Ingredients (~6 Servings)
- ~4 cups bread, torn into bite-sized pieces
- 1 lb ground pork sausage
- 1/2 cup butter (1 stick)
- ~1 small onion, diced
- ~2 stalks celery, chopped
- 1 tbsp fresh sage, chopped
- 1 tsp dried thyme
- 1/2 tsp black pepper
Vegetable Preparations
In a large pot or Dutch oven on medium heat (around 350°F), melt the stick of butter.
Once the butter is melted and bubbling, add the diced onions and diced celery to the pot and cook them together for five to seven minutes.
As you cook the onions and celery together, you do not need to brown them; you are simply trying to make sure that the onions become translucent, and the celery softens slightly before you use the bread for the stuffing later.
Preparing the Bread
This step helps to ensure that the bread will absorb a lot of the butter and act as a binding agent for the stuffing.
In this step, you will take approximately 1/3 of the torn bread (about 1.5 cups) and place it into the large pot with the butter and diced vegetables and mix the two together well so that the torn bread gets well-coated with the butter and vegetable mixture.
The torn bread will absorb almost all of the butter from the pan almost immediately.
Then, you will transfer the buttery and vegetable mixture into a large mixing bowl and set it aside until needed later.
Browning the Sausage
Once you have cooked the onions and celery together for five to seven minutes, return the same pot to the burner and turn the heat up to medium-high; add the ground pork sausage to the pot.
Cook the sausage for approximately eight to ten minutes using either a wooden spoon or a meat chopper to break it into small crumbles as it cooks.
The goal at this stage is to cook the sausage long enough for all of the fat to render out.
It is this rendered fat that will be used to hydrate the rest of the torn bread as you work with it later.
When the ground sausage has finished browning and is no longer pink, pour all of the contents of the pot (the sausage and all of the rendered fat) into the same mixing bowl as the reserved vegetables from the first step.
Seasoning with Herbs and Remaining Bread
Once you have added the sausage and fat to the bowl that has the reserved vegetables in it, you will add to the bowl the chopped fresh sage, dried thyme, and black pepper and stir until they are evenly distributed throughout the mixture.
Finally, you will add the remaining dry torn bread to the bowl and mix the contents together using your hands or a sturdy spoon.
The goal of this step is to coat the dry torn bread with the fat and sausage mixture so that the moist bread becomes a cohesive mass, rather than a dry crumbly mass.
If the mixture seems to be too dry after you have mixed it together, you can add a splash of stock or water to moisten it, but the fat from the sausage generally provides enough moisture to do this.
When you are ready to serve, serve immediately.
Stovetop Sausage Stuffing
Ingredients
~6 Servings
- ~4 cups bread torn into bite-sized pieces
- 1 lb ground pork sausage
- 1/2 cup butter 1 stick
- ~1 small onion diced
- ~2 stalks celery chopped
- 1 tbsp fresh sage chopped
- 1 tsp dried thyme
- 1/2 tsp black pepper
Instructions
- Melt butter in a large pot over medium heat. Add onion and celery and cook 5-7 minutes until softened.
- Add 1.5 cups torn bread to pot and stir to coat with butter. Transfer mixture to a large bowl.
- Return pot to medium-high heat. Add sausage and cook 8-10 minutes, breaking into crumbles until browned.
- Pour sausage and all rendered fat into bowl with bread mixture.
- Add sage, thyme, and pepper to bowl and stir.
- Add remaining bread and mix with hands until fat is absorbed and evenly distributed. Serve immediately.
