Aunt Blanche’s Stuffing

On this blog each recipe has a story behind it. It should, anyway. Food is nothing but fuel without the tales and times that go with it.

I didn’t like stuffing when I was small. My grandmother made a basic, bread-celery-butter-poultry seasoning stuffing that my mother loves, and I can’t stand. Once my mother and I started having Thanksgiving dinner at my dad’s sister’s house I found a stuffing I could get down with.

It had sausage in it. It sat there on the table in a china bowl, and I kind of looked at it. Did that bit where you dart your eyes over to size up something without offending someone. The smell hit me, and I had to have that stuffing. I have a history of eating two dinners on Thanksgiving, it stretches back to childhood, but I took thirds of my aunt’s stuffing. I took thirds at every holiday dinner she served until I moved down South.

When I was twenty-one or so I asked her for the recipe, and I still have the card I wrote it on. I don’t need that card at all anymore, but I’m holding onto it in case my kids need it.

My aunt has Alzheimer’s. I never got her corn pudding recipe, but I do have this. I have the memory of the first time I made the stuffing myself, and it was so salty I could have died. Turns out when I wrote the letter “T” before salt I used a capital instead of lowercase, read it later literally, and used a full tablespoon of salt. Every time I make this stuffing- as I add the salt I hear my aunt laughing when I reported my mistake to her. Every single time.

There is no one who has eaten this stuffing, aside from my mother and my daughter (so far), who doesn’t either demand the recipe or ask me to make it for holiday dinners. It’s simple, it’s insane, and leftovers are fantastic as a lazy breakfast with gravy over them.

I recommend assembling this either the night before or in the morning of a dinner. It takes up a lot of stove and counter space.

1 average sized loaf of bread, at least a day old

1 pound of sausage with extra sage (Neese’s is best, but Jimmy Dean will do)
1/2 cup diced sweet onion
3/4 cup of diced celery
1 TEASPOON of salt

1 cup turkey or chicken broth- divided
1 large egg, beaten

In a large pan with a lid break up your pound of sausage and use a spoon or paddle to keep it breaking as it browns over medium heat. You want to get a nice brown, dark on some but not others. Put the lid on, lower the heat, and-

Slice 2 ribs of celery into 4 long strips and then dice small. Dice up a sweet onion small as well.

See this? This is how I work. I have no idea what those mounds really are. The measurements at top are via my aunt. This? This is a handful of onion and more than a handful of celery. It’ll do.

You want that sausage to break up pretty small. Adding the onion and celery helps with that. Keep stirring it around, replace the lid, turn heat to low and get to work on your bread.

Today I used some drying-out oatmeal bread and some bakery sandwich rolls. Whatever bread you choose, as long as it’s not too dark and dense, should be fine. Stack it, slice it, and then cube it.

My cubes are less than an inch. Maybe 3/4 of an inch. I don’t know. Not too big, not too small.

This is a teaspoon of salt, ’round about. It’s definitely not a tablespoon. I actually checked it once by transferring it into a measuring spoon, and my hand comes pretty damn close.
Toss the salt into the sausage mixture, stir it around well, lid back on, turn off heat. Let it cool.

YOU MUST LET IT COOL.

Pour 1/2 cup of the broth into the bread cubes and stir it around, tossing a bit. Pour in the beaten egg, and stir some more. Pour the cooled (MUST BE COOL) sausage mixture into the bread cubes and stir and toss well.

If you did not let the sausage cool the egg will have cooked and your stuffing will be icky.

Pour the second 1/2 cup of broth into the mixture and stir well, folding it over itself until some of it is gooey and some is still cubes.

Turn the mixture into a shallow baking dish, cover with foil or the dish’s lid, and refrigerate either overnight or until about 45 min before you want to serve it. This recipe fits exactly into the smaller of the oblong Pyrex baking dishes. Cover it with foil before it goes in the oven, and remove the foil when 20 minutes are left to baking time.

If you try it, let me know how you liked it. If you like it, pass it on.

And make sure to eat some for breakfast.

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