Anne Morgan A Thanksgiving dinner with American friends is where Delia Smith’s American stuffing began, and her version holds on to the mix of textures she liked in the original. Cubes of white bread, pork sausage, celery, Bramley apple and walnuts are tossed with thyme, grated lemon and ground mace once the sausage, onions and celery have had 10 minutes in butter. It’s made for a big Christmas turkey, with plenty for about 10 people.
The recipe came to her the way family recipes do. Her friends’ version had been passed from grandmother to mother to daughter, and the one in Delia’s Happy Christmas (2009) is her own adaptation of it.
Of the three turkey stuffings in that book, it’s the only one made with cubes of bread, and the only one with apple. The other two are her 18th century stuffing of chestnuts, bacon and liver, and a sage and onion stuffing built on sausagemeat.
The photograph in the book puts all three side by side, and this is the chunkiest of them, full of big cubes of bread and slices of celery.
Delia Smith’s American Turkey Stuffing
Course: Side DishCuisine: AmericanDifficulty: Easy10
servings20
minutes10
minutes300
kcalChunky and savoury, with crisp edges of bread, meaty sausage, sharp apple and the crunch of walnuts in every spoonful.
Ingredients
- For the stuffing:
175g white bread, cut into 1cm cubes
225g onions, chopped fairly small
4 sticks celery, cut into 1cm chunks
450g best-quality thin pork sausages, skinned and sliced into 1cm chunks
225g Bramley apples, cored and chopped (no need to peel)
110g walnuts, chopped
50g butter
1 dessertspoon chopped thyme
grated zest of 1 small lemon
½ teaspoon ground mace
salt and freshly milled black pepper
Directions
- Soften: Warm the butter in your largest frying pan and add the onions, celery and sausage pieces. Let them sizzle fairly gently, stirring now and then, and after about 10 minutes they should be golden at the edges.
- Mix: Scrape everything into a large bowl, add the bread, apples, walnuts, thyme, lemon zest and mace, and season generously. Toss it all together really well.
- Rest: Once it’s cool, keep it covered in the fridge. On Christmas Eve night take it out again and leave it covered somewhere cool, so it goes into the bird with the chill off.
- Stuff: Pack it loosely into the neck end of the turkey, under the skin over the breast, and put whatever is left in the body cavity.
Notes
- Thin chipolata-style sausages are easiest to skin and slice neatly, and their meat stays in pieces rather than crumbling.
- Cut the bread from a loaf that's a day or two old. Very fresh bread squashes when you cube it.
FAQs
What if I’d rather bake it in a dish?
It works well, and the bread cubes crisp up nicely on top. Spread it loosely in a shallow buttered baking dish and give it about 40 minutes at 190°C, fan 170°C, gas mark 5, until the top is crisp and a probe in the sausage shows 75°C. The timings are mine, not hers.
Can I use sausagemeat instead of sausages?
Yes, 450g of good sausagemeat works as a swap of mine, and both her other Christmas stuffings are built on it anyway. Pull it into small lumps as it goes into the pan, so the stuffing keeps its chunky texture.
What can I use instead of walnuts?
Pecans are the obvious choice, my own idea, and very much in the American spirit. For anyone with a nut allergy, simply leave them out and add a little more apple.
How does it compare with stuffing in America?
It’s close to the usual one. A bread-based stuffing with onion, celery and sausage, often called dressing when it’s cooked in a dish, is the usual one there, which is my own note rather than hers.
Her version keeps that base and adds the walnuts, apple, lemon and a little mace.
Does it need an egg?
No. The note above her three Christmas stuffings says a beaten egg will firm any of them up enough to slice, but she prefers hers crumbly and leaves it out. To my mind that suits a chunky stuffing like this one, where the bread cubes are meant to stay loose.
What if I can’t get Bramleys?
A Cox’s works instead, my own suggestion, though it holds its shape and tastes sweeter, so the stuffing loses a little of its sharp edge.
Bramleys are what she lists, and in her Complete Cookery Course she points out that Bramley and Cox’s apples can only be found here, which she thinks is why apple sauce is such a British thing.
