Easy Herb Stuffing Recipe (2024)

FAQs

Is stuffing better with or without eggs? ›

It's all about personal preference. If you want a sturdier dressing, eggs can help do that. I don't use eggs in this recipe, though, because I like a lighter, more crumbly texture in my dressing.

The best bread for stuffing is a sturdy loaf with a tight crumb. Bakery French bread, Italian bread, Challah, and Sourdough are all good choices. When you cut up a 1-pound loaf into cubes, it should fit in an even layer on a single half-size rimmed baking sheet.

Make the stuffing, melt butter in a large frying pan and gently sauté onion and garlic for five minutes until soft. Stir in the herbs for one minute then add breadcrumbs to absorb butter. Mix in zest, pine nuts and seasoning and cook over medium heat for about seven minutes until crumbs start to brown and crisp.

Stuffing consists of a mixture of savoury ingredients such as breadcrumbs, herbs, fruit, nuts, sausagemeat and onion which are bound together with egg or liquid to form a semi-solid mixture. It is usually cooked with roast meat such as chicken, pork or lamb and is served as an accompaniment to the sliced, cooked meat.

Broth: Chicken broth keeps the stuffing moist without making it soggy. Eggs: Two lightly beaten eggs help hold the dressing together and add moisture. Water: You can add a few tablespoons of water, if you'd like, to achieve your desired consistency.

This is the base; it's what gives the stuffing structure, and it plays a big role in determining the texture. While you can use almost any bread — cornbread, bagels, or even frozen waffles — to make stuffing, it needs to be dried or “staled” first.

Freshly made pita crisps and puffs up like a ball, perfect for stuffing with the filling of your choice: shawarma, falafel, muhamarra or any other Middle Eastern goodies. Tabun (or taboon) is softer and flatter: use as open sandwich rather than trying to stuff it.

You haven't said whether you are going to cook the stuffing inside the bird or out, but it's fine to make almost any stuffing a few hours before you'll need it. The important thing is to keep it properly chilled so that bacteria won't have a chance to grow in it.

Tear the stale bread into small chunks and whiz into breadcrumbs. Add these to the bowl, then crush and crumble in the chestnuts. Place the diced pork into the food processor, pick in the sage leaves, roughly chop and add the bacon, followed by 1 level teaspoon of white pepper and a good pinch of sea salt.

Does stuffing contain onions? ›

Stuffing can be made of many different things, but the ingredients most varieties of stuffing have in common are some sort of starch (breadcrumbs, rolled oats, pearl barley etc), some sort of herb (bay leaves, sage, garlic) and chopped onion or another kind of vegetable.

Typically high in fat, carbs and salt, stuffing can be made fresh or purchased chilled, frozen or dehydrated. Traditionally, a stuffing would use the giblets of the bird with the addition of sausage meat, a source of starch, such as bread, with some aromatics such as onion, herbs and spices.

But for the Thanksgiving side dish in the South, the term dressing was adopted in place of stuffing, which was viewed as a crude term, during the Victorian era. Although dressing and stuffing are interchangeable terms, the signature ingredient of this Thanksgiving side dish in the South is cornbread.

Typically, baking the stuffing inside the bird helps keep the mixture moist. “I prefer stuffing (in the bird) to dressing (outside of the bird) because all those delicious drippings that come off the turkey gets absorbed right into the stuffing,” Bamford says.

You want your stuffing moist but not soggy and certainly not dry. The bread in the stuffing absorbs moisture, but if it's dry (as it should be, see above), it takes some time for the liquid to settle in. I suggest adding a little at a time, say 1 cup of broth for every 4 cups of dry mix.