When the weather gets a little bit cooler, I like to start dreaming of the holidays and all of the tasty food I’ll be eating soon. And then I get a little bit peckish. This dish is a quick(er) and (more) simple version of the traditional Thanksgiving turkey and it has a lot of delicious harvest flavors to make it extra tasty.

The Recipe

Servings: 6 | Prep time: 20 mins | Cook time: 1 hr, 30 mins

The Stuff You Need (Ingredients)

8 slices of plain white bread
1 onion, sliced
2 stalks celery, chopped
1/2 c. vegetable shortening (*see note C below*)
4 sweet Italian sausages
2 apples, peel-on chopped
½ c. dried cranberries
1 T. Bell’s Seasoning (*see note D below*)
Salt + pepper to taste
2½ c. dried cornbread stuffing mix
1-2 c. just boiled water
1 – 4 lb. whole roasting chicken

What You Need To Do With That Stuff (Directions)

Making some fresh breadcrumbs: grind up your slices of bread in a food processor. If you have time leave the breadcrumbs out on a tray in the open air to dry out slowly and become a little stale. If you are a bit more rushed, put the tray in a 300°F oven for 10-15 minutes stirring occasionally to prevent burning.

Raise the oven temperature to 450°F. It’s gettin’ hot in there...

Sauté the onion and celery in 1 T melted vegetable shortening until they are softened slightly. Shoot for 5 minutes. Remove to a large mixing bowl.

Slice open the sausage, peel off the casing and then break up the meat into your sauté pan. Brown the sausage and then transfer it your mixing bowl.

Melt the rest of your vegetable shortening in that same pan. (Yay for multi-use pans and making less of a mess!) In the meantime add the rest of the stuffing ingredients (basically everything but the chicken and the boiling water) to the mixing bowl and mix it all up until everything is evenly distributed. Add your melted shortening and mix some more. The amount of shortening can vary a little bit depending on the moisture in your mix. You want to add enough fat to just moisten and coat almost all of the mixture.

Add your freshly boiled water to the mix to thoroughly moisten the mixture. The bread will absorb a fair amount of water, but we are not looking to drown the mixture, just ensure that it doesn’t dry out in the oven. Leave the stuffing for the moment and start on the bird.

Prepare the chicken by rinsing it inside and out with warm water and pat dry with paper towels. Also make sure to remove the giblets. We won’t be using them in this recipe, but I’ll be sharing an excellent giblet gravy recipe in the not too distance future, so you can always save them in case you want to try your hand at that for this chicken too.

Place the chicken breast side up (I hope that you knew that) on a rack in a medium-size roasting pan. Salt and pepper the inside and outside of the bird. Pack the stuffing inside the cavity until it full, but not too full or else it won’t cook properly. Any leftover stuffing can be spooned into an appropriately sized, greased casserole dish.

Roast the chicken in the preheated oven for 10-15 minutes to get some nice golden brown and crispy skin. Reduce the heat to 350°F. Cover the casserole dish stuffing with aluminum foil and toss it in the oven with the chicken. Continue to roast the chicken until the thigh register 165°F on a thermometer. You can estimate that this will be 20 minutes per pound. Cook the stuffing along side the chicken and uncover when you have about 15 minutes of cook time left on the chicken.

Rest the chicken for about 10 minutes then remove the stuffing and slice the meat.

Enjoy the fruits of your labor!

(More than) A couple of notes:

(A) You have a choice of how to prepare this meal and I think both work equally well. First you can follow this recipe and actually stuff your chicken. This particular option takes a bit longer to cook, but there is something to say for the greater depth of flavor and chicken-ness you get in your stuffing. The second option is to bake the stuffing in a casserole dish and then roast the chicken (or even chicken pieces) separately. This is definitely quicker and perfectly acceptable except I think technically you’ll have to call it Roast Chicken and Autumn Dressing, but I don’t think that’s too important. Unless you have someone particularly pedantic in your life.

(B) The fresh breadcrumbs. This is a bit of a fiddly step and if you want to simplify things, it isn’t absolutely necessary. I like to add the breadcrumbs because I think it gives the stuffing a softness and body that you don’t get with the packaging stuffing cubes alone. And we make our Thanksgiving turkey just with fresh breadcrumbs, so I like the Thanksgiving-ness of it as well. If that makes any sense… Do what you will. (Most of) My recipes are just suggestions. I like to tell you what worked for me, give you some options and then let you basically choose your own adventure.

(C) I use vegetable shortening because that’s what my mother has always used. I don’t think that it is the most popular thing in the world, so if you are looking for an alternative I suggest butter or a very mild tasting oil so it doesn’t overwhelm the other flavors.

(D) Bell’s Seasoning. What, you’ve never heard of Bell’s Seasoning?? I’m not surprised since it seems to be a New England thing. Sadly, I discovered this firsthand when I tried to cook Thanksgiving in Michigan a couple of years ago AND COULDN’T FIND IT ANYWHERE. But I digress. If you don’t have Bell’s Seasoning in your area, you can order it online or you can make your own similar mix. For this recipe, I suggest 2 t. dried sage, ¼ t. ground ginger, ¼ t. dried oregano, ¼ t. dried rosemary, and ¼ t. dried marjoram, or something similar depending on your own taste.

(E) In this recipe I’m serving the stuffing as a side for the chicken, but I think, with the sausage, it is filling and complete enough to be a main course as well. Maybe serve it with a nice green salad and some roasted butternut squash. Oh, I’m getting hungry just thinking about it!