Corn Bread Stuffing with Chorizo

I was looking for a side dish for my texmex style turkey dinner and I had been wanting to try making a stuffing for a while so I combined the two and made a texmex style cornbread stuffing. For the corn bread I used the cranberry corn bread that I had made the day before. I had seen a lot of more standard stuffing recipes use sausage and I thought that adding spicy chorizo sausage to the corn bread stuffing would be a good idea. I then added some more texmex flavours like chilies, cumin and cilantro. I made it more 'holiday' like by adding some dried cranberries in addition to the cranberries that were already in the corn bread. Since I was only cooking a turkey breast I could not actually stuff the stuffing so I cooked it in a baking pan. The texmex corn bread stuffing with chorizo turned out really well. The slightly sweet, moist, and coarsely crumbly corn bread worked well in the spicy stuffing. The stuffing was nice and moist and tasty and had just the right combination of sweet and spicy. It was a great side for the maple and chipotle turkey breast and it was even better with some maple and chipotle gravy and jalapeno cranberry sauce on the fork as well.

Ingredients:
1 pound chorizo (casings removed and crumbled)
2 tablespoons butter
1 teaspoon cumin
1 teaspoon chili powder
1 onion (chopped)
2 stalks celery (chopped)
1 carrot (chopped)
1 red pepper (chopped)
1 jalapeno pepper (chopped)
1/2 teaspoon oregano
4 cloves garlic (chopped)
1/4 cup bourbon
2 roasted poblano chilies (chopped)
8 cups corn bread (day old, coarsely crumbled)
3 tablespoons cilantro (chopped)
1/4 cup dried cranberries
1/2+ cup chicken stock (or turkey)
salt and pepper to taste

Directions:
1. Brown the sausage in a pan and set aside.
2. Melt the butter in the same pan.
3. Add the cumin and chili powder and saute until fragrant, about a minute.
4. Add the onion, celery, carrot, red pepper, jalapeno and oregano and saute until tender, about 8 minutes.
5. Add the garlic and saute for another minute or two.
6. Add the bourbon and deglaze the pan and let it evaporate.
7. Place the chorizo, vegetables, roasted poblanos, corn bread, cilantro and cranberries in a bowl.
8. Moisten with the chicken stock and season with salt and pepper.
9. Pour the mixture into an 8 inch square baking pan.
10. Bake covered in a preheated 350F oven for 30 minutes.

Similar Recipes:
Italian Sausage, Mushroom and Chestnut Stuffing