Ingredients for Making Turkey Stuffing

Series Summary

Stuffing, or dressing, has a long history dating back to ancient Rome where chicken, hare and pig were frequently stuffed with vegetables, herbs, spices, nuts and cereal. Stuffing also frequently contained chopped liver, brains or other organ meat. Today, many people associate stuffing with the Thanksgiving dinner turkey. There is much debate about the difference between stuffing and dressing, however common belief is that while stuffing and dressing are the same thing, stuffing is cooked in a turkey or other animal, and dressing is cooked separately.

So, are you looking for an amazing turkey stuffing recipe? Well, look no further. In this free recipe video series, our expert, Craig Weisman, shows you how to make the ultimate holiday stuffing. Learn the ingredients for making stuffing, and learn how to use fresh herbs in your stuffing recipe. Craig shows you how to cook the ingredients, and he shows you how to stuff a turkey with the stuffing mixture. So, if you are planning a big holiday party or dinner, learn how to make turkey stuffing today!

Video Transcript

"Hi, I'm Craig Weisman and on behalf of Expert Village, I'm going to show you how to make the ultimate holiday stuffing. Stuffing is a very personal thing. But, I'm going to give you a basic recipe. I always kind of cook with my mouth and to taste it as I go along. And my study goes back, many years back to New York and now I'm living in California, so I like to give it a little bit of a New York flavor which I'll show you in a little bit. But, what we're doing here is we have fresh herbs, which you can't do in New York this time of year, unless you have an herb garden in your house. But I happen to have one in California, outside. So, we grow some rosemary, your parsley which we're going to use a little later on. We have your sage, a bay leaf or two, this here is marjoram. You don't use that much, you're only going to use about two teaspoons of each of these items. And, of course fresh thyme. This is savory, I didn't have any savory so I'm going to use it, actually, out of the spice rack which you can do to, but it always is kind of nice to have fresh herbs. What we're going to use is about two teaspoons of each of these. The parsley we're going to use a little later on. But most of these go into the ingredients of the stuffing which I'll show you as we cook on the stove. What I do is, this is actually a little bit of store bought seasoned stuffing, in which I mix a lot of my own white bread and wheat bread and toast it up and mix it in. Then, this year to give it the New York flair, I added some Rye bread, alright? We got some Rye bread, here. So I toasted it up, and I crumpled it, and I'm going to mix it in with the stuffing, here, like this. Boom! And, you can always just crumple it or cut it, whatever you want. But, you know, I just kind of just crumple it up. So, I toasted it up this was actually fresh Rye bread and I crumpled it up and I'm going to mix it in. Now, who knows how this is going to come out this is my own little addition this year. But, you can do whatever you like because it's going to take on the taste of the fresh herbs. We also have some fresh nutmeg here. My wife, where did you get these things? Caribbean! She went to the Caribbean this morning, she came back and did she look good. Anyway, here's a nutmeg and this is the inside of what a nutmeg looks like. The best way to shave nutmeg is if you happen to have one of these zesters, here. Diane used it earlier on an orange; it works on nuts too. You take it apart and here's the nut. So, here's the nutmeg, here's the nut. And then you take a zester, and hopefully you could see this, or you can grind it in a grinder, and you start to shave it off like so. And, after you spend a few minutes doing that, you have some fresh nutmeg. All you need is a little bit of nutmeg, I think about a half a teaspoon will do it. Couple of eggs. I have two medium onions, and six to eight celery stalks cut, of course. And, here's the secret, butter. You've got to put in butter and it tastes like butter when it's done. Here's two sticks, we'll this is half sticks of butter, which comes out to, I think, sixteen tablespoons. So this is eight tablespoons and eight tablespoons, put them together you've got sixteen tablespoons of butter. You can have more or less, depending on your taste. And, two quarts of fresh chicken stock, which you see here. Oh, it's smoking. Just made it this morning. A little salt and pepper and you're off. So, I'll see you in the next segment."