Full of roasted chestnuts, turkey liver, sausage meat (unflavoured), sourdough bread, cranberries, ultra-reduced beef stock, and baked in the oven.

Dense and wonderful...omnomnom

Okay, so it's more like a meatloaf than stuffing. Also, SHUT UP. It's wonderful. Especially with a very rich gravy.

*sigh* Two more weeks!!!

Pepperidge Farms bread cubes
Sage Sausage
Onion & Celery sauteed in the sausage fat
Chicken Stock

Never stuffed in the bird, allowed to crust up a bit in the oven.

I favor the "Nicaraguan stuffing", which is a combination of pork, vegetables and bread.

Back in the mother country each house would have their own recipes.

I loves to eat stuffing with mushroom & onions and etc. It was so delicious where we have a nice Thanksgiving time for every year. Its importance things to do for your entire family & friends, too.

We use the pepperidge farms stuffing and add chicken broth and onions, celery and mushrooms. Much better than stove-top and easy to make.

Yes! And plenty of ground sage.

At Thanksgiving, I made a sausage italian bread stuffing based on a recipe from epicurious that was a huge hit! Delicious (and very high ratings on epicurious too). Lots of french bread, sausage, celery, onions, heavy cream, etc, etc...

It's also pretty good with mince pork instead of sausage because the juices of the pork combine more easily with the bread, cream, veggies, etc.

Recipe:
http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/fo...tuffing-240559

I'm boring and easy to please. Just give me Stovetop and cover it in plenty of gravy. When it comes to stuffing I am happy to substitute plenty of quantity for quality.

OYSTERS are the best - with onions, celery & butter!!

Cornbread dressing is southern. Bread dressing is for you folks up Nawth. ;)

Hey, but Stovetop and Pepperidge Farm are for us all. ;)

My family's Labor Intensive Cornbread Dressing

A few days prior to Thanksgiving or Christmas, remove giblets from and then boil a baking hen (this is a large, fat bird, not a fryer, found in places like Whole Foods right before the holidays) slowly for several hours in water to cover. When the chicken separates easily from the bone, it is done.

Remove hen and reduce the broth by half. (That's boil the broth until half of it is gone, you noncookers--sheesh! :rolleyes: ) Refrigerate when cooled.

Prepare cornbread at least a day prior to holiday. Use traditional ingredients. (That means using bacon grease as the shortening, and also greasing the cast iron skillet with the bacon greese. Also maybe better to use two/thirds cornmeal to one/third flour, or half and half. Also use buttermilk and baking soda rather than plain milk.) Bake till crisp.

On feast day, crumble cornbread and add maybe three slices of dried white bread, toasted, which have been left sitting out on the counter for several hours in order to dry. Add sauteed celery and onion, lots. Mixture should be cooled if necessary, then pour in chicken broth. Never use hot ingredients, as this will adversely affect the texture.

Stir in lots of sage, a bit of salt and black pepper, maybe a chopped boiled egg or two (some like it, some don't), then--if mixture appears dry, add a beaten egg and/or maybe a bit of canned evaporated milk.

Next--this is the controversial part, but what makes the taste authentic, IMV--place the boiled chicken pieces on top. These will char and add authentic flavor.

After the turkey is removed from the oven, cook the dressing for about 20-30 minutes or until it sets. It should still be fairly moist.

It's good. But I've made it only a few times, too much trouble.

Anyhow, just for the history books--

ETA: Or forget about tradition and just chop a jalapeno into the Stovetop or Pepperidge Farm dresing.

I enjoy mine with sausage, celery, pepperidge farm mix, evaporated milk, and lots of butter. :)

Looking for a simple yet delicious recipe for stuffing
 

I don't cook a whole bird at our house since we have a small family and plan on deep frying a small breast. Every year, my family does the box stuffing thing. I was hoping to change that this year -- with a more home cooked version of stuffing.

Wondering if anyone is wiling to share their recipe?

My recipe is pretty simple.

Buy a bag of bread chunks or unseasoned croutons. If you go with bread chunks, I usually leave the bag open overnight to harden a bit.
Saute diced onions and celery.
Mix bread chunks, onion, celery, pepper and salt to taste.
Add chicken broth (or veggie broth) until the mixture is soft.
Bake in the oven at 350 until hot.

Slice bread (I tend to use a white bakery loaf, find wonderbread type stuff tastes of nothing) into 1 inch cubes, put under the broiler until toasted. In a large frying pan melt some butter, and gently fry diced onions. As the onions start to turn golden, add fresh chopped sage leaves, as they become cripsy the mixture is done. Toss bread chunks in the frying pan to absorb some of the butter, then transfer to a bowl, add veggie stock to give you the texture you prefer, check seasoning, add salt and pepper to taste. You can then use it to stuff the bird (packed in well), dollop into balls (I prefer this, as the edges get crispy, the middle stays soft) or bake in a dish until crispy and light brown on top. Temperature tends to be irrelevant to me, it is whatever the oven is on at anyway (normally quite high as it will be turned up for the potatoes and yorkshire puddings by the time I am ready to cook the stuffing)

cornbread stuffing
 

Pre-heat the oven to 350 F.

