Thanksgiving Stuffing

What’s that? It’s January, you say? You’re finally recovering from the holidays, you’re sticking to your New Years diet (for another 2 weeks at most – let’s be honest), and the last thing you want is a reminder of all the food you ate in November and December? Well, my friends, you might as well stop reading now.

Actually, scratch that.  Please keep reading, at least just to humor me.

This post, and this recipe, is a lifetime in coming.  I know that I can often be the queen of hyperbole, but in this case it’s actually true.  My family has been making a certain type of stuffing for my entire life that I absolutely LOVE. Honestly, I get more excited to eat stuffing at Thanksgiving than any other dish, pie included.  Problem is, there’s never been a recipe.  Now that I’m older and I’ve been involved in making it for over a decade, I could probably make a reasonably close version on my own, but somehow, whenever other family members have tried, it never quite comes out the same.  As asking my family for a recipe often involves a lot of “pinch of this” or “sprinkle of that” or “enough blah blah to taste”, I decided it was high time that we scientifically figure out the exact measurements of every spice and liquid that goes into this stuffing by using magical tools called “teaspoons” and “measuring cups”.  Radical, I know.

(Side note – I hate when cookbooks say “…to taste”. What does that even MEAN?! How can someone making a recipe for the first time know what it’s supposed to taste like? Damn you, trained chefs!)

So, despite the extreme lateness of this post (see: crazy ass couple of months preventing me from sitting down and writing this), I present you with My Family Stuffing Recipe.

Turkey Stuffing

What You’ll Need

• A turkey (Obviously.)
• 1 package carrots
• 1 package celery hearts
• 3 medium size white onions
• 3 cans Low Sodium Chicken Broth
• 1 can Low Sodium Vegetable Broth
• 3 loaves of white bread
• 1 tsp dried rosemary
• 1 ½ – 2 tsp dried sage
• 1 tbsp dried parsley
• ½ tsp dried sweet basil
• 1 tsp celery salt
• 1 ½ – 2 tbsp Bell’s Seasoning
• 1 tbsp + 1 tsp black pepper
• 1 tbsp salt

What To Do

Start out by placing the bread slices (overlapping if necessary) flat on a cookie sheet.  Bake the bread at very low heat (250F) in the oven until it is dried and crunchy.  Make sure to use the middle rack of the oven so the bread does not toast or burn.  After removing from the oven let cool, then shred the bread into small cubes or pieces into a large mixing bowl. This step can be done ahead of time, even the night before, as the bread will only get crispier if it’s left out overnight (which is a good thing!).

The night before you plan on baking your turkey (which, let’s face it, is only ever the night before Thanksgiving), remove the giblets package from the cavity. Wash them thoroughly, then put them in a sauce pan with 2 cans of the chicken broth.  Add 4-5 stalks of celery - with the greens left on - chopped into thirds, 2-3 peeled carrots (or as my picture shows, ½ of a bag of baby carrots) chopped into thirds, and 1 ½ quartered white onions. Cover and cook the giblets on low heat until they are cooked. If the broth is cooking down too much, you can add water to retain the moisture.

 

After the giblets are cooked, remove from heat and wait until they are cool enough to touch.

In a skillet, cook one package of “meatloaf mixture” meat – ground beef, pork, and veal. Drain some of the fat but keep a little bit for extra moisture in the stuffing.

The next steps will require you to have a stand-alone meat grinder, a grinder attachment for your Kitchenaid, or a lot of patience with your food processor.

Using the meat grinder, begin grinding the cooked meat, giblets and vegetables. Note: this produces A LOT of juice drippings.  I always place a cookie sheet and newspapers underneath the grinder to catch the liquid so it doesn’t splatter all over the floor.

Interspersed with the cooked materials, grind the remaining onion, 3-4 peeled carrots, and 4-5 more stalks of celery – with greens removed – to provide some texture and roughness to the mixture. Also, gradually work in a few handfuls of the dried bread to absorb the liquid that will pool up in the grinder and provide a basis for the stuffing.

After you finish grinding, beat 4 eggs in a separate mixing bowl then set aside.

Then, soften the bread by drizzling about 2 cups of giblet juices over them.

Mix the ground mixture into the bowl with the dried bread. Using a heavy duty metal or plastic spoon, begin folding the bread and ground mixture together.  Use your spoon to slice through the bowl, cutting the bread chunks into smaller pieces.  When it begins to look uniform, slowly drizzle in the beaten eggs and mix thoroughly.

Add one can each of chicken broth and vegetable broth to the stuffing, as well as the dried spices.  I would recommend adding the first half of the spices, mixing, adding the second half, and mixing some more, in order to avoid an uneven distribution.

At this point, all that’s left to do is mix until you feel like your arm is going to fall off.  It’s important to scrape from the bottom of the bowl and fold in, like you were mixing a cake batter, so that the dried spices really get incorporated well. The “cutting” motion also helps to completely break down the bread so that you have a fairly mushy stuffing – there shouldn’t be any large, noticeable chunks remaining. 

After the mixing is done, you’re ready to stuff the bird! I always wash and salt the inside of the turkey before adding the stuffing to both ends.  I won’t go into specifics about cooking a turkey, because this post is already 3.97827 times longer than any other I’ve written and I’m tired of typing.

We usually have some stuffing left that doesn’t fit into the turkey; this is easily solved by putting the extra into a casserole dish and baking at 350F for about 45 minutes, or until the top is golden brown and crusty.  It’s extra delicious if you baste it with a little bit of juice from the turkey.

Of course, nothing tops leftover turkey-stuffing-cranberry sauce-hard roll sandwiches the day after Thanksgiving – they might even be better than the big meal itself! Even if no one tries this recipe, which I would understand since stuffing is such a family-specific dish, I’m happy to finally have my family’s version recorded for posterity!