How to Make Stuffing

• Also try: Stuffing
  
• Also try: Mahalo's Guide to the Best Thanksgiving Stuffing Recipes
  
• Also try: How to Cook a Turkey
  
• Also try: How to Make Cranberry Sauce
  
• Also try: How to Make Pumpkin Pie
  
  

Guide Note: There are so many tasty stuffing variations to choose from (see Mahalo's guide to the best Thanksgiving stuffing recipes for ideas), but here are instructions for how to make homemade bread stuffing the classic way.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction
• Choosing a Recipe
• Holiday Controversy! Cooking Inside vs. Outside the Bird
• What You'll Need
• Instructions for Making Stuffing

Introduction

• Of all the special delectables we've come to love around the holidays, stuffing just might be the most essential dish...especially during Thanksgiving! But it needs to be done just right — not too dry, not too wet, gotta use the right bread, mix in the right seasonings, include the right veggies. And the most important path to impressing your dinner guests: it's gotta be homemade!

Choosing a Recipe

(Creative Commons photo by unwritten)

• Are you feeling adventurous? Wanna mix some meat into your stuffing? Some cheese? Maybe a fruit or two, or an exotic nut, perhaps? Although we'll mainly be focusing on the traditional stuffing most of us grew up loving (thanks, Mom!), there are tons of great stuffing recipes worth referencing that use all kinds of enticing rogue ingredients. But first...

Holiday Controversy! Cooking Inside vs. Outside the Bird

• It's an age old debate: cook the stuffing outside the bird and miss out on those savory turkey juices (and be forced to call it dressing, too), or cook it inside the bird and risk ingesting a nice big batch of salmonella. Some cooks do both, but many exclusively practice one over the other.

Better Safe Than Sorry!

• Those folks who swear by their outside-the-bird methods say that, above all else, cooking stuffing inside the turkey's hard! To get the stuffing to a temperature that will kill off all bacteria — 165 degrees at the least — the actual turkey must reach an even higher temp. It could make for some seriously dried-out fowl, and your stuffing could end up greasy or soupy.

C'mon, If It's Good Enough for Great-Grandma...

Careful when you stuff! (Creative Commons photo by Brooke)

• Proponents for cooking stuffing inside their turkeys point out that it is called "stuffing," after all, with folks from Ye Olde England onward having cooked within the cavity of the bird for generations. But there's no doubt that it's risky. To get flavorful, moist stuffing without the food-borne illness, follow the USDA's guidelines for safely stuffing a turkey.

What You'll Need

• For our purposes, we're going to concentrate on preparing — outside the bird — a traditional Thanksgiving sage and onion bread stuffing. This dish is pretty basic, but you can always plug in different or additional ingredients. Just remember that having the right consistency is this recipe's toughest trick — be sure to use ingredients that won't either infuse or suck out too much moisture.

Ingredients

• 6 to 8 cups of croutons made from your favorite bread
• 1 of your favorite variety of onion, chopped
• 1 tablespoon fresh sage (1 teaspoon if dried)
• 3 medium-sized stalks of celery, chopped
• 1 to 2 sticks of butter (not margarine)
• 1/2 cup of your favorite nuts
• Salt and pepper
• 1/2 cup chopped scallions (optional)
• 1/2 cup chopped fresh parsley (optional)
• 2 teaspoons poultry seasoning (optional)
• 3 large eggs, lightly beaten (optional)
• 1/2 cup dried cranberries (optional)
• 1 diced apple (optional)
• 1 to 3 cups chicken stock

Equipment

• 1 baking sheet
• 1 large mixing bowl
• 1 skillet
• 1 casserole dish
• 1 chef's knife

Instructions for Making Stuffing

Fancy using French Bread? (Creative Commons photo by FotoDawg)

The Bread

• Some stuffing recipes call for plain white bread, which might work OK...but broadening your horizons a bit in this category could take your dish from "pretty tasty" to "utterly scrumptious!"

