Stuffing

bread, herbs and butter

October 10th, 2010

The practice of stuffing animals and vegetables, for cooking, is documented right back to Roman times. Stuffing adds flavour to the cooking and puts more food on the menu – it certainly helps feed all the guests at Christmas. Do make sure that you allow extra cooking time for large stuffed birds. If in doubt, use a meat thermometer.

Stuffing recipe (for the main cavity of a 10 lb turkey):

3 slices of stale sourdough bread
6 pieces of garlic
1 large onion
a large knob of butter
half a pound of good sausage meat
a few sprigs of rosemary, sage and thyme (a few of each herb)
salt and pepper

You can either chop all this up or it’s much simpler to use a food processor, if you have one. My food processor isn’t huge, so I did the bread, butter and herbs first, removed them to a bowl and then did the sausage meat, onion and garlic. With a good sprinkle of sea salt and cracked black pepper, I finished the mixing by hand. Then go ahead and stuff your bird.

get stuffed

That’s it. Do buy some good sausage meat from the butcher, or some of his best sausages – mine does amazing Cumberland sausages, so I used those. You could also add bacon, chestnuts, etc. There’s no reason why you couldn’t cook this in a roasting tray if you need extra, or use it to stuff peppers or even lambs’ hearts