Writer's Grove

Grandma’s Cornbread Stuffing

Juuuust in case you’d like to try it—Stove Top ain’t doing it for you, or whatever—here’s the recipe my family has always used from my late grandmother (who was the inspiration behind the Widow MacDongah in the Iron Druid Chronicles). It uses basic stuff, nothing fancy, because it’s a recipe born in the Great Depression. It just requires a wee bit of planning.

This is made of cornbread and biscuits in a 2-1 ratio. You can make the cornbread and biscuits from scratch or use a mix. In days of yore, we used a cornbread mix—making two batches—and one batch of Bisquick biscuits. Cornbread mix is bizarrely not a thing in Canada, however, so we have to make our cornbread from scratch now. Either way, you make all the carbs the day before you’re going to make your turkey, whether it’s for Thanksgiving or Christmas or [insert special occasion here].

And once you’ve baked your batches o’ carbs, you break them all up into a bigass bowl and mix together with some salt and pepper and a buttload of sage. Like…a whole thing of ground sage. We don’t go easy on that one. I’m talking one of those 18g rectangular coffins full, not a ginormous bottle of it. Still, on the small coffin it says “use sparingly” and we’re like, “Listen, mothercustard, we’re gonna sacrifice every last microgram of your plant-based ass to the God of Stuffing.” If you have some poultry seasoning, you can throw that in too—not necessary, but if you have some on hand and have always wondered when you were gonna use it, now’s a good time. Shake it like a Polaroid picture in there. Mix well, cover with a towel, and forget about it overnight, because you’re gonna finish it in the morning before you stuff your turkey.

So, kablam—you’ve woken the next day, you’ve slurped down a coffee or five, and you’re ready to get some major poultry going. It’s time to finish off that stuffing. Get out your cutting board.

Chop up a white, yellow, or sweet onion, fairly fine, but not minced—we’re not making hot dog toppings here. (Red onion is Against the Law for this recipe, it ain’t gonna taste right.) Then chop up some celery into chunks. 4-6 stalks, I guess? You throw all that into your big bowl of carbs and sage, which has dried up a bit overnight. That’s okay. You want that. Because now you’re gonna moisten it. Aw yeah, it’s gonna be plenty moist, don’t you worry. Let me say that one more time for everyone who enjoys it: Moist.

Pause to wash your dang hands. I mean, you should have done that already. But really. Do it again. The clinically safe fifty thousand seconds or whatever it is. Because it’s gonna get messy.

Crack two (or maybe three!) eggs in there and then smoosh them into the stuffing. You just grab fistfuls of the carbs and let the proteins in the eggs bind them so it clumps together. You don’t want the cornbread and biscuits to be sodden, but you don’t want a mess of dry crumbs either. Just hanging together in bunches, you know? This is where you have to make a judgement call. If the 2-3 eggs weren’t enough to make it all work, add sparing splashes of chicken broth (or veggie broth if you have vegetarians in the family, this will make sense in a bit) to ensure your stuffing has become cliquish, shall we say. Again, not sodden balls of sadness! It’s a balancing act.

Now, unless you have an absolute hulk of a turkey, you’re going to have more stuffing than you can practically stuff into the bird. You should have enough to stuff both the cavity and the neck and adorn the creases where the legs meet the breast and still have plenty left over. That leftover you’re going to bake on its own in a baking dish, and if you have vegetarian family members, this is where using vegetable broth above comes in handy. You can grease up that baking dish with butter and rock it for a half hour or so after your turkey is out of the oven. You want it to cook until the top is crispy. And that’s what we usually wind up serving, along with the stuffing from the top of the turkey. Because…

Moisture from the bird is gonna make the stuffing inside SUPER moist—which is why you don’t want it to be especially juicy to begin with. Some folks like it that way—which is cool, more power to them—but we like to have the drier baked stuff ready too. This glorious carbfest is amazing at the main event with gravy, and fantastic later reheated or deployed on turkey cranberry sandwiches, what have you.

Bookmark for the day you need it, and enjoy!