I noticed that the New York Times has an article today about stuffing, and I don't want my blog to be left out, so I am including my stuffing recipe here too. It is actually my mother's stuffing recipe and we have made it for Thanksgiving as long as I can remember. Mom said that she got it years ago from Southern Living magazine. That is one of our favorite magazines for good recipes. We call it Southern Cornbread Stuffing. Here is the recipe.
This is more than enough stuffing for a 20 pound turkey. If there is extra, put it in a baking dish, cover with foil and bake for 45 minutes at the end of the turkey baking cycle.
The night before Thanksgiving, make a 9 x 12 pan of cornbread and leave it sit out on the counter all night. You could make it two days ahead. Dry is good. You can use cornbread made from scratch, or you can use two Jiffy cornbread mixes, either is fine. Also the night before, chop 7 stalks of celery and 3 large white onions and put them in bags in the refrigerator so you have less work in the morning. In the morning I take a large heavy soup pot, crumble the corn bread into it and add an equal amount of bread stuffing that you have made yourself with day old bread toasted with sage in the oven, or you can buy stuffing croutons in bags. The bag bread doesn't have a lot of flavor, even though it says it does on the package.
Take the giblets from the turkey, wash them well, put in a pan and cover with water. Add salt, a bayleaf, and a few peppercorns. Let this simmer for 30-45 minutes or until the giblets are soft and cooked well. What you want for the stuffing is the flavorful broth, not the giblets. Some people use the giblets in the gravy. My mother told me last night on the phone that her mother ground up giblets in the meat grinder and put them, uncooked, into her stuffing. Mom said it was "gooooood".
Saute the celery and onion in two sticks of real salted butter and 2 T. of oil. When the celery and onion are transparent, add them with the melted butter from the pan, into the bread. In the same pan as you sauted the onions and celery, add a package of sliced almonds and saute for a few minutes and add them to the pan with the bread. Add enough of the broth from the giblets to moisten the stuffing, usually a cup or two. Beat 2 eggs and add them to the stuffing to moisten. I forgot the eggs one year, and the stuffing was fine. Add 2-3 tablespoons of ground sage, 1 t. salt, 1 t. pepper, and 2 T. poultry seasoning. Taste and adjust the seasonings. You can add thyme, or parsley, but I just like the taste of sage. It takes more sage than you might imagine to flavor this much bread.
The stuffing is ready to put into the bird at this point. Dry and salt the cavity both front and back of the turkey and spoon the stuffing in. Cover the opening with buttered aluminum foil to hold the stuffing in, truss and put the turkey into a 350 degree oven for however long you need it to cook, 20 minutes per pound. I always baste the turkey with the butter and the pan juices at least once every 30 minutes while it cooks.
One year, in a burst of enthusiasm, I basted the turkey in champagne, but I wouldn't recommend it. I think he was too dead to notice.
Sometimes I think that turkey recipes do not cook the bird long enough. Make sure that the legs move loosely, and that the juices are running clear in the thigh. Meat thermometers help a lot. Do not believe the pop up timers. They are a silly invention and often pop too soon or too late. I make a tent for my turkey and remove it at the end, so he browns at the end of cooking.
I know some people add sausage, chestnuts, cranberries, oysters or other types of additions to make their stuffing more elaborate and complex. But, this cornbread stuffing is simple and really tastes great.
The turkey should sit at least 30 minutes before it is carved to make the juices set. This gives us time to make the gravy.
Cranberries are easy. Take a bag of cranberries, add 1 1/2 cups of sugar and 1/4 c. of water and a few small peels of orange or orange zest. Cook until the berries pop and cool in the refrigerator. It jells nicely, tastes sweet and savory, and goes just great with the cornbread stuffing. George likes the jelled cranberry out of the can, so I often cool that and open one up to put on a relish tray. Don't forget the black and green olives and a few green onions to add spice to the plate.
George makes the gravy at our house the way his mother made it. The trick is that he makes a roux with flour and the drippings in the pan that the turkey cooked in, and gets it nice and dark before he adds the stock and the water and pours it into another pan to heat. His gravy is very good, and I just stand by in awe.
My very first Thanksgiving as a married woman, I wanted very much to have a big beautiful feast. I bought a huge 25 pound turkey--don't ask me why. When I took it out on Thanksgiving morning to put it in the oven,...it wouldn't fit into the apartment sized oven. I hadn't thought of that! We had to take the racks out and sit it on the floor of the oven. NOT a good idea. Ah, youth. The worst mistake I ever made on Thanksgiving was to make a rice stuffing because my husband liked rice. It was horrid. I cried. And then there was the year that a friend put the gravy in the gravy bowl and set it on a rack in a warm oven to keep warm and it overturned and all of the gravy went onto the floor of the oven. No gravy that year. And...then there was the time that I had a housefull of company at the table, and the water main broke and there was no water. And...well, you get the idea.
Thanksgivings have calmed down considerable for me as the years go by, and for that I am very very thankful.
