Jalapenos Stuffed with Dressing – A Thanksgiving Alternative

With the holidays right around the corner, I’ve been pinning all the recipes I can and preparing for my favorite time of the year. The holidays are my absolute favorite. Not only do we get to celebrate Thanksgiving, (my birthday), Christmas and New Year’s in such a short amount of time but it’s a season of giving, a season that people are genuinely happy and a time that both my husband and I get to relax from our jobs.

Since we both work from home and for ourselves, that means we are constantly working. We work non stop building our empire slowly but surely. Since most people take time off during the holidays and it’s a legal holiday, everything shuts down – which includes our businesses. Sure, we’ll work some but nothing like normal. Not working all the time allows me to really relax and decompress. One of my favorite ways to decompress is to get in the kitchen and cook. I love cooking everything from a plain breakfast to a fancy feast.

There is one thing that drives me crazy about Thanksgiving. Both my husband’s side of the family and my side of the family cook the exact same thing, a traditional Thanksgiving dinner. No matter which house we are at, there will be ham, turkey, green bean casserole, sausage dressing and lots of desserts. This sounds like a horrible problem to have, right? I like to twist things up, so I got in the kitchen this week and made a few dishes using our traditional sausage dressing.

I absolutely fell in love with one of my dishes so I had to share what I’ll be bringing to Thanksgiving Dinner this year. You probably guessed that it has a Mexican twist and you are absolutely right! Introducing jalapenos stuffed with Thanksgiving sausage dressing. You’ll never eat regular dressing alone again!

Before we start, you need to gather the following ingredients so we can make our dressing.

When making our traditional dressing, we always use Johnsonville ground sausage. We love it because it has great flavor and Johnsonville is a trustworthy company. First start off by browning the meat. 

1. Prepare the dry corn bread mix according to package directions. Cool and crumble.
2. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
3. Grease one 9×13 inch baking dish.
4. In a large skillet, brown Johnsonville ground sausage.
5. Once browned, add butter and saute the celery and onion until soft.
6. In a large bowl, combine the celery, onions, 3 cups crumbled corn bread, eggs, chicken stock, sage and salt and pepper to taste; mix well.
7. Place into prepared dish and bake at 350 degrees F for 30 minutes.

I love that recipe because it’s so simple to make and uses ingredients that you probably already have in your pantry. If you have a different recipe, you can use that one. Prepare the dressing any way that you want.

Next, you will need to gather a handful of jalapenos. I bought approximately 10. Since we’re going to halve them, we will make approximately 20 stuffed jalapenos. You can tweak the amount, as needed. Once the jalapenos are halved, scoop out all of the seeds. You can do this with a spoon, it should only take a minute or two. Be cautious of getting jalapenos on your hands and then touching anything. Nothing burns like jalapeno juice in your eye! EEK.

Now carefully place your cornbread dressing into the jalapenos. I stuffed mine pretty good, but you can add as much or as little as you would like.  You can leave the jalapenos like this or if you are cheese obsessed like I am, sprinkle a little bit of cheddar cheese on the top of these bad boys. Stick these in the oven just long enough for the cheese to melt. I baked mine for approximately 6 minutes on 350 degrees.  Not only are these so easy to make, everybody will love your dressing made with a twist! It’s a nice change up to the traditional routine.
Is this something your family would love or would they prefer regular dressing? I know my family might be a little thrown off when I don’t bring in a huge casserole of sausage dressing but once they take a bite of these, I know there won’t be any complaints! I look forward to starting a new tradition.

Happy Thanksgiving, yall!

This is a sponsored conversation written by me on behalf of Johnsonville. The opinions and text are all mine.