In episode 59 we are making a Holiday Stuffing with Sausage that will knock your socks off. It is the perfect stuffing with pillowy soft center and a crispy top. The bready stuffing is filled with pork sausage, cranberries, fresh herbs and lots of butter. This will be the perfect addition to your Holiday table.
Transcript
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Susie Weinrich: What’s up everybody? This is Susie with Let’s Make Dinner, and I wanted to come on before this episode starts and give you a little disclaimer.
So normally when I start these episodes, I do a lot of starting and stopping and I’m checking my audio. Tonight I am recording this late and I just went straight through, recorded the whole thing, and then realized at the end that it actually did not record with my microphone. It was recorded with my computer. Which is significantly lesser quality audio. So I just want to give you a heads up with this episode that it’s not my usual audio quality, but we are going to move forward with it and hope that it sounds okay. So enjoy this episode everyone.
Intro: Happy holidays. Welcome everybody to another episode of Let’s Make Dinner, your audio library of amazing dinner recipes you can get on the table any night of the week. I’m your host, Susie Weinrich.
Susie Weinrich: You guys, happy holidays! So normally I try not to date my episodes and I try to keep it pretty neutral, but today we’re talking about Sausage Stuffing, and that’s pretty much as holiday as you can get. We’re talking about the traditional side dish for Thanksgiving, but we’re adding a little mix of flavor here by adding some sage Sausage stuffing. That’s a mouthful. So we’re adding some sage sausage and some cranberries and fresh herbs. This stuffing is super pillowy and buttery and soft on the inside with just a ton of flavor and texture. Then the top is golden and crispy. It is the best of both worlds. It’s exactly what you want. I’m going to share the full recipe with you here on this episode.
Tips and Tricks: So first of course, we’re going to talk about a few tips for this recipe. The very first thing that I want to talk about is the bread that you’re going to use for your stuffing. So if your bakery has large cubes of dried out bread, you can absolutely buy that. Now, if you’re going to buy the pre-packaged like Peppered Farm stuffing bread cubes, those tend to be so tiny. Some of it even crumbles into a powder. It just isn’t exactly what you want if stuffing is really important to you. What I recommend is buying really quality bread. So we like to use, I believe it’s Pepperidge Farm Hearty White, or the Sara Lee Artesano White Bread, and then I’ll cut it into one inch cubes and then you dry it out. So basically you’re removing the liquid from your bread so that when you add back the liquid, it’s the flavor of the stuffing, it doesn’t turn the bread into mush.
So there are two different ways that you can dry out the bread after you’ve cubed it. The first way is the overnight method. So take the bread, lay it out on big rimmed baking sheets, and just put it on the countertop and let it sit out. Definitely overnight, maybe for a day and a half even. The other option is to turn your oven onto a low temperature of 250. Again, lay those cut bread cubes onto a rimmed baking sheet and just let them dry out in that oven for about 30 minutes. You’re going to toss them every five or 10 minutes so that it doesn’t actually brown. You just want to dry it out. You don’t want to actually brown it. So those are the two methods for drying out bread and making sure that you are getting a really quality stuffing.
The other ingredient tip is to make sure that you’re using fresh herbs. Dried herbs are not going to give you the same flavor profile as these fresh herbs are. So for this recipe, you’re going to use fresh sage, rosemary, and Italian parsley. There’s also something in the recipe called poultry seasoning, and that is a dried seasoning that you’ll just buy in the spice aisle. But everything else is fresh.
Okay. The other ingredient that I want to talk about before we get started with the full recipe is the pork sausage. So for this recipe, if you can find it, Jimmy Dean makes a great pork sausage called sage pork sausage. It will come in the tube or the roll. Sometimes it’s frozen and that’s something that you want to look for early. Because right around Thanksgiving or Christmas that goes like hot cakes. So if you can find that sage pork sausage, grab that for sure. Otherwise any of those Jimmy Dean rolled pork sausages will work really well.
One last thing before we get to this recipe. Don’t be trying to save calories when you’re making your stuffing people. It calls for a lot of butter and there’s a good reason for it. It adds a ton of flavor. It gives you the right texture, and it gives you that crispy topping. It’s the holidays. Nobody’s trying to save calories during the holidays, Ok?
Sausage Stuffing Recipe: All right, so let’s get on to making this full recipe for sausage and herb stuffing. It also has cranberries in it. It’s delicious. So this is going to be made in a nine by nine baking dish, and it’s going to serve about eight people. You can absolutely, if you’re having a bigger Thanksgiving or Christmas or holiday celebration, you can double this recipe and make it in a nine by 13 dish. The baking time should still be roughly the same.
So what you want to do is of course, make your breadcrumbs stale. However, you’re going to do that. That is step number one. Step number two. You’re going to preheat your oven to 350 degrees, and then you’re going to prep that baking dish by rubbing it with one tablespoon of softened butter.
