Cornbread and Sausage Dressing
This Cornbread and Sausage Dressing is the heart of the holiday table-the kind of dish that's filled with savory coziness and keeps everyone coming back for "just one more bite."
🔍 Recipe At-A-Glance: Cornbread and Sausage Dressing
- 🕰️ Prep Time: 15 minutes
- ⏰ Cook Time: 45 minutes
- 💛 Flavor Profile: Savory, rustic, and comforting with cornbread, turkey sausage, and tart dried cranberries.
- 🦃 Good For: A Thanksgiving side dish to impress. I've also been known to make it on Christmas or for cozy dinner parties!
- 🔄 Make Ahead: Can be made up to two days in advance for an easier Thanksgiving.
- 🧡 Difficulty: A straight-forward holiday recipe.
"This is the 3rd year in a row I have made this dish! My picky family loves it."
- KEA -
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🧡 Why You'll Love This Recipe
Hiya, friend: My favorite part of Thanksgiving dinner is the stuffing. It's such an important part of the meal, and I bet you've never been to a Thanksgiving dinner that didn't have at least one type of dressing! This cornbread sausage dressing is my fave.
Here's why you'll love this recipe:
- Make Ahead: It's easy to prepare ahead of time, so you have less to do on Turkey Day-save your energy for making the best Thanksgiving gravy recipe instead!
- A Holiday Classic: This sausage and cornbread dressing has all the classic flavors you know and love, but with the addition of some tart cranberries and salty ground sausage.
- Family Favorite: This particular dressing has been my family's go-to recipe for decades. We all love it, and I think you will, too!
💛 The Ingredients You Need
- Cornbread: You can use store-bought cornbread, homemade cornbread, or even a boxed mix to make cornbread dressing. The key is that the cornbread is dry enough to absorb the liquid, so it doesn't get soggy. Cut the cornbread into cubes a few days before making your dressing and let it sit out on the counter to dry out.
- Turkey sausage: This cornbread dressing recipe calls for turkey sausage. If you're going to be making it alongside your Thanksgiving turkey dinner (here's how to dry brine a turkey), sticking with turkey makes sense to complement the rest of your meal.
- Vegetable broth: Save up all your veggie scraps through October and November to make a big batch of vegetable broth before Thanksgiving. You can use it for this dressing, your slow cooker mashed potatoes, your leftover turkey and vegetable soup...it will all get used up!
Make sure to check the recipe card below for the full ingredients list, along with quantities and my expert tips and tricks.
🔁 Variations & Substitutions
- Change the sausage: You can definitely switch it up and use chicken or pork sausage instead of turkey if you like. Both will have slightly different flavors that your guests will love! While I love Italian sausage (see my sausage stuffed mushrooms for evidence) and you can use it here, I like to stick with a simpler sausage for this recipe.
- Go gluten-free: Have gluten-free guests coming to your Thanksgiving? Then you have to try my gluten-free stuffing recipe!
- Use fresh herbs: I use dried thyme and sage for ease, but you can absolutely use fresh herbs instead! You'll need three tablespoons of fresh sage and one tablespoon of fresh thyme.
🥣 Cornbread and Sausage Dressing How-To
Step 1: Cook the sausage in a large skillet, breaking it up as you go. Move the sausage to a bowl, and sauté the butter, celery, onion, and garlic in the same skillet.
Add the cooked sausage, herbs, salt, and pepper to the pan and stir until all the ingredients have mingled and mixed.
Step 2: Get out a mixing bowl-you'll probably want the biggest one you have-and toss the sausage mixture with the cornbread and dried cranberries.
Step 3: Whisk the eggs and stock together until the yolks are broken up. Pour the stock mixture all over the dry ingredients, stirring so that all the cornbread gets touched by the liquid.
Step 4: Pour into a greased baking dish and bake at 375°F for 40-45 minutes. You'll know it is done when the dressing is browned and crunchy.
Stuffing is cooked inside a bird, while dressing is made on the side instead. In the end, both should have a similar flavor, but dressing is a lot safer and tastier than stuffing. Why? One, because stuffing soaks up all the delicious flavors of the bird, but it leaves your turkey dry and flavorless. And two, because you run the risk of salmonella with stuffing if you don't cook it for long enough (and cooking it long enough usually means overcooking the bird).
Dressing, on the other hand, allows you to have flavorful stuffing and a tasty turkey. So instead of dealing with potentially unsafe stuffing or a dry and flavorless turkey, it's much better to just cook the dressing outside of the bird! This way you serve delicious (and safe) turkey and dressing to your family and guests.
Nearly every ingredient in this dressing recipe is a flavor bomb on its own, so when you put them all together? You get herby, savory Thanksgiving magic.
You can store any leftover cornbread stuffing for up to four days in the refrigerator or up to a month in the freezer. When it comes time to reheat it, you can either pop it in the microwave, or stick it in the oven for a crispier crust.
🙋🏻♀️ Cornbread and Sausage Dressing FAQs
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👩🏻🍳 My Expert Tips & Tricks
- Dry Your Cornbread: Cut your cornbread into cubes and leave it out to dry on the counter overnight. Dry cornbread will make for a tastier dressing!
