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With Thanksgiving fast approaching, I want to share my mom’s Thanksgiving stuffing recipe with you. She’s been making this for as long as I can remember and it’s one of the most anticipated dishes I look forward to eating Thanksgiving day. With every bite it takes me back to my childhood when I would watch her in the kitchen make her classic stuffing (or dressing ask she would call it). I would sneak small handfuls of dried croutons until she would cut me off because I would have eaten through the entire bag like potato chips if she hadn’t. Before she stuffed the bird, I would swipe a spoonful of the uncooked stuffing and turn to her making sure she knew I approved -this always made her smile.
To me her recipe is nostalgic, old-fashion, and oh so good. In years past I’ve made plenty of stuffing variations with dried fruit, nuts, apples, sausage, and different breads. As much as I enjoy these other types of stuffing, it’s my mom’s recipe I keep coming back to. It’s so simple, perhaps this is why I love it… not to mention I feel so connected to mom when I make it. Stuffing is one of those types of dishes you can’t really screw up. If you’re looking for a great, flavorful but simple stuffing to serve your family and friends on Thanksgiving day, this (oldie but a goodie) recipe is for you! Enjoy! [/donotprint]
Mom’s Thanksgiving Stuffing
- 4 tablespoons butter or non-dairy margarine to keep it dairy-free
- 1 medium onion, chopped
- 3 celery stalks, cut crosswise in ¼" slices
- ½ teaspoon kosher salt
- 1 teaspoon ground sage
- 1 teaspoon dry thyme
- 10 cups dried unseasoned bread cubes (found in the bread section at the grocery store)
- 1½ cups chicken or vegetable broth
- 1 egg
- Optional garnish: ¼ cup fresh parsley, chopped
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Melt butter in a large pan. Saute onions, celery, salt, sage, and thyme for 5 minutes on medium heat. Turn off heat. Add bread cubes and gently stir them into the onion mixture. Slowly pour chicken broth over the bread cubes folding everything carefully so the bread cubes do not break apart too much. In a small bowl, gently whisk the egg and add it to the stuffing mix. Continue to fold everything until the egg is incorporated. Scoop uncooked stuffing into a medium casserole dish and bake uncovered for 40 minutes or until nice and toasty on top.
This is just about the same as the stuffing I make – I add more onion and always use raisin bread that I have left out of the package to dry at least a day or two. I know the raisin bread may sound like an odd addition, but it adds a lot to the dish. Thanks for your recipe. The old, simple recipes are always better – in my humble opinion!
Wonderful basic recipe that tastes delicious! I’ve always added an egg to my stuffing as it just gives it a little upmph. However, I added my Chicken Broth according to getting all the bread cubes moist…may have been more than the recipe calls for, but I do not like a dry stuffing. Great thing with this stuffing recipe is that its basic, and I’m sure any additions [oysters, sausage, giblets, or chesnuts} would only enhance it according to your taste and whims. I just like my plain, as the recipe states. It is delicious! I’m making mine the day before and will re-heat it onThanksgiving Day.
This recipe looks exactly like what I am looking for. Was wondering if I can add chestnuts to it. For some reason I have had a hankering for chestnuts this year.
I’ll have to ask my mom but I believe this is basically her recipe too. Only thing I know for sure that she does different is boil the neck and giblets and chop it all up adding that and the water used to boil it to the breadcrumbs. As a kid I couldn’t stand the thought of those yucky giblets being added but it sure tasted good!
Isn’t ten cups of stuffing a bit too much given that only 1.5 cups of broth is used? I mean, I know we can just tweak the recipe and add however much liquid we want but ten cups? That’s gotta be at least two large bags -worth. Like Elaine, I’m just worried the stuffing might turn out dry
Hi Elaine,
Sorry your stuffing came out dry. I’ve not had this problem – and I make this every year. What you can do is add more broth, mix everything up, and re-heat for 15 minutes.
Very very dry stuffing .what can I add now that it is out of oven ?more broth?? Thank you probably way too many cups bread cubes
Hi Sabrina,
Yes, you could easily make this a day before and bake the day of. Or bake the day before and reheat before serving.
Could this be made the day before? Or is it ideal to do the day of?
Delia.. I know this response is late but I’m looking into using this recipe and stuffing my turkey with it for thanksgiving this year. This recipe could easily be used to stuff a bird. Just follow cooking time for a stuffed bird. Turkeys usually come with instructions and how long to cook a stuffed and/or unstuffed bird. 🙂
I’m not Alice but I saw this and had to respond. Martins makes plain cubed potato bread. I find that a great substitute is regular sliced pitta bread. I put it on a baking sheet out for an hour or so to make it a little stale… Then cube it up myself. One loaf of bread is equivalent to what is needed for the recipe… This way you can do all the seasoning this recipe calls for. It tastes exactly the same 🙂 I hope that helps!
