Stuffing Without The Bird Recipes

OLD FASHIONED STUFFING

Steps:

• Allow the toasted bread to sit approximately 24 hours, until hard.
• Preheat oven to 325 degrees F (165 degrees C). Lightly grease a 9x13 inch baking dish.
• Crush the bread into crumbs with a rolling pin. Place the crumbs in a large bowl.
• Melt the butter in a medium saucepan over medium heat. Stir in the onion and celery and slowly cook until soft. Remove from heat and drain.
• Mix the eggs and chicken broth into the bread crumbs. The mixture should be moist, but not mushy. Use water, if necessary, to attain desired consistency. Mix in the onion, celery, rubbed sage, garlic powder, salt and pepper.
• Press the mixture into the baking dish. Bake 1 hour in the preheated oven, or until the top is brown and crisp.

STUFFING FOR THE BIRD!

Steps:

• Melt butter in saucepan and add onions, celery, and peppers. Cook until flavor infuses. Add turkey stock and bring to a boil. Add poultry seasoning and sage to bread cubes. Pour mixture over bread cubes, stirring in a cup at a time. Caution! Do not over moisten (or stir) your bread cubes or your stuffing will completely fuse together! Salt and pepper to taste. Allow to cool then place inside turkey. When done cooking, the stuffing should be 165 degrees F and the turkey should be 180 degrees inside the thighs.

CLASSIC BREAD STUFFING RECIPE

Steps:

• In a large skillet over medium heat, melt half of the butter. Add the onion, celery, garlic, sage, thyme, celery seeds, nutmeg, cloves, and salt. Cook, covered, until the onion is soft, 5 to 7 minutes. Remove from the heat. In a large bowl, toss the sautéed vegetables with the bread cubes. Season with pepper. Melt the remaining butter. Pour it over the stuffing, along with the broth (or milk or wine), and toss to coat. The stuffing should just hold together when mounded on a spoon.
• If cooking in a turkey, put the stuffing in the bird just before roasting. Pack the stuffing loosely, leaving enough room to fit your whole extended hand into the bird's cavity. Cook the stuffing in the bird to 160º to 165ºF, checking with an instant-read thermometer. If the bird is done before the stuffing is, take the bird out of the oven, spoon the stuffing into a casserole dish, and continue to bake it while the turkey rests.
• If baking some or all of the stuffing in a casserole, pour a cup or two of stock over the stuffing to replace the juices the stuffing would have absorbed from the bird. Bake it covered until heated through, 45 minutes to 1 hour. For a crunchy top, uncover it for the last 15 minutes of baking.

STUFFING THE BIRD

Steps:

• The night before, carefully cube the bread, cutting away all the crusts (and feeding the crusts to your neighbourhood songbirds and squirrels-its Christmas for them, too!).
• Place the chicken stock in a pot, and carefully simmer half the garlic and the heart, gizzard and neck meat for 20 minutes. Add the liver, and simmer 20 minutes more.
• Remove from heat, preserve the liquid, strip the meat from the neck, and cut away the meat from the viscera of the gizzard, discarding the viscera. Mince the meat to a fine paste, using reserved stock if or as necessary.
• Dice onion and celery finely. Heat olive oil in a pan and saute them and balance of garlic until tender, and remove from heat.
• Add seaoning, nut meal, minced neck, giblets,and soya sauce, stirring together well.
• Place bread bits and Bran in a bowl, and evacuate sauteed bits into the breading, mixing well.
• Moistenm with reserved stock until the mix is "damp" but not "soggy".
• Stuff into the bird's gut and neck cavity. Do notbe afraid to compress the mix "slightly", contrary to urban legend, the bird will not "explode", you'llsimply have some stuffing leak forward from the gut, where it will brown quite nicely!
• Cook your turkey until the breast meat and stuffing are about 155 degrees, and the dark meat is about 170 degrees, and remove from the oven. Evacuate the stuffing immediately and cover with foil.

STUFFING WITHOUT THE BIRD

Steps:

• In toaster, toast all of the bread and immediately spread generous amounts of butter on toast.
• Use entire stick of butter to do this.
• Set toast aside.
• Finely chop garlic, onion, celery, and mushrooms.
• Heat olive oil in large skillet.
• Add chopped vegetables, cook until tender, about 6-8 minutes.
• While vegetables are cooking.
• Chop parsley and almonds.
• When vegetables are tender add, parsley, almonds, and poultry seasoning.
• Stir well and cook one more minute.
• Cut toasted bread into cubes.
• Add bread and chicken stock.
• Stir until bread is softened, about one minute.
• Remove from heat and transfer to serving dish.
• Let sit covered 5 minutes.
• **Please note that I occasionally add chopped cooked apples&/or browned breakfast sausage to this stuffing when adding the bread.

DO-AHEAD STUFFING

Steps:

• Melt the butter in a large deep skillet over medium heat. Add celery and onion; cook and stir until tender, about 10 minutes. Blend in the bread crumbs, salt, poultry seasoning, pepper, thyme and sage. Stir in enough chicken broth to moisten. Spoon into large resealable bags and refrigerate for up to 3 days.
• To bake, preheat the oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Place the stuffing into greased casserole dishes.
• Bake for 45 minutes in the preheated oven. If stuffing a bird, cook according to the recipe for your bird and place any extra stuffing into a casserole dish to bake.

THE BEST VEGETARIAN STUFFING EVER

Steps:

• Preheat oven to 350ºF. Melt butter in a large saute pan over medium heat. When the butter is melted add one tablespoon of the sage, the onion, celery and the carrot. When the onions become translucent, add the garlic, apples and salt and pepper generously, very generously. After the apples have cooked for about 2 minutes, pour the vegetable broth into the pan, season with the cayenne and more salt and pepper as needed, and let the mixture saute for 1 to 2 more minutes. Tear the bread into approximately 1/2-inch squares and place in a 2-3/4-quart casserole dish. Add the cranberries and sage. Remove the mixture from the stove and pour it over the bread. Mix well and bake uncovered at 350ºF for about 45 minutes to an hour. For best results, stir at least once.