That will just make sure that the bread and all the yummy stuffing bits don’t bake to your pan. You want them to bake together. All right, so then in a large skillet, you’re going to melt an entire stick of butter. Again, do not skimp on the butter. You want all of that flavor. So just do that over medium low heat because you don’t want to brown the butter.
Then you’re going to add one large onion that has been chopped and one cup of celery that has been chopped. This isn’t a mince, but it’s definitely a rough chop into bite size pieces, so you’re not biting into a big piece of celery in the middle of the stuffing. You just want it to be mixed in there.
So you’re going to saute that in butter until it’s softened. This is going to take like 10 to 15 minutes. Once that is nice and softened, you will go ahead and add that one pound of the bulk pork sausage. There is a tool that you can buy and I will link it in the show notes for you, but it is, I think the actual name of this is Meat Masher. What it is, it’s on a handle and then it’s a bunch of Xs, like spatula Xs that make it really easy for you to crumble meat, especially pork sausage that is super sticky. If you work with a lot of Turkey, like ground Turkey or ground pork, it’s a great tool to have in your kitchen.
So go ahead and add that pork sausage and break it up so that it’s crumbled in the pan and that it is cooked through and no longer pink. Now at this point, if you have a ton of extra grease in the pan, you want to drain any excess grease.
All right, so remove that pan from the heat, and then you’re going to stir in four large garlic cloves that are finely chopped, one and a half teaspoons of kosher salt. Half a teaspoon of black pepper, one teaspoon of that poultry seasoning that we talked about at the beginning. You can find that in the spice aisle of your grocery store. Then two tablespoons of chopped fresh sage, one tablespoon of fresh chopped rosemary and a quarter cup of fresh chopped parsley. You can use Italian or curly. Both will totally work. Then you’re going to finish that by stirring in one cup of dried cranberries. So we’re talking about the sweetened dried cranberries. A popular brand is Ocean Spray, who makes Craisins. So that’s what you want to use here. So stir that all together, make it a nice little delicious mixture, and go ahead and set that to the side.
Then to a really big bowl, you want to add your 12 cups of dried bread cubes, and then you want to pour that sausage, onion, celery, herb mixture over top of the breadcrumbs, and then give it a really good stir to coat everything. You’re going to set that aside. Then in a liquid measuring cup, if you have one, if you don’t have one, just use a bowl, whisk the chicken broth and the eggs together. You’re going to need two large eggs and one and a half cups of chicken broth or stock. The difference between broth and stock – broth is made generally just from the meat. The stock is made from the bones and the meat, and your stock will have more flavor than the broth. Take that mixture of the chicken broth and the eggs and pour that evenly over the bread cube mixture, and then toss everything again so that everything is moistened and it’s just barely holding together.
So then you’re going to transfer what is now your stuffing to the prepared nine by nine pan. At this point, you’ll have two tablespoons of butter left over. You’ll want to cut that into eight even cubes, and then pop that on top of the stuffing. Now at this point, if you want, you can cover it and refrigerate this stuffing for 24 hours, and then you can pop it in the oven when you’re ready to have dinner. When you’re ready to have your holiday dinner. Or you can go ahead and cover the stuffing with foil and bake it for 30 minutes. Then you’re going to remove the foil and bake for an additional 20 minutes, and that’s it. Your stuffing is done.
However, if you want a more golden, crispy top and edges, you can absolutely turn the broiler on for the last minute or two. That’s it. That’s the full recipe. Now what I do want to tell you is that this is a stuffing with meat. If you want more of a traditional stuffing recipe, I have one of those as well on momsdinner.net, and I will link that for you in the show notes so you can check that out. I will also link to my full Thanksgiving category so you can check out all the recipes and make sure that your Thanksgiving holiday, Christmas, whatever you’re celebrating. This is a great side dish, so make sure that it’s delicious and on your table.
So that does it for today. Like I said, I will link all of the recipes and the equipment that I talked about in this episode right in the show notes for you.
As always, I would love it if you guys would subscribe or follow this show in your preferred podcast player. Then also, tell somebody about this show and about the Mom’s Dinner recipes. I would absolutely appreciate it. It would really be a present for me. So thank you in advance.
Outro: Until next time, I hope this episode of Let’s Make Dinner makes your dinner time a little easier. See ya. Happy holidays. Happy holidays to you. .
Tips Shared
Make sure you use larger 1 inch dried bread cubes. Use a quality bread like Pepperidge Hearty White. You can dry the bread on the counter overnight or in a 250 degree oven for 30 minutes.
Use fresh herbs instead of dried. It gives you a more pronounced fresh flavor.
If you can find it Jimmy Dean Sage Pork Sausage is the PERFECT match for this stuffing recipe. It comes in the tube, sometimes frozen.
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