Basic American Stuffing

Paired with the mashed potatoes that I will show at the cooking event, I will also be showing a version of American stuffing. Please note: I said "version". That is right, folks, just like mashed potatoes, stuffing comes in more than one form. You can go absolutely bonkers with the items you "stuff" into your stuffing! Besides this wonderland of choices, you can add more or less of different ingredients to create a drier or more moist dish. Sure, stuffing is traditional, but it isn't static! Today, I'm hoping to show you a truly basic form of this hearty food, but feel free to spice things up a bit. Along the way, we'll take a glance at the myriad of options for you to harness. But for now, let's think about what type of stuffing we are interested in.

Dry v. Moist v. Stuffed!!!!

While most people think of American stuffing as great inside a turkey or smothered in gravy, I am going to be serving my stuffing as more of a stand-alone dish. I personally LOVE stuffing! Warm, filling, lots of 'stuff'! I even have a Stuff Theory which I will expand upon on a later date. But here is the deal:

1. If you plan on serving your stuffing with gravy, you should keep the stuffing a little dry so that it can better absorb some gravy.
2. If you plan on serving your stuffing without gravy (as I am), you should keep the stuffing a little moist so that it is easier to eat all by its lonesome.
3. If you plan on stuffing your stuffing inside a bird, don't ask me how!! I have no idea how to do that! There no room in my kitchen to cook something like that (in my fridge, my microwave, my toaster oven) so I've never attempted something like that. In the future if I ever do try that, I'll let you know.

With all that out of the way, let's get cooking! Here is 

What you'll need:

1/2 a round onion
4 slices of bread (any kind)
some celery
some butter
an egg?
spices like salt, pepper, garlic powder, parsley flakes, etc.
broth (or water and consume)

cutting board and knife
mixing bowl

cup and spoon

small frying pan

spatula

bread pan

Now, I must admit that I did not have a bread pan before starting this recipe. So, I moseyed on down to the dollar store and picked two up. The lovely stickers you see inside the pans show the customer what the pan is made of, who the company that made it was, and all the places you can and can't use it. Ovens? Okay. Microwaves and grills? Of course not, you silly person! Luckily for me (NOT), they said nothing about how well they would do in toaster ovens. I spoke to some older ladies around me at the store and they said,  "まあ、いいかもしれないね。だめだったら、百円しかないなあ." -"Well, I guess it is fine. If it doesn't work, it was just a dollar anyway, right?" From this encouraging remark, I decided to chalk this up to my first major experiment with the dish: to see if my pans burn or melt in the toaster oven. Oh, dear.

Next, the actually cooking part of this cooking blog!

Stuffing, at is very essence, is a way to get rid of all the random foods and stale breads that you have in the pantry. To this end, some people insist that the best stuffing is made by actually leaving your bread out to become stale over a few days. You can pick white bread, wheat, mixed, season or non-seasoned, but may I suggest a few things? 

1. Dry or toast the bread.

First, using stale bread is all well and good, but make sure that you keep the bread out in the open air to become stale. This may seem obvious to some, but this blog is for those who don't know better. Keeping bread out will make it stale. Keeping it in the fridge or in a cupboard or in a bag might lead to mold since it is in a confined space. Second, if you'd rather not risk the staling process or if that doesn't sound so appealing to you, toasting the bread lightly in the toaster oven before you use it is also a valid option. The point is to start with dry bread so that the rest of the ingredients mix well and seep into it. Third, a message to those who would rather not have all the hassle and need to make. Stuffing. NOW! Take the liberty to go to the store and pick up croutons from the salad aisle. Guess what? That is already seasoned (usually), dried, and cut up! It takes out about 3 of the steps I have in this already super-simple recipe. Boom. Speedy stuffing.

2. Prepare the other ingredients. Wash and cut the vegetables.

3. Melt the butter in a frypan. Then add the veggies and cook until they are soft. Stir occasionally to make sure they don't burn or stick to the bottom of the pan.

Now, I feel like I may have gotten a little carried away with my butter here. It looks like I'm trying to make a thick butter layer on the bottom of the frying pan, but that isn't what you were supposed to do! Just a little butter, enough to help the veggies get soggy and delicious should do it, but if you are a butter fan, add some more now! You can get crazy like I did, but just remember that all the moister you add now will either lead to more mushy stuffing or will have to be cooked out longer later on.

4. Cut up the bread into cubes and place it in a bowl.

 5. Pour the butter and vegetables over the bread. Warning! The mixture will be hot, so be careful when handling the bowl or items within.

6. Add spices and an egg (or two). Mix well! Add as many or as little spices as you like. I prefer using pepper, oregano, and parsley, but you can put salt or other seasonings in too.

7. Heat water to mix the consume and add it to the mix. The more you add, the more moist the stuffing will be.

On the package of soup that you buy, the company should give a suggested consume/bullion:water ratio for you to follow. I only used a cup of water (see my cup there?), and added more consume than was suggested to get more flavor without more water since my butter and eggs already made the mixture so wet.

Once you you have the bread, the veggies, the spices, the egg, and the soup all evenly mixed, place the ingredients into a baking tin. You may want to brush or spray or spread oil or butter onto the tin to keep the stuffing from sticking to it, but I didn't because - once again - there was so much moister in my mix to begin with! Definitely going to calm down on the butter next time.

8. Place the bread tin and put in the toaster oven. Sometimes splitting the stuffing into two tins and baking separately is better to keep it from burning on top if it gets too close to the heating coils. <-- This is what I learned from my attempt because the top of the stuffing was closer to the heat than the bottom. You'll see what I mean in a little bit.

I have no idea how much my toaster oven heats up, nor do I know how long to cook the stuffing because I wasn't using exact measurements. Since the temperature of my oven is my only uncontrollable variable, I put it on the highest time setting. That way, I could check on it periodically to see how it was doing. Burnt food is rarely a good thing, so I decided that once the stuffing turned a golden brown, I would take it out and see how the inside was doing.

Unluckily for me, the toaster has two heating coils; one on the top and one on the bottom. When the door was opened, it seemed like the stuffing was perfectly spaced between the two. However, when the door was shut, the try on which the tin was placed shifted closer to the upper coil. This means that the top of my stuffing was getting a lot more heat than the bottom was, so it cooked much faster! I realized this as I kept checking on the stuffing and adding more and more time to figure out what to do.

Because I really, REALLY didn't want to get sick from my own soul food, I waited until the top of my stuffing when from golden brown to slightly charred. Then, I took it out of the pan and prepared to be suffering through my dinner.

An unforeseen joy was that even though I kept adding more and more time for the stuffing, the pan never lost its shape or melted! I know that may seem like a silly thing to be excited about, but considering I bought it from the dollar store and wasn't sure if it was even toaster oven friendly, I was pretty psyched!

9. Finally, enjoy!

But low and behold it was great! Sure the top was a bit crunchy, but a good deal of the moisture had cooked out, leaving a soft (but cooked!!) inner core to my stuffing. Phew! Definitely a relief there. Mixing well ensured that there was seasoning in every bite and the butter was still trapped inside the veggie pieces. Yuuuummmm! 

I may not be 100% on this stuffing recipe  but at least I know that even with all the mistakes and guesswork and experimentation, it somehow all worked out. I'll be sure to make another post about how the whole cooking day goes, too!