THE Best Southern Cornbread Stuffing
This is THE best Southern cornbread stuffing recipe for Thanksgiving. It's rich, savory and full of flavor without using a pound of butter. This traditional stuffing recipe needs to be on your holiday table! Plus, I'm sharing a make-ahead option! (vegetarian, gluten-free option)
- Prep Time: 20 minutes
- Cook Time: 1 hour
- Total Time: 1 hour 20 minutes
- Yield: one 13x9" pan 1x
- Category: side dish
- Method: baked
- Cuisine: Southern
Ingredients
Scale
- 1 8x8-inch pan prepared cornbread, about 7 cups cubed
- 1/2 loaf bread (sandwich, French, whole grain all work), about 7 cups cubed
- 3 green onions, chopped
- 1/4 cup fresh parsley, chopped
- 2 tbsp fresh thyme leaves
- 3 tbsp butter
- 1 med onion, diced
- 3 cloves garlic, minced
- 3 stalks celery, sliced
- 2 3/4 cups chicken or vegetable broth, divided
- 3 large eggs
- Pinch salt
- 1/2 tsp freshly cracked black pepper
Instructions
- Cut cornbread and bread into roughly 1/2-inch cubes. Place on a baking sheet and let sit overnight on the counter covered loosely with a towel, to stale, or toast in the oven at 350°F for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add stale bread to a very large bowl with green onion, parsley and thyme.
- If it isn't heated already, heat oven to 350°F. Lightly grease a 13x9-inch baking dish.
- Place butter in a large skillet. Heat over medium-low heat. Add onion, garlic and celery. Cook, stirring, until onion and celery is slightly softened, 5-10 minutes. Add 1 cup of the broth and let simmer about 5 more minutes.
- Add onion and celery mixture to bowl with the bread. Gently stir to coat.
- Whisk together eggs, remaining broth, salt and pepper. Pour over bread mixture and stir gently again. If bread appears too dry, add more broth as needed. Pour mixture into prepared pan and cover with foil.
- Bake 45 minutes, then uncover and bake an additional 15-20 minutes.
Notes
- Gluten Free: To make this stuffing gluten-free, use your favorite gluten-free bread and cornbread (like my polenta cornbread).
- You can add any additional herbs you like, such as sage or rosemary. If you only have dried herbs, you can absolutely use those too! Reduce the amounts by half if you're using dried herbs.
- While I wouldn't bake the stuffing ahead, you can do a lot of things ahead of time. You can absolutely make the cornbread a couple days ahead and the cube the bread and cornbread a day ahead to let it stale. You can also chop all the veggies and store in an airtight container 1-2 days ahead. If you like, you can also do everything up until the baking step and store the assembled stuffing in the refrigerator, covered, overnight.
Keywords: southern cornbread stuffing, the best cornbread stuffing, cornbread stuffing