Turkey Soup with Wild Rice and Dill

I’m not sure if I’ve told you guys this yet or not, but I really enjoy Thanksgiving. I do. Friends, family, food, and wine. It doesn’t get much better than that. For most people, Thanksgiving is probably the biggest meal they prepare for the entire year. Not only are we roasting a giant bird that takes up the whole oven for 5+ hours, but we’re also making multiple desserts, and multiple vegetables, multiple sides & multiple accompaniments to that bird. In my family, and now in my home, Thanksgiving takes days, not hours, to prepare.

The second best part of such a large meal that took so much time and effort to prepare is the left overs! (The first is obviously eating it the first time around with people you love) In my family, and I think in most people’s families, we tend to eat our meal early, have pie a few hours later, and then go back in a few hours after that for sandwiches made from leftover biscuits, cranberry sauce, turkey & dressing. Are you drooling yet?

Generally, there tends to still be some meat left on that giant bird even after the meal is done and a few sandwiches have been built and devoured. Once the biscuits and dressing have disappeared, if there’s still meat on those bones, it’s time to think of something else. You’re probably getting anxious to have your refrigerator back and need a recipe that uses up every last part of that giant animal in there.

Enter soup. Soup is the perfect way to make the best use of what’s left of your leftovers. A few days after Thanksgiving you probably only have a little bit of meat left, and it’s probably starting to dry out. Once I tore into those bones with clean hands and started pulling things apart, I realized that I had more meat left than I thought. Most of it was dark meat, but once it was all pulled off the carcass there were probably about 3 to 4 loose cups of bite sized chunks. That made for a very respectable soup.

You’re going to have to get very comfortable getting your hands dirty and tearing through some old bones, but you’ll be very glad you went to the trouble once your hands are clean and you have a super flavorful stock bubbling away on the stove. Since Turkeys are so much larger than chickens, there are a lot more bones. There are a lot of nutrients and tons of protein in those bones that is really really good for you if you take the time to extract them. A Slow cooked stock made from bones is packed with calcium, magnesium and other minerals, as well as dissolved cartilage and connective tissue materials like chondroitin and glucosamine which are great for your joints and can help with arthritis. Homemade stock is also full of natural gelatin, which is great for your hair, teeth, nails, skin, bones, joints and stomach lining. Studies also show that gelatin can aid in digestion, help your body release toxins, and even can help you sleep better.

If you’ve ever noticed that the juices your turkey release after being carved sometime congeal into a wobbly brown gel on your platter or carving board, that’s gelatin in action. There is so much gelatin in this turkey stock that the finished soup congealed once refrigerated. This recipe made too much soup for Russell and I to eat in one evening, so some of it went into some tupperware to be reheated the next evening. When I took the soup out it had turned into a jiggly turkey soup jell-o. I had to turn the tupperware over and shake it until the whole soup slid out and plopped into the pan like a can of gelled cranberry sauce. (Don’t worry, it turns back to liquid when heated)

This may sound unappealing to some, but believe me, this is a good thing. That amount of gelatin in your soup not only means that you’re soup is packed with health benefits, but also makes for a soup with amazing flavor and a beautiful consomme-like viscosity. If you’re not sure what I mean, it’s not thick like gravy, but just somehow feels like it coats your mouth and tongue more completely than watery chicken broth. If you still don’t get it, just try it. You can thank me later. I prefer white or yellow roses over red.

So, after I went to all the trouble to make this amazing healthy and hearty stock, I wanted a simple soup that highlighted rather than masked the richness of the turkey. I decided to go for a straightforward chicken soup style recipe, with onions, carrot, and celery. Perfect compliments to poultry. I decided that I wanted to add the chewiness of wild rice to the soup rather than noodles. Russell is obsessed with wild rice, and it holds up better than traditional rice or noodles if there are leftovers. Wild rice is also packed with protein and is really good for you, so another bonus! Last, I decided to add some dill to the soup to give it a nice bright fresh flavor. With a soup made from leftovers that bubbled and boiled on the stove for hours, it would be easy for it to taste heavy and tired, but the addition of dill brightens and lightens the whole thing up, giving it new life. You would never taste this and think it was made from leftovers.

