Name: Sausage Stuffing
Prep time: 20 min
Cook time: 1 h 10 min
Total time: 1 h 30 min
Yield: 8 servings
Cuisine: American
Ingredients: 400 g day-old white bread, cut into 2 cm cubes; 450 g pork sausage meat; 1 tbsp butter; 2 onions, finely chopped; 3 celery sticks, finely chopped; 3 garlic cloves, crushed; 3 tbsp fresh sage, chopped; 1 tbsp fresh thyme leaves; 1 tsp salt; ½ tsp black pepper; 400 ml chicken stock; 2 eggs, beaten

Sausage Stuffing

Cubes of toasted bread, sausage meat, onion, celery and sage baked at 180C for 45 minutes until crisp on top and moist within.

1 hr 30 min total Serves 8 servings Easy

Before You Start

Dry the bread cubes first.

Add stock gradually.

Bake uncovered for a crisp top.

Making Sausage Stuffing

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Heat the oven to 150°C / 300°F. Spread the bread cubes on 2 trays and dry them for 25 minutes. Raise the oven to 180°C / 355°F.
While the bread dries, brown the sausage meat in a large pan for 8 minutes, breaking it up. Lift out. Add the butter, onions and celery and cook for 8 minutes. Add the garlic, sage, thyme, salt and pepper for 1 minute.
Tip the bread and sausage into a large bowl with the vegetables. Add two thirds of the stock and the eggs and toss gently, adding more stock if the bread still seems dry.
Spoon into a greased baking dish.
Bake uncovered for 45 minutes until golden and crisp on top.

What's Going On Here

Toast the bread first. That one instruction is the difference between stuffing that holds its shape and stuffing that turns to porridge, because dry, toasted cubes can absorb a lot of stock without falling apart, and soft fresh ones cannot.

Cut a day-old loaf into 2 cm cubes and dry them in a low oven for 25 minutes, until they feel like croutons. Meanwhile brown the sausage meat with onion, celery and plenty of sage in a large pan, using the sausage fat to soften the vegetables. Fresh sage is far better than dried here, and a handful is not too much.

Add the stock a little at a time. Pour in about two thirds of it, toss, and wait for the bread to absorb it before deciding whether it needs more. The cubes should be damp all through but not sitting in liquid. An egg stirred in binds everything together.

Bake uncovered so that the top becomes crisp and golden, with soft, savoury stuffing underneath. A tray with a little more surface area than depth gives more crisp edges, which are what everyone fights over at the table.

Leftovers, Reheating and Keeping

Keeps for 3 days in the fridge. Reheat covered at 170°C / 338°F for 15 minutes.

Ingredient Swaps

An eighth of a teaspoon of garlic powder per clove is the stand-in usually given when you are out of fresh garlic; it will not brown the same way, and it burns easily, so add it with the liquid.

Serving Sausage Stuffing

Roast turkey
Gravy
Cranberry sauce
Roast vegetables