Sweat:
1 large sweet onion, medium chopped
1 small stalk celery, medium chopped
1 tsp salt
1 tsp black pepper

Set aside to cool to room temperature.

Mix well in a large bowl:
1 cup corn meal (yellow or white...your choice)
2 cups buttermilk
1 egg
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tbsp honey
The sweated onions and celery


In a 10 - 12" cast iron skillet, add 2 tbsp bacon grease or vegetable oil. Place into pre-heated oven for 15 minutes or until the cast iron skillet is hot. Pull the cast iron skillet out of the oven and pour the contents of the large mixing bowl into it. Return to the oven for 45 minutes. Take it out and allow the cooked cornbread to cool to room temperature on top of the stove.

Once cooled, break up the cornbread mixture into small pieces in a large bowl. Add 1 - 2 cans of Swanson chicken or turkey broth until the mixture is just barely flowable. The idea is for the mixture to be moist, but not wet. Add 1 tbsp of poultry seasoning and salt and pepper to taste and mix thoroughly. Usually, 1 tbsp of poultry seasoning is plenty for us. Add more, but sparingly, if it isn't for you.

Pour this mixture into a 13" X 9" casserole and bake at 350 F for 40 minutes and serve.

You can add other stuff to this like sliced pecans and boiled eggs, if you wish, but we do not.

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Similar to mine. I normally use the dried bread cubes that come with a seasoning packet, plus add a tablespoon of sage. Also saute a half pound of diced mushrooms with the celery and onion.

I've found adding extra spices to have too powerful of a taste.

my version 1. in addition to the onion an celery above, mine has mushrooms, carrots, and fennel. Also some poultry seasoning, or at the very least some rubbed sage.

my version 2 . same as kippers, but with chopped granny smith apple.


I also like to brown some italian sausage and throw it in to either version if there are no vegetarians in the crowd

WOW !!

Thank you all for the ides -- I can already taste stuffing in my mouth.

I've got a recipe for Soylent Green stuffing, but strangely, no one ever asks for it.

See my Bagel Stuffing in this thread from 2002, make it every year.

It works both in and out of the bird

It's always a huge hit.


http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/omni/...pe-thread.html

Our favourite stuffing is a standard Paxo Sage and Onion carton mixed with two pork and red onions sausages.

Perfect!

http://www.britsuperstore.com/acatal...ng_Mx_340g.jpg

http://www.ocado.com/catalog/images-...dffbd84cfca3e6

You mean adding anything other than salt and pepper?:confused:

It's true I like powerful tastes, but everyone who has tried my stuffing raves about it.:)

Stuffing without sage = no good.
Stuffing with sweet things like apples or raisins = no good.
Adding sausage, giblets, etc = no problem.

Yes. I've tried adding sage, I've tried using pre-seasoned stuffing mix, and get lots of comments about how it has an overpowering taste.

Will likely use ciabatta bread, sweet Italian sausage, mushrooms, chicken stock, butter, onion, celery, fresh sage and fresh thyme.

Ha ha! I called my mother out on 'Paxo' when she blasted me for using ready made stuffing. She claims to always make stuffing from scratch but I have distinct memories of pouring hot water on to Paxo (or whichever brand it was) and forming balls before Sunday lunch! I quite like it as a quick fix but prefer made from scratch if I am not in a mad panic / rush!

We buy Mrs. Cubison's box of seasoned dressing and add tons of stuff to it to make (IMO) the best stuffing ever. :)

We sautee onions and celery in butter and add that to the bread cubes with canned (diced) pineapple, dried cranberries, diced granny smith apples, and the meat from the turkey neck (and other scraps) that was boiled earlier in water. Add that homemade turkey broth till sufficiently moist, taste and season if necessary, and stuff in the turkey and/or bake in a pan until brown on top.

Smother with gravy at the table and get ready for absolute stuffing heaven.

Couple of big loafs of sandwich bread, just tear it apart with your hands into a BIG bowl. Chop up some onion and celery, and cook them in some butter (year, it takes alot of it) until nice and tender. also warm up some chicken broth.
To your bread, sprinkle a couple of tablespoons of that poultry seasoning that comes in a box. Pour the butter and vegetables in, and a little bi of the broth, and start mixing it together with your hands. How much you knead the stuff together determines the density - only lightly mix it if you want fluffy, pasty stuffing, knead it a lot if you want dense filling stuffing (my preference). Add more broth as needed to make a good consistency, taste to adjust for seasoning, salt and pepper.

when you cook it, put a little of the broth in the bottom of the pan to create steam and keep it moist.

