Sausage Gravy Stuffing | Best Thanksgiving Stuffing I've Ever Had | Food Wishes

Hello, this is Chef John from foodwishes.com with sausage gravy stuffing. That's right. Instead of the usual broth or stock, we are making this stuffing with a turkey sausage gravy. And I'm actually upset I did not think of this a long time ago because it produced the most gorgeous, most delicious, most satisfying stuffing I've ever made. So, I'm beyond excited to be sharing this with you. And to get started, we're going to cut up some bread to like half inch pieces. And yes, I'm using two different kinds. A regular French bread loaf and also one small baguette since that's what's going to give me the exact amount I need. And while of course you can buy prepared croutons for stuffing, I think it's always so much better if we make our own. And by the way, when I say halfinch cube, that's like the average size. Okay, we're going to have pieces that are smaller and some that are bigger, but that will make no difference at all. So, I went ahead and cubed up those two loaves and then transferred that onto two parchment line baking sheets. And once we have that evenly distributed, we'll go ahead and pop that into a 300°ree oven for about 30 to 45 minutes or until our bread cubes are completely dry and crispy. And of course, your times will vary depending on how dry your bread was. And that's it. We'll simply let that sit and cool on the pans before we transfer it into a big mixing bowl. And once that's set, we can go ahead and start our sausage gravy, which we'll begin by melting an entire stick of butter over mediumigh heat. And once that melts, we'll go ahead and transfer in a whole bunch of diced onion along with our salt. And then we'll cook that, stirring for a few minutes until our onions turn translucent and start to take on a little bit of color. And by the way, if a stuffing recipe doesn't include at least one stick of butter, it should be disregarded and probably discarded since that is definitely one of the keys. But anyway, once our onions are looking a little something like this, we'll go ahead and transfer in one pound of ground turkey. And then we'll cook all this stirring for about 5 minutes or so while we break that turkey up into nice small crumbles. And of course, as usual, the exact size is up to you. But personally, I do think it should be crumbled fairly small. So, as to get a better distribution through the stuffing. So, I think we should go at least this small, but you could even go a little smaller if you want. And then once our crumbling is complete, we can begin the browning where we will cook this mixture, stirring occasionally, until it takes on some beautiful color, which is not only going to be great for appearances, but as always, it improves the taste as well. And once our mixture is looking a little something like this, we'll go ahead and turn our plain ground meat into sausage by, of course, adding some spices and herbs, including some freshly ground black pepper, some ground nutmeg, some garlic powder, a generous spoon of poultry seasoning, which includes dried rosemary, sage, thyme, among other things. And we'll finish this phase up with a few shakes of cayenne. And we'll go ahead and stir that in and cook it for one more minute before we stop to do our rue, which involves transferring in some all-purpose flour. And we will stir that in and cook this for about 2 minutes. And if we were making a regular sausage gravy to put over some biscuits, we'd probably want to cook and toast that r a little more thoroughly. But for this application, because this is going to bake in the oven as a stuffing, it really doesn't need to cook that long. So, we'll just cook that for a couple minutes, at which point we can transfer in the best turkey or chicken broth we can find. All right, preferably homemade, but the nicer brands of the prepared stuff will be fine. And we'll go ahead and stir that in and raise our heat to high. And we'll wait for that to start to simmer and thicken. And after letting that boil for a couple minutes, we'll go ahead and dump in our diced celery. And we'll stir that in and let that cook for another couple minutes or until that celery softens up a little bit. All right. Nothing hardens up a nice stuffing buzz like crunchy celery. So even though our stuffing gets baked, we want to give our celery a head start. And then of course you should also give this a taste, checking mostly for salt since the amount in the prepared broth can vary. But please keep in mind this is getting mixed into bland bread cubes. So, we really do want it extremely flavorful and fairly aggressively seasoned at this point. And if it is, we can turn off our heat since it's ready to use. And by use, I mean we'll very, very carefully pick it up. And we will pour that over our cooled crispy bread cubes. And then before we mix this together, I'm going to toss in some freshly minced rosemary as well as some finely chopped Italian parsley. since I do enjoy the combination of fresh and dried herbs in a stuffing as they each add flavors the other one can't. But those are technically optional. So, you decide. I mean, you guys are after all the peaches and herbs of your herbs. But either way, we're going to want to give this a very thorough mixing and not just so everything's uniformly combined, but we are also releasing a lot of heat, which is kind of important since we're just about to add the last ingredient, which is a couple beaten eggs. And if we did that when this mixture was still piping hot, some of that egg might scramble, which would not be ideal. But after about a minute of mixing, there should be no problem. And that's it. Once those eggs are mixed in, we are ready to transfer this into our turkey or in my case into a nice big deep casserole dish. And by the way, it's only really a stuffing if you stuff it into something. Okay, if you bake it in a dish, it's actually considered a dressing. And I was just about to say fun fact, but that's really just more of a fact. Oh, and do not under any circumstances pack this down and smooth out the top. Oh, no. All we want to do is take the tip of our spoon and go around giving this the old poka poka until everything's evenly distributed and the surface features lots of cracks and crevices, not to mention nooks and crannies. And that's it. Our sausage gravy stuffing is ready to transfer into the upper center of a 375 degree oven for about 40 minutes or until the top is beautifully browned. And it looks like this. Oh yeah. Now that is one gorgeous looking stuffing. In fact, it's so beautiful. I'm not even going to sprinkle any chives or parsley over the top, which you know I love to do. And yes, we should probably let that rest a little bit before we dig in. Right. 10 minutes or so is plenty, but you can definitely go longer than that since this kind of stuff stays hot quite a while. So, I did wait a little bit before I grabbed a spoon to serve some up. And I'm very happy to report the texture was perfect, right? Very crispy on top and then sticky and moist inside without being wet. And then as far as the flavor goes, if you've had and enjoyed sausage stuffings in the past, I am sure you're going to love this, but I think way way more since by using a gravy instead of a broth, everything's a little richer and a little more satisfying. And while it's basically the same ingredients, it just seems a little more decadent and special. And of course, in real life, we'd be enjoying this with all the other holiday specialties, including whatever gravy we're going to be using for our turkey, which yes, could totally be the gravy we use to make the stuffing. And I'm assuming some of you have already thought of that. Okay, you can make a double batch and then use half for the stuffing and half for the meal. But whether you kill two turkey sides with one stone or just make this stuffing as shown, it really truly was the best bread stuffing I've ever made. Which is why I really do hope you give it a try soon. So, please follow the links below for the ingredient amounts, a printable written recipe, and much more info as usual. And as always, enjoy.