Sage and Sausage Stuffing/Dressing

In my most recent Roast Turkey recipe, I advised you to NOT stuff your turkey because it’s my firm belief that stuffing inside your turkey will ultimately suck all the moisture out of your turkey. It dries up your turkey for two reasons 1) you’d have to overcook your bird in order for the stuffing to be cooked to a certain temperature to kill all possible bacteria inside the bird and 2) it will just suck up all the juices from the turkey, which could make for a wonderful stuffing, but for terrible turkey. Turkey > Stuffing, so please, cook your stuffing outside your bird.

Sage and Sausage Stuffing (but really it’s called a dressing since it’s on the side and not stuffed)

Just like the Green Bean Casserole, you can make the stuffing 2 days in advance. In fact, I recommend making it in advanced because I think the flavors will probably meld together better.

Arnold’s Brick Oven Bread, cubed and dried in the oven

 

Prepping the sausage & celery mixture, and add it on top of the dried bread cubes

Sage and Sausage Stuffing/Dressing

2 loaves of high quality sandwich bread or soft French bread, about 5 quarts
1 lb sage pork sausage (Jimmy Dean works for this one)
1 large onion, finely chopped
4 large stalks celery, finely chopped

2 cloves garlic, minced
1/4 cup minced fresh sage leaves/2 teaspoons dried sage leaves works too

32 ounces (4 cups) low-sodium chicken
3 whole eggs
1/4 cup minced parsley leaves
1 stick butter

salt & pepper

1. Prep the bread for stuffing. Cut the bread into cubes, the bread doesn’t necessarily have to be stale, it has to be dried. I actually did this the night before I was ready to make the stuffing. Preheat the oven to 275 degrees, and spread the bread cubes out evenly on baking sheets. Place the sheets in the oven and bake the cubes for about 50 minutes. 25 minutes into drying out the bread, toss the cubes so that it toasts evenly. When it’s done, set it aside.

2. Cook sausage & celery mixture. In a large pan, melt a stick in medium high heat. Once the butter melts, add the sausage. Break up into small pieces, no much bigger than the bread cubes. Cook until it’s barely pink, for about 10 minutes. Then add celery, onions, garlic and sage and cook until veges are softened. This should take about another 10 minutes. As this cooks,whisk together 2 cups of chicken stock, 3 eggs and 1/4 cup minced parsley leaves. Set aside. Remove from heat and add 2 cups of the chicken stock to the mixture to cool down the sausage mixture. Once it’s cooled down a bit, add the chicken stock and egg mixture.

3. Mix the bread and sausage & celery mixture. Spread out your bread cubes in a 9×13 baking dish and slowly pour in the mixture you just made into the bread. Mix it all together gently. Wrap it tightly with aluminum foil.  You can stop now if you were making this in advance and put it in the fridge. Or continue to the next step of baking it!

4. Bake. Heat the oven to 350 degrees. If you had the stuffing sitting in the fridge, leave it sitting in room temperature for about 1-2 hours so that it will take less time to heat up thoroughly. Bake for about 45 minutes covered with the tin foil. Then remove the foil and put it back into the oven to bake it until it gets heated throughly. If it’s still not hot after an hour, feel free to leave it in the oven for longer. This will give your stuffing that’s both moist and crispy on top.

Voila – Sage and Sausage Stuffing!

 

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