50 Thanksgiving Dressing Ideas to Change-Up Your Own

(Note: The following blog post was contributed by our Director of Marketing, Sheree Johnson who loves to pass on family recipes and/or recipes she finds elsewhere… and she always tries to boost flavor and nutrition by using one of the seasoning blends!)

I don’t know about you, but one of my most important dishes for Thanksgiving dinner is stuffing (if you put it inside your bird) or dressing (if you keep it outside the bird as a side dish). I make way more than needed, because it gets second helpings all around, with the various family members or other guests all wanting some of it to take home.

My dressing is a variation of my Mom’s recipe, which was a variation of her Mom’s recipe and so on.  It includes a mix of regular bread and cornbread cubes, celery, onion, chicken stock, pork sausage crumbs, water chestnuts and dried cherries. Plus the various seasonings, including Land & SEAsonings original blend for added flavor and nutrition.

Whether you’re team “cook-in-the-bird” or team “cook solo-in-the-oven,” dressing is one of the most popular Thanksgiving sides and everyone has their preferred recipe. Many celebrity chefs have put their own unique spins on the classic dish. I came across this article from Insider which features nine celebrity-chef stuffing recipes to consider making this Thanksgiving. So if you want to change it up this year, here are some ideas.  And if you want to boost it up with flavor and nutrition, sprinkle in a teaspoon or two of our Land & SEAsonings Original Blend spice. Recipes are provided within the article, but here are the highlights:

1. Martha Stewart:  Her recipe calls for all the typical ingredients, including onions, celery, sage, and two loaves of stale white bread. However, Martha Stewart also recommends adding optional ingredients like toasted pecans and dried cherries (great cooks think alike!) to take your stuffing over the top.
2. Ina Garten:  Recommends toasting your bread first before moving on to sautéing the onions, celery, apples, parsley, salt, and pepper. After sautéing the sausage in the same pan, mix all the ingredients together with chicken stock and dried cranberries before baking it in the oven.
3. Emeril Lagasse:  He uses mild fresh Italian sausage, diced onion, diced celery, garlic, apples, chestnuts, fresh goat cheese, and a beaten egg before it’s baked or stuffed inside the turkey.
4. Rachel Ray:  The recipe is pretty traditional, except for the inclusion of McIntosh or Empire apples, and it is baked in the oven. Ray also calls for seasoned cubed stuffing, rather than homemade bread cubes like many celebrity chefs recommend using.
5. Guy Fieri:  The recipe calls for sliced pepperoni, yellow onions, red bell pepper, pepperoncini peppers, and sun-dried tomatoes. To amp up this Italian-inspired recipe, Fieri also opts to use dried-out focaccia bread rather than white bread.
6. Joana Ganes:  The recipe doesn’t have any meat in it, although it does use chicken broth and poultry seasoning to give it more flavor. She also adds interesting ingredients like heavy cream and mushrooms to her stuffing.
7. Ree Drummond:   Uses cornbread, an Italian bread like a ciabatta loaf, and French bread. The recipe doesn’t use sausage, although it does include other classic ingredients like celery, parsley, and onions.
8. Bobby Flay:  The recipe uses hot sausage, unsalted butter, red onion, celery, carrot, garlic, and fresh sage to add a lot of flavor. This recipe has received many positive reviews on the Food Network’s website, with one user calling it “a staple every year” at their Thanksgiving dinner. It’s probably because it really is a base recipe where you can enhance with your own ingredients!
9. Paula Deen:  She makes Southern cornbread stuffing, heavy on the butter, chopped celery, chopped onion, chicken stock, plus the ingredients needed to make the cornbread. The recipe also calls for saltine crackers (which some advise you might to leave out). 

As if these nine recipes weren’t enough for inspiration, this Taste of Home article provides 40 (!) different ways to create stuffing/dressing – from using rice, oysters, and other ingredients, to preparing it in a slow cooker. So along with my family recipe charged up with Land & SEAsoning, you now have a total of 50 dressing recipes in case you were looking for something new to try.  Enjoy, and Happy Thanksgiving!