Chorizo Cornbread Dressing
Chorizo cornbread dressing video (scroll down for printable recipe)
I guess it was two years ago now that I came up with this variation on my grandma’s cornbread dressing recipe. I say “variation” but it’s so far from her recipe that it really should be in a class of its own. This is a very delicious cornbread dressing involving Mexican chorizo, sweet potatoes and tequila. You could leave the tequila out if you don’t drink it but it is the holiday season and even if you don’t drink it, I’m sure someone is bound to show up at your house sometime soon and polish it off for you. Make sure to stuff them full of cornbread dressing first so maybe they won’t pass out in your on your porch.
Like most — all? — stuffing recipes it’s best to bake it in a separate dish rather than stuffing a bird (food safety reasons and crunchy-top reasons) but it’s very flexible on what temperature to bake at. Anywhere between 325-425 is okay. At the lower end of the temperature, it will need an hour-90 minutes. At the higher temperature, maybe just 25 minutes. Use your eyes and nose and brain to tell when it’s ready. It will be hot all the way through (check with a thermometer, 165ºF or 74ºC) and fairly firm and golden brown and crunchy on top.
It’s best to start with cornbread which is slightly stale, a day or two old, the better to soak up all the flavors from the chorizo, vegetables and spices. Use your own recipe, or see this recipe post on how to make cornbread. (Or use a box mix because you’ve probably got a million other things to cook this season and really, no one will ever know.)
Chorizo Cornbread Dressing Recipe – printable
PrintChorizo Cornbread Dressing
- Prep Time: 20 mins
- Cook Time: 1 hour
- Total Time: 1 hour 20 minutes
- Yield: 12 1x
- Category: side dish
Ingredients
- 1 batch cornbread, baked and cooled (1–2 days before is good)
- 12 ounces Mexican (fresh) chorizo or soyrizo
- 1 medium sweet potato (1/2 pound)
- 1 cup diced celery (3–4 stalks)
- 2 cups diced onion (1 large or 2 small)
- 1/2 poblano pepper, diced
- 2 tablespoons tequila
- 2 tablespoons minced garlic
- 2 teaspoons salt
- 1 teaspoon pepper
- 1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
- 1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
- dash cayenne, optional
- 1/4 cup chopped parsley
- 1/2 cup chicken or turkey stock
- 1–2 eggs, optional
- 1/4 cup (4 T) melted butter
Instructions
- Crumble the cornbread into a large bowl.
- Dice the sweet potato very small (1/4 inch) and cook together in a large skillet over medium-high heat with the chorizo, celery, onion and poblano until the potato is tender, the onions are soft and the chorizo is cooked and crumbly. This will take 10-15 minutes.
- Add tequila and garlic and spices and cook another 60 seconds.
- Pour this over the cornbread with the stock and mix.
- Whisk eggs then mix them into the dressing.
- Spread into a 9×13 pan and drizzle with butter.
- Refrigerate, covered, up to 48 hours if you want.
- Bake between 350-425 depending on what else is in the oven. Lower temperature will take about an hour. Higher temperature will take 20 minutes. Dressing is done when hot all the way through (to 165ºF) and the top is crunchy and brown.
12 Comments
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I have a question: why the eggs? I was all over this recipe until I saw the eggs. What’s up with that?
-Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours 🙂
The eggs keep it together and make it less crumbly. You can leave them out and have a lighter, more crumbly dressing. Either way!
I love the idea of putting sweet potatoes in the dressing!
My old hippie self has always made dressing with whole wheat bread, wild rice, and chopped granny smith apples (along with all the usual onion, celery, sage, etc.). I just recently found, in my mother’s recipe file, my grandmother’s recipe for cornbread dressing, which includes, oddly, hard-boiled egg. Weird, and yet I remember it being good.
Hmm, that is unusual, but it sounds good, I think? Was the egg chopped up really small?
In the south, it is pretty common for dressing to have chopped hard-boiled eggs added to it, and also added to the giblet gravy. My mother always made the dressing that way. The eggs are chopped pretty small, like you would do for egg salad.
Since I’m making this ahead of time for Thanksgiving, I was intrigued by Host the Toast’s recipe for Stuffing Stuffed Mushrooms. Yep, stuffed mushrooms stuffed with stuffing or dressing. I’ll be stuffing a few mushrooms with this instead.
After you mentioned that you were going to use the The Kitchen’s method of roasting turkey. I checked it out and realized that they borrowed the idea from Julia Child which is how I roast a turkey breast. One of their readers had a genius idea though: roast the turkey the day before Thanksgiving, then wrap it in lettuce leaves to keep it moist, put in it the refrigerator and then finally reheat it on Thanksgiving.
Stuffing stuffed mushrooms sounds divine. Wonder if you could use leftover stuffing the next day or if it needs to have the raw eggs in it to set.
I should have included a link: http://hostthetoast.com/stuffing-stuffed-mushrooms/ Morgan says you can make it up to 3 days in advance and her recipe calls for an egg.
@ cups of diced onion? OK, cut it up looks like a lot.
Yeah, they cook down a lot when you saute them, but if you don’t love onions, you can reduce it.
I want to make this chorizo stuffing for thanksgiving. regarding Mexican, chorizo, it comes in two flavors pork or beef which do I use? I have never used chorizo this way. are you sure it is going to become crumbly? when you squeeze the chorizo out of the package it comes in and start frying it the consistency is very watery or at least greasy. The Spanish chorizo has a different consistency much firmer can that type of chorizo be used
I’ve only used pork chorizo. When you cook Mexican chorizo, it will stay in small pieces. It’s not going to cook into large crumbles like regular breakfast sausage because it’s a finer texture. I guess you could use Spanish chorizo but you would need to add some other kind of fat I think since that is a dry sausage.