- Make Ahead: Yes! You can make cornbread dressing up to two days before you plan on serving it. After baking your dressing, allow it to cool, then cover it in plastic wrap and store it in the fridge. The day you serve it, bake it in an oven preheated to 350°F for 30-35 minutes covered with either a lid or some aluminum foil. Remove the cover and bake for an additional ten minutes. This will give your dressing that nice crispy crust!
🦃 More Thanksgiving Side Dish Recipes:
If you tried this cornbread and sausage dressing or any other recipe on my blog, please leave a 🌟 star rating and let me know how it went in the comments!
📖 Recipe
Cornbread Dressing with Sausage
Ingredients
- 1 pound turkey sausage
- 1 tablespoon butter
- 1 cup celery chopped
- ½ cup onion finely chopped
- 2 garlic cloves minced
- 1 tablespoon dried sage
- 1 teaspoon dried thyme
- ½ teaspoon salt
- ¼ teaspoon pepper
- 6 cups cornbread cubes dried
- ½ cup dried cranberries
- 1 ¼ cups vegetable broth
- 2 eggs
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 375°F. In a large skillet, cook sausage over medium heat, crumbling as you go. Cook through, then remove from skillet, drain, and set aside.
- In the same skillet, melt butter over medium heat. Add the celery, onion, and garlic and sauté for 2 to 3 minutes, until onions are translucent.
- Add the cooked sausage back to the skillet, along with the sage, thyme, salt, and pepper. Stir until everything is evenly mixed, then remove from heat and transfer to a large bowl.
- Add the cornbread and dried cranberries to the bowl and gently mix to combine.
- In a separate small bowl, whisk together the broth and eggs. Pour the mixture over the cornbread sausage mixture, stirring to evenly coat.
- Pour into a greased baking dish and bake for 40 to 45 minutes until brown and crunchy. Serve!
Notes
- It is really important that your cornbread cubes are dry to prevent a super soggy stuffing! The easiest way to do that is to cube your cornbread and leave it out on the counter for a few days before making the recipe.
- You can swap pork or chicken sausage for the turkey sausage if you prefer!
- This recipe can be made up to 2 days ahead of time, then reheated in the oven at 350°F for 30 to 35 minutes covered. Remove the cover, then bake 10 minutes more to get the crisp top again.
This cornbread dressing switches up a Thanksgiving classic and gives it a new flavor and texture that is amazing! I usually serve this alongside my mom's classic bread stuffing (yes we have two!) and both always end up on my plate. Enjoy!
Thanks for this recipe. I have lost my go-to recipe, and this is close to that one (except that it was split between white/corn bread volume which I prefer). Also, I prefer dressing without the fruity, nutty accoutrements. I strayed last year from that preference, and I was not happy!
Fixin' to get ready for next week....
This is the 3rdd year in a row I have made this dish! My picky family loves it. Maybe next year I'll try it with the apples too!
Happy Thanksgiving!
I'm so glad to have found a sausage dressing that does NOT call for fruit.
This recipe looks AMAZING! I want to try it this week. Does one full recipes of the cornbread equal the 8 cups of cornbread cubes in this dressing recipe? Thanks!
If you use the recipe I link to from Daily Garnish, it ends up being about 3/4 of the batch to make 8 cubes. Hope you love the dressing!
Thanks! I make my grocery lists for the week on Thursdays (today) so I will report back on the deliciousness next week! 🙂
do you think this could cook in the crockpot vs. the oven? i really need the oven space for a million other things thanksgiving day.
I don't see why not! Just keep a close eye on it, you definitely don't want it to dry out. If you do try it, let me know how it turns out.
Add me to the chorus suggesting an appley addition! We've been making a stuffing very very similar to this for several years, but with lots of apples thrown in there too. SO GOOD! I usually get lazy and just slice them rather than dicing, but dicing would probably be preferable...
Next time I'll definitely add apples! (And I'm totally lazy, too.)
My mom makes one super similar to this, but without the eggs and she adds apples. Doing a post on it soon. Looks great!
Awesome! I've had a few people suggest added apples. Sounds yum!
Question - do you think you can make ahead of time - freeze then bake or bake and reheat?
Thanks
Hmmm, I don't see why not? Although, it might be best to assemble all the dressing parts, freeze that stuff, and then do the broth/egg mixture right before you are going to bake it off. Worth a shot!
Thank you, that what I was thinking.
hey- having your buttermilk chicken tonight and tried the coor's pumpkin ale- not very impressed even tho it's made in my back yard
You mean the Blue Moon pumpkin ale (the one made my Coors)? Beer is such a person choice. 😀
I'm so glad you posted about forgetting the scale- sorry I'm a day late- but how true!! I finally came to the same conclusion after nearly chucking a whole 18 months of working so hard at the gym... I love your blog!!
Thanks, Gerry! 🙂
Add diced apples in with the celery and onions. It's to die for.
YUM! I thought about doing that, but we already had apples in our brussels sprouts, so I decided one apple-y dish was probably enough. But next time? No doubt!