Thanksgiving stuffing is personal. It’s one of the flavors you probably remember from childhood. There are a zillion recipes for stuffing out there. Here is one more, and I assure you this is a great one.
I should just note that there is absolutely nothing wrong or lacking in that basic stuffing recipe we all have had and made and feasted on. It’s wonderful. And it’s a treasure you probably have only once or twice a year. It’s just, well, you’ve had it tens of times. Time for something else, perhaps? But, but, that something else has got to be really good or there may be riots around the Thanksgiving table. We can’t have that. This stuffing is guaranteed to please every palette at your table.
Recently we blogged the Pumpkin Stuffed with Everything Good from Dorie Greenspan’s new book Around My French Table. For our Thanksgiving this year, we are modifying that stuffing and serving it hot from the oven. We make our stuffing and bake it separately from the turkey. It’s a matter of convenience, not one of those turkey –related health issue. I’m not great with a carving knife, so just slicing up the bird while refilling my wine glass is work enough. Doing a mining job on that body cavity to get all the stuffing out is more Thanksgiving day work than Brian needs. He doesn’t want to be confused with someone working for the TSA. Why not just scoop that steaming stuffing directly out of that baking dish!
Here Dorie’s recipe modified by me just a tad to create a chorizo-spiced stuffing that will warm your table.
This recipe is for a modest amount of stuffing. By all means, you can scale this up. For the bread, I love my own homemade sourdough. And the chicken stock is homemade, too. Every roast chicken in our house ends with that carcass in a pot simmering with vegetables for a few hours. Our stock is deeply colored, intensely flavored and ideal for roles like this stuffing.
Thanksgiving Stuffing 2010
Yield: 4 servings
Ingredients:
- ¼ pound stale bread, thinly sliced and cut into ½-inch chunks
- ¼ pound cheese, such as Gruyère, Emmenthal, cheddar, or a combination, cut into ½-inch chunks
- 2–4 garlic cloves (to taste), split, germ removed, and coarsely chopped
- 1 chorizo sausage, cooked until crisp, drained, and chopped (my addition)
- 1 Granny Smith apple, peeled, cored and sliced.
- About ¼ cup snipped fresh chives or sliced scallions (my addition)
- 1 tablespoon minced fresh thyme (my addition)
- About ⅓ cup homemade chicken stock
- Pinch of freshly grated nutmeg
Preparation:
Preheat the oven to 350˚F. Grease a 1 ½-quart baking dish.
Toss the bread, cheese, garlic, sausage, apple and herbs together in a bowl. Season with pepper — you probably have enough salt from the sausage and cheese, but taste to be sure. Stir in the chicken stock with the nutmeg and some salt and pepper and pour into the baking dish. You might have too much or too little liquid— you don’t want the ingredients to swim in the stock, but you do want the bread nicely moistened. (It’s hard to go wrong here.)
Bake for 60-90 minutes. Check after 60 minutes. You want the mixture dry and the bread just crisping.
Source: Inspired by Around My French Table by Dorie Greenspan