1. Select a loaf of bread you love, and perhaps one that's a bit more sturdy than white bread. French or Italian bread holds up especially well if you find yourself adding more liquids than you originally anticipated.
2. You can dry the bread one of two ways (don't use soft bread...you'll end up with a soggy mess!): either dry it out the night before you'll be eating, or toast it the day-of.
3. Cut each slice of bread lengthwise into half-inch strips. Then lay each piece in a single layer side by side on your baking sheet.
4. If you're toasting, place the sheet in a 350-degree oven for eight to 10 minutes. Don't let the bread get too brown — it should be toasted just enough to be brittle.
5. Cut the pieces into cubes, enough for eight cups (although you may not need all eight). Place in bowl.

The Skillet Goodies

• The first skillet ingredient we'll add is the onion, and it provides us another opportunity to meander a bit from the norm. If you truly love the ever-popular white onion, go for it! But sweeter onions like Walla-Wallas or Vidalias are really great in stuffing as well. Some folks use red onion, too.
• Extra tip: Try to chop your veggies as finely as possible so the ingredients blend well throughout your stuffing mixture and don't make the stuffing too chunky.

Try a Vidalia. (Creative Commons photo by Doug Craig)

1. Chop the onion and place it in your skillet.
2. Chop the celery by slicing the stalks lengthwise and then crosswise, and add to the onion.
3. Add six to eight tablespoons of butter. You may even want more butter, but start small at first — you can always add more (and whether you do so often depends on the amount of bread you're using).
4. Add your sage, and now's the time to add other herbs if you'd like. Parsley, sage, rosemary & thyme (or just poultry seasoning) are all fair game, but sage is the one you pretty much gotta have — it produces that aroma we all automatically link to good ol' traditional Thanksgiving stuffin'.
5. If you chose to include fruits like apple or cranberry, or extra veggies like scallions, add those in now as well.
6. Add some salt and pepper and saute this mixture for five to ten minutes, stirring constantly, until the onion begins to soften and become translucent, and the herbs are fragrant. If you're including nuts, add those in sometime during this process so that they begin to brown.
   Extra tip from Dean's mom: "I saute the chopped onion and celery in the microwave. It's sooo much easier, less messy (no skillet), and there's less chance of burning the veggies."
7. Remove skillet from the stovetop and place mixture in your bowl with the bread.

The Home Stretch

• Here's the step that's going to make or break us in terms of moisture content and consistency — adding your chicken stock.

1. First, if you're including eggs in your stuffing (which makes for a richer flavor and adds an appetizing golden brown hue), do so now as you begin to stir the contents of the bowl.
   Extra tip from Dean's mom: "I don't use eggs in my stuffing, but I have in the past and have always thinned the lightly beaten eggs with a bit of cold chicken stock."
2. OK, moment of truth time: stir in about a half-cup of your chicken stock (and be sure to use chicken, turkey or vegetable stock over plain water. May as well use liquid that adds even more flavor, right?). As you stir and toss together your ingredients, keep adding chicken stock until the bread is lightly moistened. Again, don't add too much too soon as you can always add more.
3. Keep tossing until the dry and wet ingredients are evenly distributed.
4. Butter a 13 x 9 x 2 casserole dish and turn your mixture into it.
5. Cover tightly with foil (you may butter the foil as well) and bake at 350 degrees anywhere from 25 to 45 minutes or until fragrant.
6. Remove foil and bake another 15 to 20 minutes until a nice, golden crust forms on top
7. Serve warm, and promptly!
8. Refrigerate any leftover stuffing immediately. Keeps for several days.

Resources for How to Make Stuffing

• The New York Times: "To Stuff or Dress the Bird? James Beard Had It Covered" (2006)
• MSNBC: Dress Your Holiday Bird for Success
• Cook's Illustrated: Oven-Baked Holiday Stuffings
• eHow: How to Make Stuffing Easily from Scratch
• eHow: How to Make Bread Stuffing
• All Things Frugal: Homemade Turkey Dressing
• MarthaStewart.com: Food Safety, Fallacies, and Facts
• Perfect Entertaining: Creating the Perfect Turkey
• Food Network: Stuffing 101
• Wikipedia: Stuffing History
• yumsugar: Do You Cook Stuffing Inside or Outside of the Turkey?
• Calorie-Count: Diet Forums: Stuffing
• USDA: Let's Talk Turkey: A Consumer Guide to Safely Roasting a Turkey

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