Really Simple Allergy Friendly Apple Stuffing

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I caved. I know that I said I wasn’t making stuffing this year, but I love it too much to forgo it even though it is a lot of work. Instead of giving up the stuffing, I simplified my recipe a bit and did not make the cornbread this year, making it with only two types of bread that I already had in my freezer.

Ingredients:

5 cups of cubed bread*

1 green apple, diced

1 red apple, diced

2 tablespoons of olive oil

8 tablespoons of olive oil or butter

½ cup cooked sausage, diced or crumbled*

1 to 4 cups quality chicken or turkey broth*

Salt and pepper to taste*

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Arrange bread cubes on a large baking sheet. Place bread and oven and bake for 5 minutes. Then turn down the temperature to 200 degrees and prop the oven door open. Dry the bread this way for about 30 minutes or until no longer moist.
2.  Meanwhile, sauté the apple in 2 tablespoons of olive oil until the apples are slightly soft. Add the sausage and cook until warm. Turn down the heat to low and add the remaining olive oil or butter. Salt and pepper to taste.
3. Mix the apple mixture and the bread cubes together in a large bowl until the bread cubes are oily.  Add one to two cups of the broth and allow the mixture to rest in the refrigerator for at least one hour. After one hour, add 1/3 cup more broth if the mixture isn’t soft yet. Stir and allow the mixture to rest in the refrigerator for another hour. Continue adding broth 1/3 cup at a time and waiting an hour until the bread cubes are no longer hard. My most recent batch took 2 2/3 cups broth, but each batch will be different based on the kind of bread used and how dry the bread was before adding the liquid.
4. Once the stuffing has reached the desired moisture level. Oil or butter a baking pan and press the stuffing into the baking pan. If you have an olive oil sprayer, spraying the top of the stuffing will cause it to brown prettily, but if you don’t have a sprayer, it’s okay to skip this step. Bake at 375 degrees for 45 minutes to warm through and brown the top. Alternative, you can press the stuffing into muffin tins to make individual portions and bake for only 20 minutes.  This recipe should serve 8, but let's be honest, it will probably serve 5.

Note about Bread: You can use nearly any type of good quality bread—gluten free, white, whole wheat, or corn. I recommend homemade or deli bread, not the cheap mass-produced stuff. The recipe works best if you use at least two types of bread. I recommend a quick bread like biscuits or soda bread and yeast bread. Cornbread is also good to throw into the mix. I keep chunks of homemade bread in the freezer for recipes such as this one. If you don’t have food allergies, you can also buy toasted bread cubes at many grocery stores.

Note about Sausage: I used my homemade chicken sausage recipe that I have provided in an earlier post. You could use a vegetarian sausage as a replacement or any store-bought sausage if allergies and intolerances are not challenges for you and your guests.

Note about Broth: I cooked an organic chicken the week before. Then I simmered the left over bones, meat, and skin in my slow cooker with a quart of water for 2 days. You could substitute vegetable broth.

Note about Seasonings: This recipe would be even better with freshly chopped sage, oregano, parsley, chives, and the leafy parts of celery. I am not sure of my allergies and tolerances for these seasonings, so I have left them out for now. Feel free to add a tablespoon or any or all of these to enhance the flavor.

Overnight Slow Roasted Organic Turkey with Gravy

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The centerpiece of Thanksgiving is a deliciously roasted bird. Mmmmm.

My body doesn't like most commercially processed poultry for some reason. Therefore, I secure an organic or less processed "natural" bird for my table. These birds are often tougher than the massive commercial birds. Therefore, I find that the slow cooking method gives me the most tender and flavorful bird. I use regular wheat flour in my turkey bag and in my gravy because the gluten-free flours make me ill. However, King Author's Gluten-free Multi-purpose Flour works as a substitute in this recipe. Not all gluten-free flours work for making gravy, so you may want to do some trial runs if you are using a different variety of gluten free flour than this one.

Turkey

Ingredients:

1 twelve to 18 pound organic or natural turkey

Salt and pepper

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 rib celery, halved

1 apple, halved

1 carrot, halved

1 tablespoon flour (wheat for me, but any kind for those with glutton allergies)

Turkey bag and large roasting pan

Directions:

1.     Make sure to thaw the turkey completely. Partially frozen turkeys are dangerous to cook using this method. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.  Add 1 tablespoon of flour to the turkey bag and shake. Remove giblets and organs from turkey cavity.  Salt and pepper outside of turkey and rub with olive oil.  Place celery, apple and carrot in turkey cavity. Place turkey in turkey bag and then place in a roasting pan. Cut several holes in the bag.

2.     Bake turkey at 400 degrees for 30 to 40 minutes. Then turn temperature down to 200 degrees. Roast at 200 degrees for 10 to 24 hours (Avoid opening the oven for the first 10 hours).

3.     Remove turkey from oven. Allow turkey to rest for 20 minutes.  Remove turkey to platter.  Reserve drippings for gravy.

Turkey Gravy

Ingredients:

2 tablespoons olive oil

Drippings from roast turkey, strained

2 tablespoons general-purpose flour (wheat for me or King Author Gluten free Multi-Purpose flour for those with a gluten allergy)

1 to 2 cups chicken broth (I usually cook an organic chicken the week before and freeze the broth for this purpose).

Salt and pepper

Directions:

1.     Skim fat from turkey drippings and add to a saucepan with olive oil.  Turn heat to medium and add flour, stirring constantly. 

2.     When flour is brown and is free of lumps, add the rest of the turkey drippings. 

3.     Continue stirring until gravy thickens.  Add broth or water to get the amount of gravy you need.  Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Cranberry Sauce and Cranberry Juice

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Crisp, refreshing, tangy—all words that describe the seasonal delight that is cranberry sauce. A few years ago, I decided that I liked it too much to have it only during the holidays and started making it a regular side to our meals year round. Eating the jewel-toned sauce in every season is especially easy when a batch of homemade cranberry sauce lasts the whole year when stored in the freezer. And thanks to the high quantities of pectin that occur naturally in the fruit, the sauce jells automatically on its own.

This time, when I whipped up my usual pot of cranberry goodness, I decided that I wanted a sparkling glass of the ruby juice too. To make the juice, I used the sauce to infuse filtered water with a rich cranberry flavor. Interestingly, the pectin from the berries gives the juice a velvety mouth feel once it sets up in the refrigerator over night.

Ingredients:

2 pounds fresh cranberries

2 cups granulated sugar

2 cups water

Additional water for juice

Directions for Cranberry Sauce:

1.     To make sauce, combine the cranberries, sugar, and 2 cups of water in a large stockpot. Bring to a vigorous boil. Then reduce heat to low to maintain simmer. Cook for about 30 minutes.

2.     Remove from heat. Set aside about 3 cups of the sauce to make juice. Store the remaining cranberry sauce in the refrigerator until it sets up like jelly. Then the sauce may be frozen for up to a year.

Directions for Cranberry Juice:

1.     To make juice, you will need about 3 cups of warm cranberry sauce, a juice pitcher, a large spoon, a mesh sieve, a bowl slightly larger than the sieve, and about a quart of water. Place the sieve in the bowl and add 1 to 2 cups of the warm cranberry sauce to the sieve. Pour some of the water over the sieve and stir.

2.     Once the cranberry sauce turns the water very read, lift the sieve out of the water to strain the juice. Pour the resulting juice from the bowl in the juice pitcher. Discard the cranberries that have been strained. Repeat this process until you have about a quart of juice. Store the juice in the refrigerator for up to a week.