Maple Cornbread Dressing with Clams

Cornbread dressing is a classic American Southern dish made by tons of African-American home cooks on holidays and celebratory occasions. It’s a fantastic way of repurposing leftover cornbread by re-mixing day-old cornbread with some type of stock, meats, veggies, herbs and spices, then bake it all up. So essentially, cornbread dressing is a type of stuffing. Because my own African-American family has deep origins in Rhode Island, I’m making my New England version with two key ingredients that make sense for my own heritage cooking … clams and maple syrup.

The use of clam juice and maple syrup shows up in historical recipes from the Narragansett Indian Tribe of Rhode Island, of which I partially descend from. The Native American and Black communities there are tightly interwoven, and have historically eaten the same foods as everyone else. If you visit any coastal town in Rhode Island you will see just how widely available clams are in the form of chowder, clam cakes, fried clams, or simply eaten with cocktail sauce from a raw bar. We Rhode Islanders take our clams very seriously. 

Pure maple syrup is super important in this recipe. I have fond memories of tapping trees to make maple syrup with my 2nd grade class in woods behind our school, so adding it to my “Rhone Island” cornbread made perfect sense.  However, any time you add a liquid to a baked good, you have to make adjustments to the other dry ingredients, so definitely check out my recipe where I’ve done that leg work for you. Just promise me you will NOT use corn syrup based syrup!

Make-ahead Items for Cornbread dressing

You’ll want to make a batch of homemade cornbread, and do so at least one day ahead of time. Store it at room temperature and let it dry out. Don’t worry about wrapping it or doing anything high maintenance because you will eventually be re-hydrating it.   

Green Tomato “American Southern” Sofrito is another make-ahead ingredient for my cornbread dressing.  Sofrito is a sauté base found throughout many cultures. It’s a blend of veggies, herbs, and aromatics which are specific to a region or culture. A couple years ago I decided American Soul food needed its own unique blend using green tomatoes as a base. My blend also has Tabasco peppers, parsley, and the ever-so-famous Gumbo “holy trinity” veggies of onion, celery and green bell pepper. Making a batch of this sofrito the same day of making your cornbread dressing can get a little overwhelming, so it’s best to make this ahead of time and store it in the freezer. You can use it as cooking base for other rice and bean recipes as well. 

Ingredients

• ½ recipe of day-old, dried Maple cornbread 
• canola oil
• 2 celery stalks
• ½ white onion
• 2 tablespoons freshly cracked black pepper
• ½ cup of my Green Tomato “American Southern” Sofrito 
• 8 ounces clam juice 1 8oz. jar
• 8 ounces low sodium vegetable stock
• 2.5 ounces chopped clams (½ of a 10-oz can, pre-drained)
• 1 egg
• 3 large sage leaves 
• 1 cup Oyster crackers
• kosher salt to taste (I suggest only 1 teaspoon, the clam juice already has salt)

Instructions

1. Make a batch of my Maple Cornbread, then and let it sit day or two so it gets rather dry.
2. Dice the celery and onion, and chop the clams into desired sizes. 
3. In a skillet, sauté the Green Tomato Sofrito with 1 teaspoon of kosher salt in canola oil until the liquid cooks off and it begins to brown slightly. Then add the onion and celery and cook just until the onions start to sweat. Stir in the black pepper and chopped clams, then turn off the heat. 
4. Crumble the cornbread and oyster crackers, then combine them in a large mixing bowl. Stir in the sautéed mixture, egg, clam juice, and vegetable stock, and sage.
5. Transfer wet cornbread mixture to a greased 10-inch skillet. Bake the cornbread dressing at 350 degrees until the center is firm and the top starts to turn golden … approximately 1 hour and 15 minutes. 
6. Remove from heat and let it cool, and serve.