Cranberry Cornbread Stuffing Recipes

CRANBERRY STUFFING

Steps:

• In 10-inch skillet, melt butter over medium heat. Cook celery and onion in butter, stirring frequently, until onion is tender. Stir in about one-third of the bread cubes. Place in large bowl. Add remaining bread cubes and ingredients; toss.
• Stuff turkey just before roasting.

CRANBERRY CORNBREAD

Steps:

• In a bowl, cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy, 5-7 minutes. Add eggs; mix well. Combine the flour, cornmeal, baking powder and salt. Add to creamed mixture alternately with buttermilk. Fold in cranberries., Transfer to a greased 9-in. square baking pan. Bake at 375° until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, 40-45 minutes. Serve warm.

CRANBERRY-STUFFED CORNBREAD STUFFING MUFFINS

Steps:

• Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Spray cooking spray into muffin pan.
• In large skillet, heat olive oil to high heat. Slit sausage casing, and remove ground sausage. Break up sausage in pan, then turn to medium heat just before fully cooked. Add the three containers of onions, garlic, shallots, and celery and cook all until sausage is done and onions are translucent. Add seasoning packet that came with Stuffing mix (or not, if you bought the kind that's pre-seasoned), and add one of the chicken broth boxes. Heat all ingredients until bubbly, then add thyme and sage just before removing from heat.
• Pour all stuffing mix all into one very large bowl. Then pour all contents of pan plus the additional box of broth over stuffing mix. Stir all together with two large serving spoons. Set aside.
• Rinse and drain cranberries, then heat in orange juice until juice is boiling and all cranberries pop open and become mushy. Watch that the juice doesn't boil over, so turn it down to low and keep it at a simmer. In a food processor, pulse orange zest and pecans together to get a medium ground. Strain cooked cranberries from orange juice and mix them with the zest, pecans, and brown sugar.
• Just before baking, add the four eggs to the stuffing mix. Stir well, coating all stuffing.
• Spoon stuffing into muffin cups, halfway, and make a bit of a well for the cranberry filling. Just not all the way to the bottom. Spoon about 1 ½ tablespoon of cranberry filling into each muffin cup, then come back over and fill the muffins the rest of the way, covering the cranberry filling entirely. They won't rise, so they can be filled to the top. Keep the cranberry filling buried within the stuffing, since the filling is sugary and will caramelize when baked, and you don't want it to cause the muffin to stick into the pan.
• Bake at 325 degrees for 45-55 min, or until bubbly and golden brown/crusty on top. Let cool in muffin pans and run a butter knife around the inside of each cup to loosen each muffin. That way if any of the cranberry filling has leaked out and gotten sticky, it won't cause the muffin to break apart. They will be dense so it's best to use a plate upside down on top of the muffin pan, then flip over to remove the muffins. Makes 30 large muffins.

SAUSAGE, CRANBERRY, AND CORN BREAD STUFFING

Steps:

• Preheat oven to 325° F.
• Cut corn bread into 1/2-inch cubes and in 2 large shallow baking pans bake in middle of oven until just dry, about 20 minutes. Transfer corn bread from 1 pan to a large bowl and in pan toast pecans in oven until insides are golden, 10 to 20 minutes.
• Halve leeks lengthwise and then cut crosswise into 1/2-inch pieces. In a bowl of cold water wash leeks well and lift from water into a sieve to drain. Chop celery. In a 12-inch skillet cook leeks and celery in butter with salt and pepper to taste over moderately low heat, stirring, until leeks are tender, about 25 minutes. Remove sausage from casings and break into small pieces. Add sausage to leek mixture and cook over moderate heat, stirring occasionally, 5 minutes, or until sausage is cooked through.
• In a small heavy saucepan cook cranberries with sugar over moderately high heat, stirring, 5 minutes, or until some begin to burst. Chop parsley.
• To bowl of corn bread add remaining corn bread cubes, pecans, sausage mixture, cranberries, parsley, broth, and salt and pepper to taste and toss together. Cool stuffing completely. Stuffing may be made up to this point 1 day ahead and chilled, covered. Bring stuffing to room temperature before proceeding.
• For cooking stuffing inside poultry:
• Any frozen poultry destined for stuffing should be completely thawed, and the stuffing itself brought to room temperature before it's put into the turkey. Do not stuff your bird the night before you cook it; such a seeming time-saver can have dangerous results. Instead, it is best to loosely fill the bird's neck and body cavities immediately before roasting. And always use a meat or instant-read thermometer: The meat is done when the temperature of the thickest part of the thigh (be careful not to touch the bones) reaches 180°F.; the stuffing baked inside the bird is done at 160°-165°F. After roasting, let your stuffed poultry stand 15 to 20 minutes, a double assurance that the requisite temperatures for food safety have been reached.
• For cooking all or part of stuffing outside poultry:
• In a shallow baking dish bake stuffing in preheated 325° F. oven 1 hour (for moist stuffing, bake covered entire time; for less moist stuffing with a slightly crisp top, uncover halfway through baking time).