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- The base of this dressing is a classic unsweetened Southern cornbread, dried overnight so it fully absorbs the flavorful egg mixture.
- Traditional stuffing herbs and aromatics — onions, celery, shallots, sage, thyme — bring even more flavor when cooked in a bacon-infused butter.
- Holiday dressings are sometimes one-note in terms of texture, but here, the toasted pecans add both flavor and a pleasant crunch.
This dressing from food legends Edna Lewis and Scott Peacock starts with a classic Southern cornbread, made with white cornmeal and buttermilk (and no sugar) and cooked in a cast-iron skillet. After drying overnight, pieces of torn cornbread are tossed with stock, eggs, toasted pecans, and aromatics and herbs cooked in bacon-infused butter, then baked until golden — soaking up all the flavors along the way.
To stuff or not to stuff
Though dressings like this one are often called “stuffing,” you may have heard that actually stuffing them into your bird to cook is not recommended. Why? If you put the raw stuffing inside the turkey’s cavity, it will take a lot longer to cook all the way through — crucial since it not only contains raw eggs, but will also soak up some of the raw poultry juices. That means you’ll run the risk of overcooking your turkey in order to get the dressing inside up to a safe temperature. The texture is also better if you bake the stuffing on its own, which allows it to get crispy on the top with a soft interior. Cooked inside the bird, it’s usually on the soggy side.
Notes from the Food & Wine Test Kitchen
- Use the freshest pecans you can find; they will have the sweetest flavor and noticeably enhance the finished dressing.
- Be sure to dry your cornbread overnight, so it can fully soak up the delicious drippings and stock as the stuffing cooks.