Not only is this soup fresh, healthy, hearty and delicious all at once, but it also helped me rid myself of the last of the Thanksgiving meal. Now the fridge is clean and un-stuffed, and I can start thinking ahead to…
Christmas! In just a few short weeks there will be Christmas dinner, Christmas cookies, Christmas parties, and Christmas cocktails!

Turkey Soup with Wild Rice and Dill

Servings: 8ish
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1 picked over turkey carcass, with just a bit of meat left
2 large onions
6 stalks celery
5 carrots
1 tablespoon olive oil
1/4 cup white wine
1 1/2 cup wild rice
salt and pepper
4 tablespoons finely chopped dill

With clean hands, pull all remaining meat off of your turkey, being careful to avoid any skin or bones. Tear meat into bite sized chunks and store in a covered bowl in the refrigerator. Place all bones and skin from the turkey into an 8 quart stockpot, breaking up the carcass to fit as needed. Roughly chop one onion (skin on), 2 stalks of celery (leaves on) and 2 carrots; and add to stockpot along with enough water to cover the turkey. If desired, add herbs like sage or thyme. Cover your pot, and slowly bring to a boil over medium heat. Once the pot is at a low boil, turn the heat down and let it simmer for 2 to 3 hours. Remove the pot from the heat and let cool for an hour or until you’re comfortable handling it.

Strain the stock through a fine mesh sieve into a bowl. Discard the bones and set stock aside while you start your soup. Chop your remaining onion and celery into a medium dice, and slice your carrots into rounds. Heat olive oil over medium-high heat in the bottom of a heavy bottomed stockpot, add your vegetables, and season with salt and pepper. Cook, stirring regularly, until onions and celery are soft and translucent, and any liquid has cooked off. Add your wine and cook down until dry. Add the wild rice and brown for just a minute or two, stirring constantly. Strain the stock into the stockpot, and bring to a boil. Cover and simmer for 30 minutes, stirring every so often. Add pulled turkey meat and half your chopped dill, and simmer for 15-20 minutes more. Just before serving stir in remaining chopped dill, taste, and adjust seasoning with salt and pepper if necessary.

How we did Thanksgiving

I really love Thanksgiving. Like, a lot.

When I was younger Thanksgiving was always a holiday spent with family, sort of like Christmas but without the stress and running around, and with more pie. My Mother was the ultimate queen of holiday entertaining and this time of year our house was always filled with friends, family & food. Her Christmas party was usually the biggest deal of the year and she’d have giant bowls of shrimp cocktail, two different types of boozey homemade egg nog, countless nibbles and sweets, and trays of her famous taco dip. Sorry, now I’m drooling. These days I’m trying to follow in her footsteps.

Now that I’m older, and sell kitchenware for a living, I can’t get home for Thanksgiving anymore, so I’ve had to swap the family for friends. As much as I wish I could be home with family, spending Thanksgiving here in Brooklyn means that we can host in our own apartment, choose who our guests are, and make the food exactly the way we like it. No drunk uncles or soggy overcooked vegetables at this dinner, just good friends, great food, & lots of wine. Lots and lots of wine.

We live in a small two bedroom railroad apartment, (long and skinny with the only windows at either end) so we don’t have a dining room. We do have plenty of seating though, so we decided to serve our meal buffet style and pull some chairs up to the sofa and around the coffee table. Most of our friends love cooking almost as much as I do, so we decided to make our Thanksgiving meal a potluck and ask people to bring a dish with them. Since we were hosting we decided that the turkey would be my responsibility. Since I tend to go overboard, I went overboard. The plan was to make the turkey, gravy & dressing, along with a pie or two. What actually went down was a little more involved.

