Sausage Stuffing for Your Holiday Turkey

Sausage is the perfect ingredient for any stuffing recipe; it adds flavor and variety to the everyday stuffing recipe. Here is a simple recipe for holiday stuffing. I created this recipe because I was tired of my turkey being dry all the time, sure it looked great, but when you get to the white meat, dry to the bone. The following is my personal recipe guaranteed to help make your holiday dinner a success, by keeping your turkey juicy and delicious. The amount of ingredients listed below is required for a turkey over 20 lbs. Reduce ingredients to suit your needs. Remember, cooking should be catered to your tastes, don't be afraid to mix and match ingredients as you see fit.

5 lbs sausage (Italian, hot or both)

½ stick butter

2 boxes instant stuffing mix

4 onions pulverized in a processor

4 stalks of celery pulverized in a processor

Bake sausage at 350 ◦ for about 45 minutes or until sausage is brown on all sides, turn during cooking to achieve this result.

Let sausage cool, dice all the sausage.

Melt butter in a pan and simmer pulverized onions and celery until they become translucent, remove from heat.

Prepare instant stuffing mix according to the manufactures directions on the box.

When you have completed preparing all the ingredients, mix them all together in a large bowl until well combined.

Stuff the two chambers of the turkey, (inside body cavity and inside neck cavity) tie or pin turkey skin flaps closed, to retain stuffing.

Bake turkey as described on packaging, remember cook time varies for size of each bird, and be aware that a stuffed bird will take longer to cook. These variations will be stated on the poultry packaging cooking instructions.

If you have extra stuffing that will not fit in the bird, simply bake it in a loaf pan covered with aluminum foil for 25 to 30 minutes. If you don't want to stuff the bird, or just want to make stuffing, you can bake all the stuffing in loaf pans as well.

Quick tip: Rub the uncooked bird with olive oil, cover entire bird with aluminum foil for ½ the cook time prior to cooking. Following these steps will assist to seal in the juices and help make your turkey a nice crispy, golden brown. The olive oil will also help prevent the skin from sticking to the aluminum foil.

Enjoy your delicious meal and pass the recipe on to friends and family, everyone should be privy to a juicy tip now and then.