I consider myself a good cook, however my mother makes stuffing that to this day baffeles me. I know there are the usual culprits are involved, but I have never figured it out. She cooks some inside the turkey, but mine is cooked separately, I like mine on the extremely dry/burnt side. Makes me sad that i'll miss Thanksgiving this year :(

I have a different variation each year. Last year was black olives, sundried tomatoes, roasted sweet onions and fresh rosemary with some sort of cubed bread. Gravy was a peppercorn shiraz reduction with turkey drippings, diced sundried tomatoes and a bit of the black olives ground into a tapenade to balance it all out.

This year I'm fancying some sort of multi-layered porchetta stuffing, but that may just turn into a turducken-type nightmare. :p It all depends on what I end up having time for (& what's on sale) the week before. I'm kind of a last minute cook in the kitchen and tend to stress everyone out because no one really knows what's coming out of the kitchen. :D

My mother made the best stuffing ever. I crave it sometimes. But she has cancer and no longer cooks - this year we might not even be able to enjoy a real family dinner. For the first time in my memory I am dreading the holidays. I just cant imagine it without her or her turkey and stuffing. :(

I think Turkey and stuffing is just one of those things you can't fancy up. It fills the soul, and the simpler it is, the better a job at that it does.

Sorry to hear that. Why not ask her for her recipes and such, and celebrate the holidays early, with you or someone else in the family doing the cooking?

Spend as much time as you can with her and ask her for her stories on cooking for the holidays and for her recipes. She'll be with you for every thanksgiving when you recreate her recipes :)

I do different Turkey and stuffing every year because we celebrate both Canadian (Oct) and American (Nov) Thanksgiving. Plus, the MIL is really insecure and competitive (not a good combination) and does turkey one way and one way only :p So when I make turkey I always do something very different that she can label as blasphemous :D . Plus, sometimes we have turkey at x'mas too and that's turkey 3 months in a row....

One of my more traditional recipes is a sweet Italian sausage stuffing with fennel and orange with fresh cranberries. Gravy is sweet onion riesling reduction. It's still considered weird for the MIL but it's a situation that works for us :rolleyes: I think the last time I made a "traditional" turkey was our first thanksgiving together that I cooked and the MIL had some sort of fit. :rolleyes:

First Christmas I hosted was like the thanksgiving episode from Friends! Each person has their ideas about what is essential for Christmas to be proper, and I was juggling stuffing (inside and outside of turkey), gravy, bread sauce, yorkshire puddings, mashed and roasted potatoes, 4 different stove cooked vegetables, roasted parsnips,cranberry sauce, etc etc. I was so busy making sure everyone had what they wanted, that as I sat down at the table I realized I had completely and utterly forgotten to make any food for myself (I am veggie, and normally do something different for me - I had planned and had the ingredients for a quiche that year but just never made it!)

Have to say, my best Thanksgiving:

My brother had moved out to Colorado, and about two weeks before thanksgiving, he was in a very bad winter hiking accident. My parents and I flew out there, as he was hanging on by a thread the first few days. Anyways, he got better, and was quite able to eat even though he was stuck in the hospital still by the time Thanksgiving rolled around.

So, knowing that this was something pretty important to him and us, we ended up trying to cook a full thanksgiving dinner in a Townplace Suite. Cooking the vegetables was a bit complicated - as we only had two burners and a couple of pans, but we managed that just fine. The Turkey, however, proved far more difficult - it was just to big for the little oven they had, and we kept setting off the smoke alarm. So there we were with an turkey we couldn't cook.

Well, my mother was a smoker back then, and during her cigarette breaks at the hospital was talking with some of the kitchen staff. She happened to be up there when I called her about the dilemma - and she talked to her friends - and they offered to take the turkey and cook it for us!

In the end, we had a great little meal. We invited soe of the nurses to come in and join us, he had another friend he had met out there come up too, and we had one of the best meals ever served in a hospital!

Time for a bump :)

Cornbread stuffing. No fruit (ugh). Plenty of sausage. Cooked in the bird.

No soggy bread stuffing, please.

I'm not sure it's the only way to go but I would eat your stuffing gladly. Sage sausage is the key to my enjoyment. I'm usually disappointed with stuffing in restaurants as a result. My own is about 25% sausage.

NO celery!

Bread stuffing
 

Has to be bread stuffing with onion, celery, sage, rosemary, thyme, chicken broth. In the purest form, broth from the cooked turkey neck can be used rather than chicken broth if you're not making giblet gravy. The bagged commercial stuffing mixes are not bad to start with, adding the onion and celery, but it is easy to over-season if you're not careful. Always trying to make it come out the same as my dad's.

Cornbread with apples, sausage, onion, celery, and really good seasoning. Never in the turkey though. I'm always concerned about cross-contamination and the stuffing won't cook as evenly.