The menu I prepared went like this:
turkey roasted with citrus herb butter
chardonnay turkey gravy
mushroom, leek & sourdough dressing
roasted butternut squash with honey and thyme
spiced orange cranberry sauce
flaky salt and pepper buttermilk biscuits
lattice top deep dish apple pie
sweet potato pie
wine, wine & wine

Since we have amazing friends with amazing taste, the other dishes that joined the party included:
braised red cabbage with apples and red wine
mashed potatoes with goat cheese and garlic
brussels sprouts sauteed with chestnuts, bacon and onions
rice salad with chickpeas and dried currants
pumpkin bundt cake with salted caramel icing
spicy cayenne apple pie
chocolate filled peanut butter cookies
homemade bourbon vanilla ice cream
On yeah, and more wine.

how we did Thanksgiving | Brooklyn Homemaker

Doris, Betty & Russell waiting for guests to arrive

Needless to say I’m still full today. It was an amazing meal and I’m so lucky to have such wonderful friends to spend my holidays with. The turkey was probably the best I’ve ever tasted, and definitely the best I’ve ever made. Our dogs could not have been happier either. They were in heaven! Plenty of treats falling on the ground and plenty of laps to curl up on. A few of our guests were English and Irish, and this was the first Thanksgiving one of them had ever celebrated. We spent much of the evening talking about the differences in holiday traditions and foods across the world and making plenty of dirty jokes about fish pie. We played games and watched the muppets with Lady Gaga for the rest of the night.

As much as I love tooting my own horn and being showered with compliments, I’m not just sharing all this with you to make you jealous. I also want you to know that even if you live in a small apartment and don’t have much family near you, you can still have an amazing Thanksgiving meal to remember. Of course how you organize your service and what your meal consists of is entirely up to you, but just in case you’d like to do something similar to what I did, I’m going to give you an idea of how I made it all happen.

dessert buffet | how we did Thanksgiving | Brooklyn Homemaker

dessert buffet selfie

I happened to have the Tuesday before Thanksgiving off so I did all my grocery shopping Monday night after work and tried to do as much as possible on Tuesday so I’d have less to worry about on the big day.

3 days ahead (Monday)- I finalized the menu, went grocery shopping, & confirmed the guest list.

2 days ahead (Tuesday)- To get a head start on things that would need to be done the day of, I made a citrus and herb butter for the turkey, cubed and dried the bread for the dressing, peeled and cubed the butternut squash and put it covered into the refrigerator. I also went ahead and made my cranberry sauce, and both of my pies because I wouldn’t have time the next day. I also met Russell in Manhattan to stock up on the ever important wine.

1 day ahead (Wednesday)- I work in a kitchenware store so, as you can imagine, the day before Thanksgiving is a busy day. I worked a 12 hour day and was exhausted when I got home, so I tried to plan my schedule so I would have very little to do that night. I did pick up some flowers on my way home, and went ahead and washed, dried & seasoned the turkey with salt and pepper before putting her in the fridge to rest until the next morning.

Thanksgiving day I slathered the turkey up with the citrus and herb butter and got her started in the oven. Then I started my mushroom, leek & sourdough dressing, covered it and put it into the fridge to wait until the turkey came out. Then Russell and I spent the rest of the morning calling family, cleaning the house and getting ready for our guests. I set up a buffet on our credenza-height bookshelf, and set up a dessert buffet on top of our bar cabinet. We decided to use some compostable bamboo disposable plates to save on dishes while still keeping it classy-ish. We got our wine chilling, seating in place, corkscrews and glassware out and ready, ice trays filled, and double checked to be sure we had everything we needed.

Once our guests started arriving and the turkey came out of the oven, everything else went in while the turkey took a much needed rest. Gravy was made, biscuits rose, squash roasted, dressing browned, potatoes reheated and brussels sprouts sauteed in cast iron.

The rest of the night was spent enjoying ourselves and our food. I’ve said this already, but it was the best. Heaven.

Just for fun, here’s how I did the turkey. I usually brine but this year I decided to skip it. I’ve always felt like it’s a lot of work for a small payoff, so I thought I’d try another trick to ensure a moist bird. That’s right. I said moist.

Moist.