Hi Alice,
Don’t know if you still check out comments or not but just in case…
I can’t find unseasoned bread cubes or crumbs…any advice on seasoning with the herb seasoned? Don’t want the added work of making bread cubes.
Thank you.
Hi! This may sound ridiculous but i’m from europe and never had or made stuffed turkey..so, do I put the stuffing inside the turkey, or not? That’s what the name implies, but there’s no mention of it. And shouldn’t I cook the turkey with the stuffing inside? For flavor i mean. Thanks!!
This was wonderful stuffing. Great flavor and very simple to make. I only had wheat rolls on hand so I cubed them and baked them on a tray just to dry them out and it worked perfectly. Thanks to you and your Mom for the recipe.
From Sydney, Aus.
I know, rite!?!? So I use Daves Killer Bread for everything, the stuff is amazing. It’s a bit pricey but you pay for what you get – buy the cheap stuff and you end up with stuff that barely qualifies as food.
I make my croutons (stuffing mix) a little differently – I cube up all kinds of different breads – wheat, white, rye – and in a big bowl I will mix some italian seasoning, melted butter and parmesan cheese until everything is coated then bake it at 350 until everything is crunchy and good – When I am making stuffing I add thyme and sage too. Let the bread cubes cool on some paper towels and try really hard not to eat them before turning them into suffing!
This is also my Mom’s stuffing recipe, and my Grandmothers. I’ve been making this basic recipe for years, and it has evolved…I now add cornbread and browned sausage to mine. But I always add the beaten eggs…they make the dressing “light and fluffy” as my family says. If possible it’s a good idea to use some of the turkey drippings, as it adds extra yummy turkey flavor.
Thanks you to Alice for her recipe and to all of the folks who added their experience to this comment page. I have had a hard time finding the best recipe for homemade stuffing that came from years gone by. Betty Crocker had a recipe, yet, it never tasted as good as my Grandma’s and my Mother’s. This recipe DOES!!!
Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays are extra special because of the flavors from our growing up years. The memories come flooding through and the conversation at the table is much better. We laugh and give our stories. The youngsters enjoy these and the emotional bonds among us.
God bless you all!
I also added a large green pepper seeded and chopped in a food chopper and I add this to the onion and celery mixture.
I made this recipe for new years instead of thanksgiving because my family always stuffs the bird. This was by far the best stuffing I have ever had, and that is saying a lot considering I am so picky when it comes to stuffing. I did not have any issues that most had about the stuffing being too dry. I used one pack of meyers (sp?) Bread cubes and it was perfect. I did ad sausage to this because I love sausage stuffing. The only issue I had was it wasn’t enough to feed 6 people. Everyone absolutely loved it, but there wasn’t enough for seconds! I’m making it again tonight but doubling the receipe! Thank you so much for a very simple and extraordinarily tasty dish!
Best stuffing recipe! Made this for Christmas dinner this year. I doubled the recipe
I also prepared this 4 days in advance and stored it in the fridge. I did not cook it until
I took the turkey out of the oven on Christmas. Everyone loved it and it was so moist. Definately making this recipe for years to come! Thanks for sharing it:)
16 oz = 2 cups applies only to liquids. A 16 oz bag of bread cubes would be far more than 2 cups.
1 Cup of bread cubes would weigh about 1 oz (source: USDA nutrient database). Based on that, a 16 oz bag would be enough for your needs.
I mean bread cubes, not breadcrumbs.
I’m not sure what happened but this recipe was a disaster for me. 10 cups of breadcrumbs was way too many and there wasn’t enough liquid to bind everything. I even added extra chicken broth and melted butter and nothing would bind. A medium casserole dish was way too small and even with a large dish, the stuffing was falling out. The final product was just a bunch of loose breadcrumbs and not good at all. Is the 10 cups of breadcrumbs correct?
I made this recipe for Thanksgiving this year. I have to say that I think the measurements for 10 cups of bread crumbs were way off. I had to add at least 4 cups of broth and it was still too dry. And just two teaspoons of seasoning? That was way off too. Great bones for a solid recipe, but the measurements weren’t correct.
FYI Stephanie who said 16 oz is 2 cups: That only works for liquid measure. You can’t assume that 16 ounces of ANYTHING will yield 2 cups. Water is much much denser than bread, so while 16 oz of water yields 2 cups, 16 oz of bread is probably 7 or 8 cups worth of volume. Just trying to help, for your future recipes’ sake.