Easy Stuffing Recipe

Ever since Thanksgiving I’ve been working at this stuffing recipe. On Thanksgiving I made it with white rice (because we had a lot of leftover white rice from ordering Chinese food), but I prefer other bases for the stuffing. I have been making stuffing in chickens ever since. I highly recommend fresh sage if you can get it (see above photo – I grow it in my backyard, but it’s currently covered with snow); dried sage and other dried herbs are OK substitutes.

Ingredients

• 1 whole chicken (you are going to have to make more if you are using a turkey)
• filler: 1/2 cup cooked couscous or 1/2 cup cooked rice or 1/2 cup cubed homemade bread
• 1 egg
• 1 onion, chopped
• 1 stalk of celery, chopped
• 1 apple, cubed
• salt and pepper to taste
• dried or fresh sage and other herbs to taste
• optional: 1 cubed zucchini (add after the onion is translucent and cook for a bit)

How to prepare the stuffing

Start baking your chicken. You can sprinkle with pepper and fresh squeezed orange juice if you like, but don’t put in the stuffing yet. Meanwhile, prepare the stuffing. Saute the chopped onion and celery. When the onion is translucent, add the chopped apple and optional zucchini. Cook until apple starts to soften. Mix in herbs, seasoning, egg and grain filler. Now that the chicken has baked for at least half an hour, you can add the stuffing with a big spoon. Continue baking the chicken until the chicken is done (probably over an hour total). If you have extra stuffing, you can bake it on the side of the chicken. You can also add other ingredients on the side, like mushrooms or carrots.

If you have vegan friends joining you for the meal, you can prepare twice as much and cook the vegan “stuffing” separately, without the egg and far away from the chicken.

I liked the home-baked bread version the best, but one doesn’t always have extra rye-whole-wheat-sourdough bread available. In general, you should try playing with amounts to get the right proportion of wet ingredients like egg and apple to the grains.