Stealing some moist bird

Roasted Turkey with Citrus Herb Butter

Servings: Feeds many many people, depending on the size of your bird
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Citrus Herb Butter:
1 1/2 sticks of salted butter, softened
1 teaspoon coarse kosher salt
1 teaspoon fresh cracked pepper
1 teaspoon cayenne pepper
2 tablespoons finely chopped fresh sage
2 tablespoons finely chopped fresh parsley
2 tablespoons finely chopped fresh thyme
2 tablespoons brown sugar
zest of one large orange
zest of two lemons

Roasted Turkey:
1 15-20 lb fresh turkey *see note
citrus, herbs, onions and apples for filling
carrots, onions, celery and apples for roasting to flavor gravy

chicken or turkey stock

To make the flavored butter, mash all ingredients into the softened butter with a fork and mix until well combined. Place in an air tight container and refrigerate. Remove from fridge and soften for an hour or two before you’re ready to use it. If you forget to do this you can soften it in your hands.

If possible, wash the turkey and remove the gizzards and neck the night before Thanksgiving. Pat dry, inside and out, with paper towels and season with salt and pepper. If you can’t do this the night before, do at least one hour before the turkey goes into the oven. Cover with foil or a lid and move to the refrigerator. Hold onto the gizzards and neck for gravy.

Preheat your oven to 325 degrees. Roughly chop a few pieces of celery, carrots, onions & apples and place in the bottom of a large roasting pan. You don’t need to peel the skin off the onion and you can use the leafy tops of the celery. Add a few sprigs of herbs and your reserved neck and gizzards, and add enough chicken or turkey stock to come about an inch up the side of the pan. Add a large V roasting rack to the pan.

Rub the softened citrus herb butter completely over your turkey on all sides and some on the inside cavity. Reserve a few tablespoons to reapply later. Place your butter covered turkey, breast side down, on your roasting rack. Fill the cavity of the turkey with roughly chopped citrus, apples, onions and herbs, or whatever flavors you’d like. Leave some room for air to circulate in the cavity or the turkey will take longer to cook and could dry out.

Transfer Turkey to the oven, uncovered, and roast for 3 1/2 hours basting every 30 minutes. Remove from oven and flip the turkey breast side up. They make special turkey lifters to make this easier, or you can use large rigid spatulas, or oven mitts covered in plastic bags. You might want an extra set of hands to keep the roasting pan steady or help out. Rub the remaining citrus herb butter on the breast side of the turkey and return to oven for 1 1/2 to 2 more hours, or until a meat thermometer placed in the thigh meat reads 165 degrees. Continue basting every 30 minutes until done. Your total roasting time will depend on the size of the bird. Closer to 15 pounds should take about 5 hours, 20 pounds more like 5 1/2 hours.

When the turkey is done, remove from oven and transfer from roasting rack to a large carving board. Tent with aluminum foil and let rest for at least 30 minutes, up to 45 or 50. Strain the juices from the pan and use for gravy, adding more stock if necessary. You can use this resting time to reheat or finish any remaining sides in the oven. Carve and serve your bird and brace yourself for a barrage of compliments. **See note.

*Note: I like to say you want your about 1 1/2 to 2 pounds of turkey per person- this will ensure everyone is completely satisfied and you have some leftovers for sandwiches and something leftover to make soup or turkey pot pie.

**Note: This was the first time I’ve ever roasted a turkey breast side down- and I will never go back. It made for the moistest breast meat I’ve ever tasted, and the number of compliments made me a little uncomfortable. If you don’t handle compliments well, don’t use this recipe.

Spiced Citrus Bundt Cake with Buttered Whiskey Glaze

Blogging is hard work you guys. Who knew?

The first thing you think of when you read a food blog is, well, the food. But there’s a lot more that goes into blogging than just making food. You have to be able to sit down and write something, and you want it to be written well enough that someone will want to read it. Being able to write for an audience and have your writing be relatable and engaging is a challenge of it’s own. I definitely don’t want to be responsible for any eye-roll-induced headaches.

