you have to take a photo of it at home?”. Which is code for “do I have to wait to use it?”.

But he knows the drill…I take photos of everything. We unpacked it and there was even an instructional DVD with it, so we watched that. It was VERY helpful. I actually think we might have been sharpening our knifes wrong all this time.

We sharpened all of our knives, and well, let me just say that I wish I had done this before now. I use knives almost daily in my kitchen and I could have saved myself a lot of aggravation over the years if I had bought one of these sooner. With all the holiday cooking, I do, this is going to be a huge help.

And with my new sharp knives, I got busy on all my chopping and slicing for myCornbread Sausage Stuffing. My knives were so sharp that it actually made the whole process enjoyable.

I thinly sliced my leeks…

Cornbread Sausage Stuffing Recipe with Apples and Cranberries (8)

I chopped celery….

And I cubed up some Granny Smith apples.

After slicing and chopping all my ingredients, I looked for more things to slice and chop. Ha, not really. Now it was time to cook the sausage. After the sausage was cooked, I removed it from the pan and sauteed the leeks and celery until tender. Then the apples were thrown in with a bit of thyme. Once the apples were a bit tender, everything was combined together.

The sausage/vegetable mixture was stir into the Mrs. Cubbison’s Corn Bread Stuffing, and chicken stock and dried cranberries were also added. The stuffing is placed in a baking dish and cooked until hot and the top was browned.

And there you have it!Cornbread Sausage Stuffing with Apples and Cranberries — a delicious stuffing for Thanksgiving, Christmas, or Sunday dinner.

Here’s the complete recipe, ready for you to print, save to your ZipList recipe box, or you can pin it to Pinterest for safekeeping if you aren’t ready to use it right now.

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Cornbread Sausage Stuffing Recipe with Apples and Cranberries (14)

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  • Author: Brandie Valenzuela
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Description

This Cornbread Sausage Stuffing recipe with Apples & Cranberries is a delicious side dish for Thanksgiving, Christmas, or Sunday dinner. Made with all the best stuff: cornbread dressing, sausage, celery, leeks, Granny Smith apples, and dried cranberries.

Ingredients

Scale

  • 1 oz box Mrs. Cubbison’s Corn Bread Dressing (12)
  • 1 lb ground breakfast sausage
  • 23 tablespoons butter
  • 1 1/2 cups celery (diced)
  • 2 in leeks (white & pale green end only, cut half lengthwise and sliced thinly crosswise)
  • 2 Granny Smith apples (peeled, cored and diced)
  • Salt and Pepper
  • 2 teaspoons thyme
  • 23 cups apple juice or chicken stock
  • 1 cup dried cranberries

Instructions

  1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Place corn bread dressing into a large bowl and set aside.
  2. In a large pan over medium-high heat, cook the sausage into crumbles until cooked thoroughly. With a spoon, remove sausage from pan to a bowl and discard any excess grease.
  3. Heat butter in pan over medium heat. Add the leeks and celery to the skillet and cook until vegetables are beginning to soften. Add apples and thyme to pan and cook until apples are beginning to soften. Season with a pinch of salt and pepper each.
  4. Add sausage back into the pan with the vegetables and apples; stir to combine. Add sausage/vegetable mixture to the corn bread dressing bowl. Mix to combine. Gradually add apple juice or chicken stock, 1/2 cup at a time, mixing after each addition. Continue adding juice or stock until mixture is moistened, but not mushy — 2 cups should be enough, but feel free to add more if you wish. Mix in cranberries.
  5. Place in a 9×13″ baking dish. Bake until hot and top is browned (about 20 minutes).
  • Category: Side Dish
  • Method: Baking
  • Cuisine: American

Recipe Card powered byCornbread Sausage Stuffing Recipe with Apples and Cranberries (15)

Cornbread Sausage Stuffing Recipe with Apples and Cranberries (2024)

FAQs

Is stuffing better with or without eggs? ›

It's all about personal preference. If you want a sturdier dressing, eggs can help do that. I don't use eggs in this recipe, though, because I like a lighter, more crumbly texture in my dressing.

