Forget those over priced, palm oil laden packet stuffing mixes. My Homemade Sage & Onion Sausagemeat Stuffing is so much better and contains just a few simple ingredients: onions, garlic, dried sage, fresh parsley and crumbs made from leftover bread. Delicious mixed with pork sausagemeat and cooked as stuffing balls.
Do you make stuffing to go with the Christmas dinner? If so, are you one of those thousands in Britain who buy a packet of stuffing mix?
What baffles me is, in a country where an estimated 24 million slices of bread are thrown away EVERY DAY, people will go out and buy a box of what is basically phoney dried breadcrumbs (flour and vegetable oil often including environmentally disastrous palm oil). This costs them the equivalent of nearly £4 a kilo.
Or, perhaps a fancy sawdust with ‘ciabatta-style breadcrumbs’ from a leading supermarket is more your thing? Then knock yourself out and pay almost £11 a kilo. By weight that’s more expensive than the same supermarket’s organic, free-range turkey!
Instead, why not make a proper sausagemeat stuffing? With good quality (free-range, please) pork sausages or sausagemeat, real breadcrumbs, onions that are soft and succulent from being slowly sautéed in butter, and the whole lovely lot seasoned with your own choice of herbs.
Ok, it’s a little more work. But you can save yourself some time on the day by making the stuffing in advance and refrigerating or freezing. Anyway, after all, it is Christmas.
CRUMBS
In our house, we make virtually all of the bread we eat and turn out lovely, crusty loaves. But the ends of the loaves can be very crusty indeed. So, not wanting to break a tooth in a sandwich (and you certainly wouldn’t want to making them even harder by toasting), I make them into crumbs and pop them into a bag I keep in the freezer.
It’s always useful to have a few breadcrumbs on hand to add texture and interest to lots of dishes. Try mixing with Parmesan, chopped or flaked almonds and scatter over cauliflower cheese before baking with a few dabs of butter on top and you’ll see what I mean.
Even if you don’t make your own bread, I’d encourage you to slice and freeze your bought loaves so that you can take out just what’s needed each day with no wastage.
STUFFING VARIATIONS
I’m giving you a recipe for the classic sage and onion stuffing, but the basic mixture can be varied and flavoured in endless ways:
- Substitute herbs according to your taste e.g. replace the sage with thyme or rosemary
- Sauté grated apple with the onions
- Stir in chopped chestnuts for a bit of bite
- Add cooked, chopped smoked bacon
- A few dried cranberries and maybe a little orange zest would be fitting for a Christmas stuffing
- Try adding mixed spice and chopped apricots for a Middle Eastern/North African vibe.
I like to make my stuffing into balls (probably because I love anything resembling meatballs). I either cook them around the turkey or in a separate roasting tray.
If you prefer you can spread the mixture into a greased ovenproof dish and bake it in a moderate oven before cutting into portions to serve. I don’t think this looks quite as attractive, but it is quicker. Just note that you may need to increase the cooking time.
When making any sort of stuffing, meatball or similar, before cooking the whole batch, I take a little of the raw mixture, form it into a patty and fry it off so that I can taste if the seasoning is correct. I think this extra step is worth it to make sure the stuffing is good and tasty.
I’m a big fan of advance preparation, so I either make up the stuffing mix and freeze it raw (remembering to take it out of the freezer the night before it’s going to be cooked) or, more usually, cook the stuffing balls, freeze them, defrost overnight and then ping in the microwave just before serving.
Don’t you think these stuffing balls, studded with sweet, moist onions and tasting of meaty, porky sausage, shown here with a roasted free-range turkey crown, are more inviting than the dried up specimens from a packet?
Go on – you deserve some!
Homemade Sage & Onion Sausagemeat Stuffing is so much better than packet versions of stuffing. Instead of wasting bread, freeze stale slices to make the crumbs for this recipe.
CourseSide Dish
CuisineBritish
Servings 20 stuffing balls
Ingredients
- 1tspolive oil
- 15gbutter
- 1largeonionfinely chopped
- 2clovesgarlicfinely chopped
- saltto taste
- freshly ground black pepperto taste
- 400gpork sausagemeatpreferably free range
- 75gbreadcrumbs
- 1-2tspdried sageor 1 tbsp fresh sage, chopped
- 1tbspparsleyfinely chopped
- 0.5tbspolive oilnot needed if cooking the stuffing around a turkey or other joint
Instructions
Heat the olive oil and butter in a small frying pan.
Add the onion, garlic, a little salt and pepper and gently cook, stirring often, until the onion is soft and starting to brown (approx 20 min). Put aside to cool.
Put all the rest of the ingredients into a large bowl, including a little more salt and pepper, add the cooled onion mixture (including the fat from the frying pan) and mix together with your hands. Adding a few drops of cold water will help you bring it together if necessary.
Take a small piece of the mixture, form it into a patty and fry until thoroughly cooked through. Taste, then adjust the remaining raw stuffing mix with more salt, pepper or sage if needed.
Form the stuffing into walnut-sized balls (you should get around 20) and either freeze on a tray before transferring to a freezer bag or cook in a moderate oven, in a little olive oil, until brown (approx 25 min).
If freezing after cooking, leave until completely cold then freeze on a tray before transferring to a freezer bag.
Defrost thoroughly before either cooking or reheating.