You also want to be able to photograph your food, and photograph it well enough that the food will look appealing and will make people want to make it themselves. Beyond having your food look nice in a picture, it should taste great too. I would never want to recommend a recipe I don’t stand behind. I could make a beautiful looking meal that tasted terrible, and no one would know until they tried to make it themselves. But what would be the point of blogging about food that isn’t any good? I want to share recipes with you that you’ll love and that you’ll want to make for your family and friends and keep on file to make again and again in years to come.

There’s also a certain amount of pressure, probably self imposed, but also probably better for the blog, to post unique and original recipes. I’d rather share something interesting, something that gives me bragging rights, than to post a recipe I copied word for word and ingredient for ingredient from someone or somewhere else. Every once in a while a recipe is so good that tweaking would be completely unnecessary, such as the Aunt Sassy Cake that was my very first post, and of course when I find such a recipe I definitely want to share it with you. For the bulk of my posts though, the meat and potatoes if you will, I want to be able to say, “Why yes I did think this up all on my own, thankyouverymuch.”

Over the 15+ years I’ve been cooking, I’ve learned enough to be completely confident toying with recipes to put my own spin on them. I think that most home cooks feel more comfortable making a savory meal their own than changing baking recipes. With a savory meal you can toss in a dash of this, a sprig of that, a splash of this other thing, and if you have a little experience and comfort with it, you’ll usually end up with something good, and sometimes something great. This makes cooking more exciting, and what keeps me wanting to get back in the kitchen to cook for myself and my husband.

When it comes to baking, it gets more complicated. Baking is about formulas and chemical reactions. It’s about math and science. Flour, sugar, leavening, fat & liquid; when combined in the correct proportions, should result in a tasty end product. If you get the ratio wrong though, you can end up with something heavy and flat, or dry, or burnt, or falling apart, or tasteless, or bad tasting. I am no pastry chef, and I won’t claim to be able to come up with a cake recipe from nowhere without needing at least a point of reference. I will say that I’ve been doing this long enough now that I’m comfortable toying with flavors and ingredients in my baking. If I have an idea in my head for a cake with a certain flavor, I try to find a similar recipe that’s tried and true, and tweak it to try to make it my own.

When I dreamed up this cake I was thinking about cold weather, cocktails with friends, and the smells and flavors of the holidays. I was thinking of citrus and spice and a little nip of something to warm you up. I started by finding a recipe for an orange pound cake that I could convert. A bundt cakes tends to be slightly denser than a layer cake, so pound cake recipes usually translate well. Once I found a recipe that I thought would work well, I set to changing a few things to put my twist on it. I wanted to add a layered citrus flavor so I swapped some of the orange zest and juice for lemon. I also wanted a hint of warm homey spice, so I added some cinnamon and clove, some cardamom and bit of ginger for kick.

Well. Sometimes things don’t always work out the way you expect them to. I’m not entirely sure what went wrong, but the first time around, this was a big ol’ failure with a capital FAIL. The flavor of the cake was great, with the perfect levels of citrus and spice, but the cake itself was dry dry dry. Like a loaf of bread. The original recipe called for an orange simple syrup to be brushed on the cake as it came out of the oven. With a flat loaf-shaped pound cake it’s easy to brush on a syrup and let it soak into the cake, but with a bundt the syrup would run down the sloped sides and puddle on the bottom. I skipped the syrup, assuming wrongly that it was added mostly to boost the orange flavor and not needed to add moisture. Beyond being dry, I also thought the cake was just a bit too sweet for my taste, and if I’d used the syrup it would have been even sweeter still.

I knew though, that the idea for the cake was solid, the flavors worked really well together, and the cake was actually really pretty to boot. So, rather than admit defeat and move on, I decided it was time to try, try again. The next evening after work I went back in for another round, zesting and creaming and sifting and mixing. I dialed down the sugar just a touch, and added a bit more liquid, boosting both the citrus juice and the buttermilk for flavor. I also think that while butter adds the best flavor, cakes baked with oil usually end up impossibly moist, so I increased the amount of fat just a bit and swapped some of the butter for oil. I’ve played with this recipe so much now that I consider it completely my own.

