With Thanksgiving quickly approaching, I figured it no better time than now, to perfect one of my favorite Thanksgiving side dishes, STUFFING! Growing up my dad would cook Pepperidge Farms Pre-Packaged Stuffing and then spruce it up a bit by sautéing mushrooms, onions, garlic and celery to add to it. That was all I ever knew of stuffing. To me that was better than that yucky StuffTop brand, but still not quite up to my standards of eating these days. So, since I am not down with all of those preservatives, additives and all the other unnecessary junk that is added to packaged foods, I went ahead and made my own, Healthier Homemade Stuffing!
It is made using REAL and SIMPLE ingredients and you would never know the difference! The most important ingredient is finding a fresh baked Sourdough, French or Ciabatta Bread to use. I recommend going to your local bakery, I chose Whole Foods because they use cleaner ingredients than most.
First, you will want to dice your bread into bite size pieces and let them sit out overnight to dry out. If you don’t have time for that, or you simply forget, you can bake them at 325 for about 30 minutes or so. Once the bread is completely dry, place it into a large bowl and set aside.
The next step is to brown your sausage, using a sauté pan, and set aside once it is fully cooked. I used organic ground pork from Whole Foods, but you can use any sausage of your choosing. If you don’t like pork or simply choose to omit this, feel free to!
Next, I melted the butter into a pan and sautéed the onions, celery, mushrooms and garlic until the onions were translucent. Then I added in all of the spices. Once that was all cooked together, set aside.
Next, in a medium bowl, add your turkey or chicken broth ( you can use vegetable broth if vegan) and whisk in your two eggs, (haven’t tried flax eggs). Then pour this mixture over your bread. Add in your veggies and mix it all together.
Lastly, transfer your stuffing into a 9×13 baking dish and bake at 375 degrees for a total of 1 hour. For the first 30 minutes, cover your stuffing with foil and then remove for the remaining 30 minutes.
I really hope that you make this Healthier Homemade Stuffing, so that you can really impress your family and friends this Thanksgiving! I think that you will find that not only does it taste better because it is homemade, but also because that it was surprisingly simple to make as well!
If you end up making this, please comment below or tag me at #healthymommamanda
Recipe:
Ingredients:
- 1 loaf of Sourdough (Ciabatta, French, etc)
- 1 lb of ground pork or sausage of choice
- 4 celery sticks, diced
- 4 oz organic white mushrooms, chopped
- 1 organic yellow onion, diced
- 4-5 garlic cloves, minced
- 1/2 cup grass-fed butter
- Salt and pepper
- 1 tbsp organic poultry seasoning
- 1 tbsp dried sage
- 1 tbsp garlic powder
- 2 pasture raised eggs
- 2 1/2 cups organic turkey broth
Instructions:
- Cube your Sourdough bread into bite size pieces. Let your bread sit out for at least 6 hours or overnight, preferably. If you skip this step, you can easily place the bread into the oven at 325 degree for 30 minutes until the bread dries out. *You want the bread to dry out so that it will absorb the liquid* Once dried out, place diced bread into a large bowl and set aside.
- Preheat oven to 375 degrees and line or spray a 9x 13 inch dish and set aside.
- Brown your sausage in a sauté pan until fully cooked and set aside.
- Melt your butter in a large pan. Once melted, sauté your onions, mushrooms, celery and chopped garlic until onions are translucent. Add in your spices and cook for a few minutes longer until fragrant.
- In a bowl, pour in your broth and whisk in your eggs. Once mixed, pour on top of your bread.
- Add the sausage and the sautéed veggies into the bread bowl as well.
- Mix everything together until fully incorporated and then transfer your stuffing to baking dish.
- Cover your stuffing with foil for 30 minutes. Remove foil and bake for another 25-30 minutes.
- Enjoy!