The Best Southern-Style Vegan Stuffing
This stuffing is incredibly flavorful, easy to make, and should 100% be on the table at your next holiday get together. I call it southern-style because I use half cornbread as the base instead of entirely using white bread. I make this vegan stuffing with lots of butter, tons of fresh herbs, and a few other tasty ingredients, so I promise there is no lack of flavor here!
There’s cornbread in the stuffing!?
Yes, and I LOVE the addition of cornbread in stuffing! Growing up in Wisconsin, putting cornbread in stuffing was not a thing. But then, I moved to Florida and was introduced to it. I haven’t made stuffing without cornbread since giving it a try a couple of years ago, and I probably will never make stuffing without it again! With that being said, I think true southerners call stuffing “dressing.” I’m not a true southerner, and I don’t feel like changing my vocabulary either, so I still call it stuffing, haha.
The cornbread has a slight sweetness to it, and when added into the stuffing, it balances and marries all of the buttery, herby, and savory flavors together. The stuffing itself isn’t sweet by any means, though. The cornbread is also a lot more fragile than white bread, so it breaks up slightly when stirred with all the other ingredients. Try to imagine soft chunks of white bread throughout a base of moist cornbread. I don’t know if that makes a lot of sense, but it’s the best way to describe the final texture of the stuffing!
This vegan stuffing recipe uses my SUPER easy homemade vegan cornbread recipe. I recommend making my cornbread because, well, it’s delicious, SO easy to make, and you will also have about four pieces left over after using what’s needed for the stuffing. So, it’s a win-win!
This southern-style stuffing recipe is easy and fairly quick to prepare!
First, I create flax eggs by whisking together ground flax meal and water. Traditional stuffing calls for real eggs to help bind everything, so I use my tried and true binder: flax eggs. Flax meal is the only “weird” ingredient in this recipe, and it’s not even that weird, as it can be found at nearly any grocery store nowadays!
Then, I saute diced yellow onion and celery in a ton of vegan butter until their soft and have just begun to brown. I then throw in a decent amount of freshly chopped rosemary, thyme, and sage, along with salt and pepper.
Into a large bowl, I then toss together cubed cornbread and baguette pieces along with the sauteed vegetables and herbs, flax eggs, and vegetable stock. I dump it into a baking dish, dollop on top vegan butter, and bake it for just over an hour. VOILA!
This is a MUST-MAKE side dish for the holidays!
First of all, do people eat stuffing during times other than the holidays? I don’t think so… and that’s upsetting, haha. This vegan stuffing is SO good and deserves to be eaten more than once or twice a year! (I’m also speaking to myself here!) So, since I know it’s more than likely only shown some love a couple of times a year, I say it is a must-make dish for the upcoming holidays.
This recipe creates buttery, herby, moist, and slightly chewy stuffing. It’s soft from the cornbread yet somewhat chewy from the baguette pieces. The smell and taste SCREAM Thanksgiving, and I’m positive you will adore this recipe if you’re a fan of stuffing!
PSST! Read my “tiparooskis” section. It is located below the recipe, and I’ve provided a few tips and substitute suggestions you may find helpful.
If you make this southern-style vegan stuffing, don’t forget to post a picture to Instagram, tag me @chefsummerstorm, and #gardengrub so I can see your recreation!
The Best Southern-Style Vegan Stuffing
Ingredients
- 2 tbsp ground flax meal
- 6 tbsp water
- 2 1/2 cups vegetable or vegan chicken stock
- 1 cup vegan butter, divided into 3/4 cup and 1/4 cup, plus more for greasing the baking dish
- 2 1/2 cups yellow onion, small diced
- 1 1/2 cups celery, small diced
- 3 tbsp fresh rosemary, stems removed/discarded & finely chop the leaves
- 2 tbsp fresh thyme, stems removed/discarded & finely chop the leaves
- 1/4 cup fresh sage, stems removed/discarded & finely chop the leaves
- 1 tsp kosher salt
- 1 tsp black pepper
- 6 cups baguette, cut into 1 inch cubes (About one 8 ounce store-bought baguette.)
- 6 cups cornbread, cut into 1 inch cubes
Instructions
- Combine the ground flax meal and water in a small bowl. Let this rest for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. This mixture creates flax eggs. Then, whisk the flax eggs together with the vegetable stock. Set aside.
- Into a large saute pan or pot, melt 3/4 cups of the vegan butter over medium-high heat. Once hot, add the onion and celery in and cook for 8 minutes, stirring occasionally.
- Then, add in the rosemary, thyme, sage, salt, and pepper. Stir well and cook for 1 minute.
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Heavily grease a 9×9 inch baking dish with butter.
- Now, into a large mixing bowl, toss together both of the cubed breads. Evenly pour the vegetable stock-flax egg mixture and the sauteed vegetable-herb mix over the cubed bread. Quickly but gently, stir everything together to coat the bread evenly.
- Dump this mixture into the greased baking dish and spread it evenly across. Evenly dollop across the 1/4 cup of butter over the stuffing. Wrap the top of the dish in tin foil and place it on the middle oven rack to bake for 40 minutes.
- Remove the tin foil and bake for 35 more minutes.
- Enjoy! If not eaten immediately, I recommend keeping it covered, as it will thicken and become more firm as it cools down. Wrapping a piece of plastic wrap over the dish will trap steam over the stuffing, keeping it super moist!
Tiparooskis
Welcome to the tip section of the vegan stuffing recipe! Here I provide my top tips to help you perfect the recipe. Sometimes, I also give substitute suggestions that I think you may find helpful.
- “Mise en place” all of the ingredients! This is a French culinary phrase that means to have every recipe component prepared. So when you’re in the middle of cooking, you’re not also scrambling around still chopping or measuring out ingredients. Doing this method will save you a lot of time and stress while making any recipe, really, but I would highly recommend doing so for this stuffing.
- Hate cornbread?! You can use all white bread instead. Sigh… I am sad to hear that and am also surprised you made it this far, considering you hate cornbread. Or, maybe you don’t want to take the extra step to make cornbread, and that’s fine, I understand! You can use all white bread instead of half-half. The stuffing’s texture and flavor will be slightly different, but delicious nonetheless!
- Feel free to change up the white bread, as well. I chose to use baguette for the white bread, but you can use French bread, ciabatta, sourdough, or any white bread that is relatively hearty, dense, and on the chewier side. That means do not use a basic, soft, white sandwich-style bread that’s usually found down a grocery store’s aisle, haha. It must be a bread that has more substance to it and can withhold all of the moisture from the rest of the recipe.
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