Boy did my determination pay off. I was definitely able to fix the dryness issue, and now the cake is perfectly moist with a tender bite. This cake has it all. Good looks. Great flavor. Perfect texture. The total package. The combination of citrus and spice is comforting and somehow nostalgic. Cold weather always makes me want citrus. There’s something familiar and old fashioned about eating oranges shipped from warmer climates when the weather in the northeast is cold and windy. There is a reason that grocery stores start filling up with tangerines right around Christmas. This time of year you can usually start to find citrus married with spice too. Lemon and ginger tea, clove studded oranges, cinnamon sticks and citrus boiled on the stove to potpourri your home. Classic flavors people, now in cake form.

Then we have the whiskey glaze. The flavors of butter and whiskey drizzled over this cake is amazing. They marry incredibly well with the cold weather flavors of the citrus and spices, bringing to mind the flavors of a hot toddy. I used Bulliet rye, because that’s what I had on hand, but it would be amazing with Bourbon too. It’s easy to make, just a simple matter of melting some butter, mixing it with whiskey and whisking in confectioner’s sugar until there are no lumps. I melted the butter in the microwave in a pyrex measuring cup, and mixed the glaze up in the same cup for easy pouring.

The one word of warning is that this glaze is seriously boozey. Three tablespoons of whiskey might not seem like much, but there’s isn’t much else to this so the alcohol is front and center. It isn’t overwhelming since there’s just a small amount of it on each bite, but it definitely is an “adult” addition to this cake. If you want this to be a more family friendly recipe, or if you don’t like whiskey, skip it! A simple citrus glaze would be really great and just as easy- just whisk together some confectioners sugar and orange or lemon juice, maybe some zest too.

So go take some butter and eggs out of the fridge and let them come up to room temperature. Don’t kid yourself. Don’t stop yourself. You know you want to make this cake, so just give in and make it. It’s delicious and perfectly moist, and it has whiskey on top. In a couple hours you’re going to eat this cake, you’re going to eat it real good. Like this:

Spiced Citrus Bundt Cake with Buttered Whiskey Glaze

Servings: 12ish
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finely grated zest of 3 large oranges
finely grated zest of 3 lemons
2 cups granulated sugar
1 1/2 sticks (3/4 cup) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1/2 cup peanut or vegetable oil
4 large eggs, at room temperature
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1/4 teaspoon ground cardamom
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1/2 cup fresh orange juice
1/4 cup fresh lemon juice
1 cup buttermilk, at room temperature
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Buttered Whiskey Glaze (optional):
3 tablespoons good whiskey
3 tablespoon melted butter
1 1/4 cup confectioners’ sugar, sifted

Directions
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Generously grease and flour a 10-12 cup bundt pan.

With the paddle attachment in an electric mixer, mix your citrus zests and sugar together on low for 3 minutes, or until the sugar is golden yellow and you can smell the citrus from across your kitchen. Add the soft butter and cream with the sugar for about 5 minutes, or until light and fluffy. On low speed, add the oil and then the eggs, one at a time, until just combined.

In a large bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and spices. In another bowl, combine the orange and lemon juices, buttermilk, and vanilla. Add the flour and buttermilk mixtures alternately to the batter, beginning and ending with the flour. Pour batter into pan and tap on the counter to even the batter and remove air bubbles. Bake for 50 minutes to an hour, until a cake tester comes out clean.

Allow cake to cool for an hour or more before turning out onto a cooling rack. To make the glaze mix the melted butter and whiskey together in a small bowl. Whisk in confectioner’s sugar and continue to whisk until combined and free of lumps. If too thick, you can add a few more drops of whiskey to thin it for easy pouring. Pour over the top of the completely cooled cake and allow the glaze to dry before serving.

Mushroom, Leek & Sourdough Dressing

Okay. So. Here’s the thing.

