A new snack that will keep kids happy, without making parents feel guilty
A chance to win £100 worth of shopping vouchers
The right stuffing
Do you believe a Christmas bird is just an excuse for the stuffing, the feathered equivalent of bread in a bulging sandwich? Do you deliberately make so much stuffing that there's too much to fit inside the cavity and you have to put the rest in a separate baking dish to cook on its own?
And when it comes to the main course, do you slap a mound of stuffing on to your plate, taking only the most token shaving of the fowl? If the answer to all these questions is ‘yes’ then you’re a stuffing aficionado, someone who understands that stuffing is not just a padding to make the turkey, capon or goose go further, but a dish in its own right – a kind of succulent hot pâté, sophisticated and smooth, or country-rough.
Get tips on making the perfect stuffing, plus discover 7 brilliant stuffing recipes.
- Pork, Sage and Onion Stuffing
- Prune and Foie Gras Stuffing
- French Chestnut and Apple Stuffing
- American Apricot Stuffing
- Cornbread stuffing
- Cornbread stuffing with apples
- Greek Stuffing
Stuffing is an excuse for mashing together favourite, familiar ingredients. Top of the British list is sage and onion. Think of the comfort of Paxo, the king of packet sage and onion stuffings, that storecupboard standby which tastes so good with grilled sausages and helps us out when we can’t be bothered to do the real thing. Well, it is the real thing.
In Normandy, where apples are abundant, apple and sausage stuffing moistened with a slug of Calvados is a classic. The Périgord French in the goose-fattening centre of the country go for all-out luxury with a wonderful prune and foie gras stuffing for the honking bird. The Russian Czars used to stuff goose simply, with just a little thyme and 3 or 4 large tart apples, peeled, cored and chopped.
An Italian recipe uses equal amounts of unsmoked bacon, cooked ham, mushrooms and a dozen juniper berries, all chopped together with the liver of the turkey. Americans make a stuffing of cornbread - a sweet, crumbly bread - with onions, green peppers and celery. In the Southern states, where peanuts are grown, there’s even a stuffing of double-roasted peanuts mixed with onions, cornbread, melted butter and a splash of wine.
The point seems to be that stuffing is made from whatever you have to hand, wherever you live. As long as there is something that will hold the ingredients together – like bread, a cereal, a mashed pulse, sausagemeat or liver, you can include pretty well anything, from apricots to shredded spinach.
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | next
printer friendly
send to a friend
Delicious
Digg
reddit
Facebook
StumbleUpon
Horoscopes| Message Boards | Quizzes | Newsletters | Join
iVillage Ltd is a UK company registered in England & Wales (3837269) at 80-110 New Oxford Street, London WC1 1HB
