How to Make Supper Stuffing and Cider Gravy

I’m going to start by putting some EVOO down on the bottom of a big skillet. This is going to be for our supper-sized stuffing.

Yeah. I just blew everything up and added some protein to it and stuffing became the center of the plate. It’s going to be our entrée. I’m going to grab a loaf of nice crusty bread so we can make some super-sized stuffing croutons and I’m going to put the oven on to about 325 to 350 degrees so that we can toast up our big cubes of bread.

In the refrigerator I’m going to grab some celery for our stuffing, a little bit of butter also for the stuffing and a bay leaf, a nice fresh bay leaf. Here we go. Back here, I’m going to need those apples and onions for my stuffing but I’m going to grab my poultry seasoning first to season my big, super-sized stuffing croutons. This one is a heavy basket.

I’ve got some gold and delicious apples. You could also try gala or honey crisp or macintosh in our stuffing and this stuffing recipe is based on the same stuffing we make every single year in my family for our traditional Thanksgiving stuffing. It’s apple, celery and onion and it is delicious together.

Let’s start by cutting up half a loaf of this bread here. It’s a huge, big, beautiful loaf of crusty bread. You want to bowl too like say four cups of big crunchy croutons so I’m just going to use half of this loaf. You can get creative. You know, hack it up whatever you like and you can also use bread ends. Sometimes when I have ends of bread, I pop them in the freezer. This is a great use up for that and you can mix the different types of bread too. You could put in some cubes of pumpernickel or rye or sour dough in with some peasant bread or whole grain bread. So, it’s a terrific little use up.

So, we’ve got our baking sheet covered here. I’m just going to put those crumbs right down on top. You want to season up a little poultry seasoning and pop her in the oven. Here we go and I’m going to put it in my hand so we don’t end up with tons of poultry seasoning all over the place. Well, it goes a long way. Just sprinkle a little down over the top and I always have poultry seasoning left over because every year on Thanksgiving I’m worried I won’t be able to find it or that I don’t have it. So, I’m about to get another jar.

If you don’t have any poultry seasoning in the house you can just use some ground thyme. That will be delicious too. Let those toast up for a while. My oil is ready to go. I’m going to turn that back a bit and get chopping quickly.

I’m going to need to start with the apple, celery and onion. Of course it’s traditional in my family. It sounds a little weird to have apples in your stuffing. Trust me, they cook up and get nice and tender and they’re barely sweet by the time the stuffing’s done. Let’s get these down in there.

EVOO is saying, “Come on, I need some action.” You want to use five or six pieces right from the heart of the celery. Definitely leave the leafy tops on. They’re full of flavor, nice big, soft, ball-sized onion and everything here because it’s a super-sized supper stuffing. Don’t chop things too small. You want nice big, bite-sized pieces of everything in there; big chunky pieces of vegetable and apple. Throw the bay leaf down in there so it can get cooked up.

It’s smelling good already, I have to say, bay leaf in here. Now, any sweet apple will do. These cook up really quick that’s why I chose a gold and delicious. But as I said, the honey crisp or the gala, the macintosh, they’d be fine too. It depend such a short amount of time. I didn’t want to go with something too tart like you know everything is spice. Your grainy is a mess. But really, I’ll never know. Use whatever apple you like. You want a green apple in there, so be it in your kitchen.

Now, I’m going to show you how to core the apple here. Just cut into on the side just like that. Cut the core away. So, quarter it. Quarter it and then the same thing, nice, big, chunky, bite-sized pieces. So, maybe you’ll end up with eight slices and then cut those into half or thirds. Here you go, just like that.

Our stuffing looks perfect so here, we’ve re-heated our turkey. It’s Deli sliced roast turkey breast but you just ask them for one big, fix slab. I chunked that up, put it down in with our apple, celery, onion and bay leaf and salt and pepper. We’ve made sure that that’s gotten time to heat through.

Now, we’re going to add our super-sized croutons that we made in the oven and this was just crusty bread that we seasoned with poultry seasoning. Those are a lot bigger than the stuffing mixes you’re going to find in the store, right? Well, this is our entrée. This is our center plate here. Here we go and then you’re going to douse this with stock and let it get nice and moist that just hang out.

Back here, I’m going to start my gravy. To my melted butter, I’m going to add a little flour. We’re going to let that cook for a minute. We’re going to make gravy with some apple cider, nice cloudy, organic apple cider as the background flavor and then we’re going to pair that up with some chicken stock. Here we go. Mix this together.

Now, the longer you cook a roux, the less thickening power it has and we’re using a lot of liquid here so we don’t want our roux to cook out too long. Okay. Let’s go to the refrigerator and grab a little more stock while I’m over here. You just kind of eyeball it. You use enough stock to get your stuffing moist and then I put equal amounts down into our roux for our gravy.

I’m going to let this come up to a big bubble here for just a second. Can I have a little more stock to our stuffing? I love the stock in boxes. Is it the greatest thing ever or what? Keep it on hand right in the fridge, always good to go. Here we go. Let’s fold that in a little. Boo will get that. Mommy is a bit of a messy cook so, anything that falls, hey it’s fair game. There we go. Excellent!

Then you let that hang out. It’ll suck up all those great juices. Oh, we’re bubbling away back here. We’re in a good shape now. Let’s get our cider down in there and some black pepper too. Here we go and salt over the shoulder for luck. Beautiful! Look at that. This gravy is a winner. What a lovely background flavor this is. I’ve got about a cup of cider down in there. Now, we’ll add in some chicken stock too and then we just let that thicken up.

We’re all out of time for today guys. Thanks for joining me. I’m Rachael Ray and guys remember there is always time enough for really great meal.