Bread Stuffing for Thanksgiving

Let's be honest, stuffing is perhaps my favorite dish of Thanksgiving. But it does require some serious work (as in hours and hours, I'd say 3 hours!) of total cooking and prep time.

 

Worth it though. I have followed this recipe every year and it has worked year after year. I like my stuffing more on the dry side of things, not wet and mushy and soggy but a little tough. The way you make this work is by

1. not adding too much stock at the end and 2. drying out the bread before hand.

So let's get started!

INGREDIENTS:

-1 big loaf of crusty bread Surdough.  

-1 cup of walnuts or pecans.

-400 grms of sausage meat.

-1 large yellow onion, diced.

-3 medium celery stalks.

-2 tablespoons of sage, thyme and oregano (mixed).

-1 large apple.

-1 tsp of salt.

-150 aprox.  of concentrated chicken stock.

STEPS:

1. Dice up the bread in small dices and toast it for 10 minutes at 220 degrees in the oven.

2. Now add the nuts and toast again for another 10 minutes. Set apart.

3. In the meantime, cook the sausages and break it up into crumbles and brown it for 1o minutes.

4. Now add the vegetables to the sausage.  Start with the onions in small dices for 5 minutes until they are translucent. Now add the celery in thin slices too for another 5 minutes. Now dice up the apple too for 3 minutes. Add a little pepper to all this.

5. Now combine all the ingredients. Mix the toasted bread, nuts, 2 eggs and stir until it is all evenly coated.

6. Now transfer all to a baking dish (or two!).

7. Now add the broth. I put one broth cube for the 200 ml so that it tastes strong. Now I like stuffing on the dry side, not mushy so I put less broth. If you like it dry like me do not put more liquid. 

8. Stick in oven for about 1 hour in 180 degrees until it all begins to dry out. 

9. Now open the door of the oven and let all the steam go and continue cooking with the oven open about 25 degrees. The water has to disappear! and the bread has to go hard again, the only way to do this is to opening the door of the oven. WEIRD! but yup, necessary. I have never had to open the oven door to cook a this, but turns out you have to. 

10. Continue watching it until it is all crispy and golden but do not let it brown. Use the grill as well, but watch out it is so easy to have it burned. 

11. Let it cool briefly before serving.

That's it. This recipe is quite a gem.

  

Abraham Lincoln told me it was awesome.