Heather says:
The best part of this dressing aside from it being fabulously tasty is, it’s gluten-free! I have several friends who are either celiac or have friends who are. I love when I have a great recipe I can pass along, especially for a holiday meal.
I’m not a huge fan of egg in my dressing, so when I doubled the recipe (to serve 20) I used only 3 eggs instead of four and it worked well. There was enough cohesion without any eggy bits.
Cornbread and Andouille Sausage Dressing
Serves 8 – 10
Ingredients:
- 1 recipe sweet cornbread, made the day before
- butter to grease the baking pan
- 1 lb Andouille Sausage
- 1 medium yellow onion, diced (about 1 cup)
- 3 ribs celery, including leaves, chopped
- 1 red bell pepper, seeded & diced
- 1 garlic clove, minced
- 1/4 cup green onions, chopped
- 1/2 tsp dried thyme
- 1 tsp salt
- 1/2 tsp fresh ground pepper (estimate this)
- a pinch of cayenne (go very light, as the sausage already has some kick)
- 2 large eggs, beaten
- 1 – 1.5 cups turkey stock
Preheat the oven to 350F and butter a 13 x 9 baking dish.
Heat a large skillet over medium-low heat. While it heats, peel the casing from the sausage and crumble it as evenly as possible into the pan. (This part is kind of a pain).
Brown the sausage. Then transfer to a paper towel. Leave the drippings in the pan. Chop the sausage so the pieces are uniform in size and not too large. The size is somewhat of a personal preference. If you and your family like big chunks, that’s fine.
Add the chopped celery and onions. Cook for about two minutes, just until the onions begin to soften. Add the bell pepper
and garlic.
Return the sausage to the pan and add the green onions, salt, ground black pepper, and cayenne. Stirring to mix after each addition.
Remove from heat and set aside.
Grab a large bowl and the cornbread. Tear the cornbread into chunks, it’s going to crumble easily, don’t stress, the egg will bind it back together.
To the cornbread, add the sausage mixture and the beaten egg. Add 1/2 the turkey stock. Mix gently.
Feel the mixture, it should be moist, not soggy. If it is still dry, continue adding the stock a little at a time until there are no dry areas. Remember, we’re NOT making soup.
Spread the mixture into the buttered dish, cover with foil, and bake for 20 – 30 minutes at 350F. Remove the foil for the last few minutes to brown the top.
If you make this ahead of time, refrigerate it overnight. It will take longer to heat through, more like 45 minutes, but check after 30 to ensure it doesn’t burn or dry out.
Enjoy!
This looks really tasty! I love me some sausage in my dressing!
I'm going to be really honest and admit that I don't know what Andouille sausage is. I've heard the name before, that's it. Is it like Italian sausage? Is it spicy or mild? I'll look it up somewhere…
Andouille sausage (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andouille_sausage) is a smoked sausage with chunky bits of meat in it. most of the ones i've tried tend to be on the spicy side, but since it's usually used as an ingredient in something else, the end product usually isn't overly spicy or hot. you hear about it used a lot in louisiana, particularly in cajun cooking.
Great, thank you. Maybe that's where it gets its French name–from Louisiana. I'll look for it when I'm shopping sometime soon.
I had to do my first gluten free holiday last year…one MONTH after being diagnosed with Celiac disease. I was soooo freaked out…but once I read up on everything, I realized that many of my dishes (like my cornbread dressing) were either ALREADY gluten free, or required minimal tweaking to make them so. THANKS for this post Heather! So many people hear that you're gluten free and they automatically assume that the food at your house is going to taste like library paste….to eat gluten free really means to pay attention to ingredients and ingredient labels. The reality is that MOST people eat the occasional gluten free meal and don't even REALIZE it. Once I wrapped my head around THAT, it became much less of a burden and more of a challenge…I wanted to make things taste like they were just normal food…AND gluten free. If you're imaginative, it's MUCH easier than ANYONE thinks!!! 😀
Anything new is intimidating and knowledge is power over that feeling. My husband goes on body building kicks, when he does this he does a modified low carb diet. I think I need a staff to get all the recipes posted in a timely manner. 😉
I find the diet annoying because one of the kiddos is pretty tiny and the carb fiend of the bunch. I try to cook meals for everyone but they are on opposite ends of the spectrum in "preference" not need. If it was a need, we'd all be on a gluten free diet. As it is, I shoot the middle.
Gluten lite is much healthier! After being diagnosed and reading up on wheat and gluten, it surprises me why people eat it at ALL! (other than the fact that it's yummy….) It's so hard to digest…and a multitude of people have some sort of mild intolerance to wheat/gluten and it's almost ALWAYS chalked up as a different allergy. Like me, for YEARS I thought I was just lactose intolerant…and THAT'S why I had such a hard time eating cold cereal (a VICE of mine from WAAAAY back!) Turns out that I'm only mildly lactose intolerant….nothing a little Lactaid Ultra can't handle…..it was really the wheat in the cereal that was causing my gastrointestinal upset…..my fav cereal WAS Life. (Booohoooo….I'm STILL in mourning over losing that cereal….) Since I stopped eating Life and went to Rice or Corn Chex (they recently made the jump to GF–gotta check labels!) my late nite cereal snacking binges have been back ON! LOL
My issue is that it's not just wheat he wants to avoid, it's potatoes, rice, corn, (which includes all of its derivatives cornmeal, grits etc) We don't eat a lot of pasta, the bread we eat is usually whole grain. We have a pretty diverse diet. My issue is when he goes on the diet the kids don't eat as well because they see he doesn't eat like us.
Yea, see I don't know WHAT I would do if I weren't allowed SOME carbs! We eat a TON of rice and potatoes! I figure that I deserve it after giving up my bread! And I'm the ONLY person in my family who was taught the FINE art of homemade sourdough bread…….and now I can't even make it. If I didn't have rice and taters, I'm pretty sure I'd try to commit murder! LOL