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.
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 a Cornbread 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 my Cornbread Sausage Stuffing. My knives were so sharp that it actually made the whole process enjoyable.
I thinly sliced my leeks…
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.
PrintCornbread Sausage Stuffing Recipe with Apples and Cranberries
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
- 1 oz box Mrs. Cubbison’s Corn Bread Dressing (12)
- 1 lb ground breakfast sausage
- 2–3 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
- 2–3 cups apple juice or chicken stock
- 1 cup dried cranberries
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Place corn bread dressing into a large bowl and set aside.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- Place in a 9×13″ baking dish. Bake until hot and top is browned (about 20 minutes).
- Category: Side Dish
- Method: Baking
- Cuisine: American
Debi Walstad says
Thanks for sharing your amazing recipe on Weekend Bites! Find it in our Thanksgiving recipes roundup post. http://practicalparentingideas.blogspot.com/2015/11/weekend-bites-no-61-thanksgiving-sides.html
Marie at the Interior Frugalista says
This stuffing recipe sounds delicious! Wanting to do something a little different this year I’m definitely going to give this a try. Pinned to share and refer back to during the holidays. Thank you for the recipe!
Miz Helen says
This is a great stuffing recipe! Thanks so much for sharing your awesome post with Full Plate Thursday and hope you are having a great day!
Come Back Soon!
Miz Helen
Amanda says
Perfect stuffing recipe! I’m bookmarking and making for Thanksgiving 🙂
mel says
Man, your stuffing looks so good! I need a good sharpener at home!
Mitch says
My mother-in-law uses sausage in her stuffing and it is delicious. Me, I just use root vegetables, I always screw up the sausage part. thanks!
Mitch
valmg @ From Val's Kitchen says
I’ve been thinking about an electric carving knife myself lately.
I believe my brother and his wife would love that stuffing.
Shannon Gosney says
Oh my gosh – I want one of those! How cool is that??!!!
Elizabeth Towns says
Not only do I want to try that dressing, I want that knife sharpener. Since I do a lot of cooking for my family, I am the master cutter around here and knife sharpening is my task. Truthfully, I usually get new knives close to the holiday season after about 2 years with one set. I could save so much money with a knife sharpener.
Jenn says
Your stuffing looks delicious! I’ve never had stuffing with sausage before!
Linda Enslow says
On the east coast I use Peppridge Farms Cornbread stuffing mix. Our recipies are almost the same except I add toasted walnuts and exchange leeks for shallots. Scrumtious either way. Happy Holidays to you and yours.