Food Holiday Food
Almost my favorite dish at Thanksgiving Dinner.
Because I am thinking about it a lot today as the holidays approach we are going to talk about a family favorite…
Rice stuffing
My recipe started out as the childhood favorite I enjoyed that Mom and Grandma once made for the holidays however over the last twenty some years I have tweaked it and, in my opinion, Improved it. I hope you enjoy.
Ingredients:
4 cups dice onion
3 cups diced celery
2 cups diced mushrooms (optional but do it if you can)
Note1 dice as coarse or as finely as you like. I do the onion very fine and the other vegetables medium coarse, but you do you. As far as mushrooms use what you like. I have made this with probably 8-10 different wild and domestic types over the years and all were good.
10 cups chicken broth
1 cup wild rice
8 cups rice
2 tablespoons better than bullion
2-3 lbs of sausage
Note2 use whatever kind of rice you like we use plain white rice without further identification usually with a yellow label and the word rice on it. So far as the better than bullion goes I guess you can use cubes or granules but you will be happier if you use better than bullion and may never use the dry bullion again. Lastly the sausage traditionally this is Sage breakfast sausage (Jimmy Dean I believe) and while that is my favorite I have made it with hot sausage, plain sausage, Italian sausage, and others over the years and all were really good. Bottom line use the sausage you like in a quantity that makes your heart happy or at least satisfied I think 5 lbs+ would make more of a meat loaf than stuffing.
Ok the first step is to dump all the broth, wild rice, and better than bullion in a big pot and set it going as high a heat as you can get it to go.
Then once that starts to boil cover it turn the heat to medium.
Now crumble fry tour sausage. Once the sausage is cooked and crumbled move it to a bowl retaining as much of the drippings as possible in the skillet.
Then over medium low heat add all your vegetables to the skillet. Cook the veg until the onions are mostly clear, the celery is starting to bend, and the mushrooms have darkened and started to shrink. Don’t cook them until the onions are invisible, the celery is totally limp, and the mushrooms loos all structural integrity that is no good at all. (if you cut the celery significantly larger than the onions add that by itself a few minutes before the rest) Then remove the vegetables and just add them to the bowl with the sausage.
Thoroughly deglaze the skillet with a ¼-1/2 cup of the boiling broth and dump it back in the pot.
At this point and only now add your rice to the boiling stock reduce heat to med low and cover. Cook until your rice is done (I don’t know what kind of rice you like so figure it out and depending on variety you may need to adjust your liquid) and liquid is absorbed (it is ok if it is a little wet but shouldn’t have standing liquid).
Combine all of the sausage mixture and all of the rice mixture together in a big bowl and mix together very well.
Spread this mixture into a large cake pan, casserole dish, or other baking vessel with high sides. If it doesn’t all fit use something like a slightly smaller cookie sheet or another pan that nests in the one you are using to compress the stuffing and add more until you get it all in there. If it all fits then compress it anyway it is a requirement. If you don’t have a huge pan just split the stuffing in half and then use each half for a regular at home sized sheet cake pan.
Note3 I use a 28x40 pan for this or two regular cake pans/disposable aluminum pans however depth isn’t really relevant (as long as it is at least 2.5 inches) so a big roasting pan or a couple regular cake pans are fine.
Lastly toss it in the oven uncovered at 350 for 45 to 60 minutes until the top starts to brown and get crispy.
This is an all time favorite in our house and also the official day after Thanksgiving or Christmas breakfast food. I truly hope you will try it and enjoy.