Is it okay to make stuffing a day ahead of time? ›

The short answer to whether you can making stuffing ahead of time is yes.

What is sausage stuffing made of? ›

A mixture of sage, sausage, onion, garlic, and celery lends this stuffing classic flavor.

Why does my stuffing crumble? ›

The stuffing should be moist but not wet. If there is a puddle of broth at the bottom of the bowl, you've added too much. Add more bread to soak up the excess moisture. If the mix is still dry and crumbly, add more liquid and toss gently until it starts to clump together.

What does adding eggs to stuffing do? ›

Eggs: Two lightly beaten eggs help hold the dressing together and add moisture.

What is the best kind of bread for stuffing? ›

Breads such as sour dough, French bread or Italian loaves are for the best bread for stuffing. Their soft-but-sturdy interiors are the perfect texture for stuffing. The pieces retain their shape without crumbling.

Can you prepare uncooked stuffing ahead of time and refrigerate? ›

If you don't plan on stuffing the bird, but preparing the dressing as a side dish, you can prepare uncooked stuffing ahead of time as long as you freeze the stuffing immediately after mixing the wet and dry ingredients. USDA recommends that you never refrigerate uncooked stuffing.

Can I make stuffing the night before and reheat? ›

Absolutely. Most Thanksgiving stuffing recipes can be made at least partially in advance since: A) They're easily assembled a day or two ahead of Thanksgiving Day; and B) They're often baked using a two-step process (once covered with foil to cook through, then uncovered to achieve a crispy top).

Can you use week old bread for stuffing? ›

In fact, using stale bread and fresh bread will both leave you with equal amounts of mush. The longstanding tip to use old, stale bread for the perfect stuffing is actually a myth. Letting bread go stale doesn't actually dry it out. After sitting out on your counter, bread goes through the process of retrogradation.

Why use a sausage stuffer? ›

You will be surprised how easy it is to stuff your seasoned ground meat into sausage casings with a sausage stuffer. You can use your meat grinder with stuffing tubes to stuff your sausages, but a sausage stuffer is easier to control, especially if you are doing large batches of sausage.

How much water to add to sausage before stuffing? ›

Add at least 1 oz. of water per pound of meat to aid in the stuffing process.

What do you stuff sausage with? ›

Using a sausage stuffer is typically the most time-efficient and simplest method for stuffing your own sausage. Some meat grinders have attachments like the KitchenAid® Sausage Stuffer Kit that can help streamline the process. It is possible to manually stuff sausage, but it can be time-consuming.

How to keep cornbread dressing from being gummy? ›

Stir occasionally to ensure even drying. And if your dressing is still too mushy after baking, you can add more crumbled cornbread, dry bread, or even dry breadcrumbs or croutons to absorb excess moisture. Mix it in gently, so you don't compress the dressing too much.

What do southerners call stuffing? ›

But for the Thanksgiving side dish in the South, the term dressing was adopted in place of stuffing, which was viewed as a crude term, during the Victorian era. Although dressing and stuffing are interchangeable terms, the signature ingredient of this Thanksgiving side dish in the South is cornbread.

What is a good substitute for eggs in stuffing? ›

However, if skipping the binder completely sounds like too big of a risk, many egg alternatives exist. Berries and Lime list seven: silken tofu, aquafaba, vegetable oil, baking powder, fruit or vegetable puree, yogurt, and finally, the substitute that Minimalist Baker specifically recommends for stuffing, a flax egg.

How do you keep stuffing moist when cooking? ›

Typically, baking the stuffing inside the bird helps keep the mixture moist. “I prefer stuffing (in the bird) to dressing (outside of the bird) because all those delicious drippings that come off the turkey gets absorbed right into the stuffing,” Bamford says.

Is it better to make stuffing with fresh or dry bread? ›

Any attempts to make stuffing with soft, fresh baked bread will result in a bread soup with a soggy texture. Follow this tip: Stale, dried-out bread makes the best stuffing.

How do you keep stuffing from burning? ›

In order to cook everything evenly and prevent the top of your stuffing from burning to a crisp, it's a commonly known trick to cover the top of the dish with foil while it bakes in the oven, trapping in moisture and lots of great flavors.

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