The Best Sausage Stuffing

Soft and tender with tons of flavor

This recipe is a guide for creating the perfect stuffing base. In this one, we use sausage; however, you can remove the sausage and add any other ingredients you want as an internal garnish. For example, if you want to use bacon in place of the sausage, or shrimp, smoked salmon, roasted and pulled chicken, etc., just adjust as you see fit.

Ingredients:

1 loaf of basic sliced white bread

2 ribs of celery - cleaned and diced

1 carrot peeled

1/2 onion - diced

3 cloves garlic minced

2 sausage raw - cut out of the casing

3 cups chicken stock

2 eggs beaten

2 tablespoons fresh sage chopped

1 tablespoon fresh thyme chopped

6 ounces unsalted butter

4 tablespoons nutritional yeast (optional)

Steps:

1. Dice the white bread and line on a sheet pan (two if needed as you don’t want to pile the bread, it should be an even layer).

2. Toast the bread in a 350F oven for about 10 minutes or until it’s golden brown.

3. While the bread is toasting, add the sauce to a cold pan with the butter and bring up to heat slowly. You want the sausage to render and release the fat slowly.

4. When the sausage has cooked, add the carrots, onions, and celery and saute for about 5-7 minutes until the veggies are softened.

5. Add the garlic and cook for another minute. Then, remove from the heat.

6. Once the bread is toasted and the sausage veggie mixture is cooled, mix the two together in a large bowl. Add in the remaining ingredients.

7. Let the bread mix sit and absorb the juices for about 5-10 minutes.

8. Rub a baking pan with butter, and then pour the stuffing mixture into the baking pan.

9. Cover tightly with aluminum foil, then bake in a 325F oven for about 40 minutes. Remove the foil, turn the heat up to 400 and brown the top for another 10 minutes.

10. When the stuffing has come out of the oven, you can drizzle it with a mixture of more butter and freshly chopped herbs as an option topping.