Preparing for Thanksgiving or a big bird just came by? Check out this Stuffing for Turkey recipe and enjoy life without wondering why!

Many times, in life, especially when we lose control over our actions and slowly grasping the reality again, we wonder why we did things in a way we did them.
The answer lies in the unique relationship our brain works together with its various parts. Our thoughts and whole being, forms and resides in the front part of our brain called neocortex which, in evolutionary terms, is the youngest part of our brain.

Interestingly, we may think that we are a free thinking being, capable of making of our own decisions, in reality many tasks are being done and governed subconsciously by the primitive part of our brain that is located at the back of our skull.
These actions, that are made on autopilot, are justified later by our thought processes and acknowledged as actions, we as thinking beings, wanted to take. On the rare occasions when we face the necessity of our actions, we mostly laugh it off with the ready-made “Habits die hard.”

We sparsely need to muse about our instincts driven nature, except on those rare occasions when we do something embarrassingly shameful and cannot sink the memory into the depth of dark forgetfulness.

Like trying to talk to our crush, only to end up spilling coffee all over our clothes, impulse buying at a gas station then binging it on the way home or tasting our freshly made stuffing for Thanksgiving only to destroy the whole thing in a bread frenzy.

Stuffing animal cavities is probably as old as roast to prepare them, after all what easier method is out there to prepare the main course and side dish than doing them all at once.

Sure, it was not always about bread but rather more widely available vegetables or leftover meat. Using bread as a stuffing, or nowadays more likely as a standalone side dish, is a recent progress of our kitchen culture.
Saving leftover stale bits of baked goods by stuffing them was a novel way of repurposing food, just like using up leftover meat and potatoes in cottage pie or making savory crepes from yesterday’s dinner.
Sure, all good things come to have their own space in the culinary world and sometimes they command unreasonable amount of work to prepare.

Although it may not seem so at first but bread based stuffings are one of such things if we want to make them from scratch and not just some for the sake of using up the stale bread that we have knead by hand after nurtured its sour dough starter for weeks.

Making stuffing from already cut and dried stuffing bread takes nothing to prepare but if we think about it, it is just a complete waste of resources.
After all who in their right mind would bake perfectly delicious soft bread with crunchy crust just to let it go stale or purposefully dry it out so they can use it up in recipes that are designed to use up leftover ingredients.

Yet, interestingly, once we find a solution to something, like how to use up stale bread, and that solution gets out of our active thought process then back into our daily routine, we stop thinking about its usefulness and just keep doing it even after it does not make any sense.

Not like we could do much about it because habits die hard and even harder if that means having our customary Thanksgiving Turkey dinner without bread stuffing.

Ingredients

2 cups / 500g Bread (cubed) (stale will hold its shape better during the preparation process)
2 tablespoons / 30g Cooking oil or butter
2½ cups / 400g Onion (diced)
2 cups / 200g Celery (diced)
1 teaspoon / 5g Salt to taste
3 tablespoons / 12g Parsley (freshly chopped)
1 teaspoon / 0.5 Sage (dried)
1 tablespoon / 3.5g Rosemary (freshly chopped)
1 tablespoon / 2g Thyme (freshly chopped)
3¼ cups / 750g Water (only if bread is dried or stale)
2 medium / 100g Eggs

How to make Stuffing for turkey

We can use either stale or completely dried out bread. Dried bread is much harder to cut up so if we have bread for the sole purpose of making stuffing then cutting it up in advance will save us some effort and time. Best part of the stuffing is the crunchy crust so choose bread with plenty of crust to start with, like french baguette, bread rolls or similar stuff.
Heat oil in a skillet and sauté (stir-fry) diced onion, celery and salt until glassy / translucent look, about 5 minutes.
Lower the heat to medium low then slowly caramelize the onion and celery until it is browned, about 15 – 20 minutes.
In a big bowl, mix bread, freshly chopped parsley, sage, rosemary, thyme and the freshly prepared onion-celery.
Beat eggs and water together.
Mix the egg water mixture with the bread.
Place stuffing into an oven proof dish.
Roast for about 20 – 35 minutes in a 425°F/220°C oven. If we have a broiler, it can be even faster but it needs some experimenting with the rack position and heat as the top can scorch quite easily.