Stuffing

As I mentioned in the turkey post, I don't put stuffing in my bird. But that doesn't mean there is no stuffing. WHAT A TERRIBLE THOUGHT.

My stuffing recipe is pretty flexible and changes every year. But it usually goes a bit like this:

Fry an onion (or two), some garlic, and 3-4 finely chopped celery stalks in butter, in a reasonable sized pot. Then add:

-pepper

-salt

-lots of parsley

-lots of sage

-a bit of rosemary and/or thyme if you have any

-more butter

-bacon, if you feel like it

-1 egg

-mushrooms

-some kind of nuts - I like walnuts or pine nuts, although chestnuts are traditional.

Then chuck in about 300g of roughly cubed bread. I like to use a really seedy multigrain with a hearty rye flavour, but if you want to go more traditional you can just use white bread.

Add some chicken stock to keep the whole thing moist, then put into a baking dish. I usually do this the night before Christmas, so it has plenty of time to get tasty and flavourful. But take it out first thing Christmas morning so it'll be room temperature by the time it goes in the oven.

My oven is usually pretty full of turkey and veggies by this stage, so I just chuck it in as soon as the turkey comes out, uncovered, for 40 minutes, as high as my oven will go. It warms all the way through and ends up all crunchy on top.