One of the funnest parts of having a food blog is you get to celebrate the holidays all month long. With food. All the holiday food, from September to December, the party does not stop.
It’s pretty awesome. I sort of had an early Thanksgiving celebration this past weekend with all the cornbread lovin you can imagine, maple flavored apple parfaits and white wine carmalized stuffing…anyone wanna come over for leftover stuffed grilled cheese sandwiches? (recipe coming at ya soon!)
For those who know me well, Thanksgiving isn’t particularly my favorite holiday. I like the cozy family aspect of it, but the traditional Thanksgiving food doesn’t have me on the ground drooling. The dessert part is usually what I ache for all day. As long as it involves pumpkin cheesecake or chocolate cream pie with homemade vanilla ice cream served on cute China plates then I am SO game for Thanksgiving.
Most of the other food feels like a chore. I know, what kind of food blogger am I? I’m just more of a steak & chicken girl than a turkey girl and I like crispy sweet potatoes over mashed marshmellow stuffed ones. I’m a woman who knows what she wants, what can I say.
There has always been one dish on the Thanksgiving table that wins my heart every year though and that would be my moms turkey sausage stuffing. It’s become an infamous recipe that gets me giddy with excitement every year because I know there will be at least one thing I can stuff my face with at the dinner table. That excitment is what inspired this Carmelized Mushroom, Tarragon & Turkey Sausage Stuffing with Cornbread Croutons. Aka my new favorite meal in the world.
She got the recipe from a Suzanne Summers cookbook years ago (Suzanne Summers, totally 90s, I know) and we both get madly enthusiastic over this dish because it tastes nothing like traditional stuffing. We like to live on the edge a little when it comes to “following a tradition”.
Most stuffings are baked with bread and carrots and sort of reminds me of a vegetable-bread style fruit cake. In other words, there hasn’t been a traditional stuffing recipe that has completely blown my taste buds out of the park. Maybe it’s the name. Stuffing doesn’t exactly sound aesthetically pleasing but it is “tradition” to have one at Thanksgiving so people buy into it.
This recipe here my friends is going to knock you off your Thanksgiving game, in the best way possible. The best thing you can do this holiday season is carmalize onions and mushrooms in white wine sauce. Your kitchen is going to become your happy place when the aroma of that kicks in.
I went the extra mile and topped this breadless “stuffing” with crumbled cornbread croutons because my life revolves around cornbread and it adds a great crunch to this dish. I used my Maple Pumpkin Cornbread recipe posted Monday, which is simple and delicious in itself! Feel free to use your favorite cornbread recipe or mine if you need some inspiration!
Carmelized Mushroom, Tarragon & Turkey Sausage Stuffing with Cornbread Croutons
- Yield: 6 cups 1x
Ingredients
Cornbread Croutons
- 2 cups cornbread, chopped into small cubes*
- Olive oil
- Stuffing
- 3 onions, finely chopped
- 2 Tbsp olive oil
- 4 cups cremini mushrooms, finely chopped
- Sea salt + black pepper to taste
- 1/2 cup dry white wine (chardonnay)
- 1 Tbsp butter
- 8 turkey sausage links, casings removed and diced** (about 1.5 lb – 2 lb of sausage)
- Handful of fresh tarragon
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees farenheit.
- Sautee the onions and olive oil for your stuffing over medium high heat in a large pot or saucepan. Allow to cook and carmelize for roughly 20-25 minutes, stirring every now and then.
- While the onions are carmelizing, toss your cornbread cubes with a drizzle of olive oil and spread out onto a greased or parchment lined baking dish. Bake in the oven for 20 minutes until golden. Turn the oven off then let croutons cool while in oven 10 minutes while you prepare the rest of your stuffing. It’s crucial to leave them in the oven so they get crispy!
- Once the onions are done carmelizing, add in the mushrooms and sautee for about 10 minutes. They will appear crisp around the edges and cooked through. Season with salt and pepper then turn heat to high and pour in your white wine. Let stand for a few minutes then reduce heat to low, stir in your butter and place a lid over mixture so it can simmer for 10 minutes, then turn heat off.
- While the mixture is simmering, cook the sausage in a large, greased saucepan for 8-10 minutes or until cooked through. Add the sausage to your mushroom mixture as well as the fresh tarragon and stir.
- You can either top the stuffing with the cornbread croutons as they are or crumble them on top so they appear as breadcrumbs.
Notes
- Makes 6 cups
- *I used my Maple Pumpkin Cornbread recipe (link is above in post) for the croutons. It’s best to use cornbread that has been sitting out for a day or two.
- ** I used turkey sausage from Trader Joe’s, which I am a huge fan of. It’s not the crumbled kind, but actualy links with casings already removed. I like to dice the links into extra small pieces.