When I was a kid, my grandmother always called stuffing, “dressing”. I would try my hardest not to give her side eye and move on with my day. I always thought, “it’s not Thousand Islands, it’s stuffing”. It seems that this is what happens below the Mason-Dixon line. Southerners tend to refer to the dish as dressing no matter what, and us Yanks always call it stuffing. I learned later that, at least in this situation, she was right. The real answer is that if you bake it stuffed inside of a bird (or anything else with a cavity to stuff), then yes, it is stuffing. That’s because you stuff with something it, but if you serve it on the side, baked separately, it is called dressing. That’s because, while they weren’t cooked together, you use one to “dress” the other.

So, as much as it pains me to admit it, Grandma was right, and now I’m sharing a recipe for “dressing”. Look at me, sharing a Thanksgiving recipe over a full week before the big day! Aren’t I organized and proactive? Yep. Sure am. It’s almost like I’m a real blogger or something!

As someone who truly LOVES food, both preparing and eating, Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays. The pies, the huge spread filled with a variety of veggies, the giant golden bird, and a feast that seems to go on all day, eating “dinner” in the early afternoon and going back for seconds and maybe even thirds between naps. Christmas is great, but in my family it can be a bit hectic and stressful, but on Thanskgiving you get all the food and all the family without the pressure. Even when I was a vegetarian, Thanksgiving was my favorite because I love all the sides almost even more than the Turkey itself.

This year we’re not able to head home to be with family for Thanksgiving, so we’re hosting our own here in Brooklyn with a couple of friends. One of our guests is a vegetarian, so as much as I’d love to fill the dressing with sausage and chicken stock, I’ve thought of something just as good! This dressing is STUFFED (get it?) with the meaty texture and earthy flavor of mushrooms and the savory goodness of celery, onions, leeks & herbs.

Rather than buy a stale old bag of pre-cubed bread, I started with a fresh country sourdough loaf which I cut into 1/2 cubes. I like to trim the crusts off, especially the bottom crust, because they can be tough and chewy in the finished dressing. Once the loaf is completely cubed I dried them in the oven on 275 for 30 minutes or so, turning occasionally to prevent browning. Starting with fresh bread gives you a dressing with a firm custardy texture rather than the bread crumb mush that you sometimes end up with when you used boxed or bagged mixes.

All the herbs and savory vegetables combine with the mushrooms in such a rich earthy way and make for such a flavorful dressing. Everyone, vegetarian on not, will love it. If you arent’ worried about making your Thanksgiving feast vegetarian friendly, you can definitely swap the vegetable stock for chicken or turkey.

Oh my god you guys, it’s just over a week away! I’m so excited!
It’s going to be a busy week!

Mushroom, Leek & Sourdough Dressing

Servings: 8-12ish
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5 tablespoons butter, divided
3 large leeks
1 small onion, diced
5 stalks celery, cut into large dice
coarse kosher salt & pepper
3/4 lb white button mushrooms, cut into large dice
1/2 lb portabello mushrooms, cut into large dice
2 tablespoons sage, finely chopped
2 teaspoons thyme, finely chopped
8 cups sourdough, cut into 1 cubes and dried
3 to 4 cups vegetable (or chicken or turkey) stock
2 large eggs, lightly beaten

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

To prepare your leeks, slice the white and tender green parts in thin disks, and slice each disk in half. Discard the deep green leaves. Place all the sliced leeks into a bowl and top with cold water. Leeks are very sandy so this is important. scoop the leeks out being careful not to disturb the sand at the bottom of the bowl. Repeat, and set aside.

In a large skillet, melt 3 tablespoons of butter and saute onions and celery over medium high heat. Season generously with salt and pepper. When the onions are getting soft and translucent, after about 5 minutes, add all of your mushrooms, leeks and herbs. Turn the heat up to high and cook, stirring occasionally, until the liquid from the mushrooms evaporates and the leeks are soft and tender. Mushrooms have a lot of moisture so this could take up to 20 minutes or so. Remove mixture from heat and transfer to a large bowl to cool completely.

Add bread crumbs into cooled mushroom mixture and stir until well combined. Stir in stock and adjust seasoning if needed. Stir in eggs and transfer mixture to a 2 quart oven safe dish. Dot the top with remaining butter and cover with aluminum foil. Bake for 25 minutes, remove foil and bake 25 minutes more.