Sausage Stuffing Recipe

Sage, pork sausage and sweet chewy dried cranberries, baked until the top goes crisp and golden and the middle stays soft. The cranberries are what make this Sausage Stuffing Recipe different from most, and I wouldn’t make it without them. Serve it next to the turkey with plenty of gravy over the top.

There are 4 stuffing recipes on this blog, which probably tells you where my priorities sit at Thanksgiving. This is the one I make.
The dried cranberries are the reason. A whole half cup of them scattered through the sausage and the sage, so every few bites you get something sweet and chewy cutting through all that richness. I know they sound odd in a savory stuffing. Put them in anyway.
The rest is pork sausage, a lot of fresh sage, celery and onion, and bread dried out in the oven so it soaks up the broth without going to mush. Crisp golden top, soft savory middle. I’d take a plate of just this and skip the turkey entirely.

• Bread (1 loaf, cut into cubes): I use a French baguette, and day old is even better than fresh. You want something with a real crust and a chewy crumb, because soft sandwich bread collapses into paste. It gets dried in the oven before anything else happens to it.
• Unsalted butter (4 tablespoons): For cooking the sausage and the vegetables in. Unsalted, because the sausage brings plenty of salt on its own.
• Pork sausage (1 pound, casings removed): A spicy Italian sausage with herbs in it is what I’d reach for first, because the flavor is so much better. If you can’t find one or you’d rather skip the heat, a garlic and herb sausage works beautifully.
• Onion (1, chopped) and celery (2 stalks, chopped): White or red onion, whichever you’ve got. Both go in the skillet and soften up with the sausage.
• Fresh sage (¼ cup, chopped): A quarter cup sounds like a lot and it is. Sage is what makes stuffing taste like stuffing, and dried sage won’t get you there, so use fresh.
• Dried cranberries (½ cup): I know this sounds odd in a savory stuffing. They go in with the vegetables, plump up a little in the pan, and give you sweet chewy bites all the way through. Also sold as craisins, if that’s what your store calls them.
• Eggs (3): Whisked with the broth and poured over. They hold the whole thing together.
• Fresh parsley (¼ cup, chopped): Some goes in the egg mixture and some over the top at the end, so the finished dish isn’t entirely brown.
• Garlic (2 cloves, minced): Into the skillet with the onion and celery.
• Chicken broth (¾ cup, low sodium): Not very much, because the eggs bind most of this together on their own. Low sodium again, for the same reason as the butter.
• Salt (½ teaspoon) and black pepper (½ teaspoon): I keep both light, since the sausage is already salty and really flavorful. Taste it before you commit and add more if you want it.

Dry the bread: Oven to 275°F. Spread the bread cubes out over a large baking sheet and give them about 45 minutes, until they’re completely dry and crisp right through.

Please don’t rush this one. Dry bread soaks up the broth and the egg and keeps its shape. Fresh bread turns to paste and there’s no way back from it. Squeeze a cube when you think it’s ready, and if there’s any softness left in the middle, put it back in the oven.

Get the dish ready: Turn the oven up to 350°F and spray a 9×13 inch baking dish with cooking spray.

Cook the sausage: Melt the butter in a large skillet over medium heat, then add the sausage and break it up with a wooden spoon or a potato masher as it cooks. You want fine pieces rather than big clumps, so keep working at it. Cook until there’s no pink left.

Add the vegetables: In go the onion, celery, garlic, sage and dried cranberries, all together, for about 10 minutes until the vegetables have softened. The cranberries plump up a bit in the pan, which is exactly what you want. Then take the skillet off the heat.

Mix the binder: Whisk the eggs, the parsley and the broth together in a bowl and season with the salt and pepper. Add the sausage mixture to the eggs, then gently fold in the bread cubes until everything is evenly coated.

Be gentle here. The bread is crisp and fragile at this point and you’re coating it, not stirring it. It’ll look like far more bread than liquid and that’s right.

Bake it: Into the baking dish, cover it with foil, and 45 minutes at 350°F. Then take the foil off and give it another 15 minutes, until the top is golden brown and crisp.

Finish it: Out of the oven, let it cool for a few minutes, scatter the rest of the parsley over the top and serve.

To whip up this scrumptious sausage stuffing, start by drying cubed bread in the oven until it’s crispy – this forms the perfect base.

One hour at 350°F, split into 45 minutes covered with foil and 15 minutes uncovered.

Keep the foil on for the first 45 minutes. The steam stays in, so the middle cooks through and stays soft. Then take it off and the top dries out and goes golden and crisp. Leave it uncovered the whole way and you get a crunchy lid over a middle that’s still wet, which is the saddest stuffing there is.

Add 45 minutes for drying the bread at 275°F, which is why the card says 2 hours in total. The good news is the bread can be dried a day or 2 ahead, and the cubes keep perfectly well in a paper bag on the counter.

You’ll know it’s done when the top is browned and crisp and the middle is set rather than wobbly. If you’d rather have a number, the center should read about 165°F.

Where it was cooked, and that’s it really.

Stuffing was cooked inside the bird. Dressing was baked separately in a dish. By that definition almost everything people make now is dressing, including this one.

Nobody is actually that strict about it. The word you use mostly depends on where you grew up: stuffing through most of the country, dressing through the South, and both of you talking about the same pan of bread and sausage.

I call it stuffing and I bake it in a dish, which is technically wrong and I’ve made my peace with it.

Yes, and there are 2 ways to go about it depending on how organized you’re feeling.

Dry the bread ahead. Up to 2 days early, then keep the cubes in a paper bag on the counter. A paper bag rather than a sealed container, so any last moisture can escape. This alone takes 45 minutes off your Thanksgiving morning, which is 45 minutes you will want back.

Assemble it the night before. Mix everything, get it into the baking dish, cover it and refrigerate overnight. Let it sit out for 30 minutes before it goes in the oven, and add about 10 minutes to the covered baking time since it’s starting cold.

I wouldn’t assemble it more than a day ahead. The bread keeps softening while it sits in the egg mixture, and by day 2 you’ve undone all that drying you did so carefully.

Yes, up to 3 months, and it reheats really well.

Freeze it baked. Let it cool completely, then wrap the dish in plastic and then foil, or portion it into containers. Thaw it overnight in the fridge.

Reheating: Covered with foil at 350°F for about 25 minutes, then uncovered for 10 to bring the top back. Add a splash of broth over it before it goes in, this helps if it looks dry.

In the fridge it keeps 4 days in an airtight container.

I wouldn’t freeze it unbaked. The bread sits in that egg mixture the entire time it’s in the freezer and thaws out soggy, and then we’re right back where we started.

Swap the baguette for a sturdy gluten free loaf and everything else in the recipe stays exactly the same.

Gluten free bread dries out faster, so check it at 30 minutes instead of 45. And it’s more fragile once dried, so be even gentler folding it into the egg mixture than you would be otherwise.

Have a look at your sausage too, since some brands use breadcrumbs as a filler, and that’s not something you want to find out at the table.

The whole Thanksgiving table, really, but these are the ones it sits beside on mine.