When beginning to prep for my big Thanksgiving dinner meal the first thing I started on was the stuffing. I’ve tried quite a few stuffing mixes, having made a sourdough bread stuffing and rice stuffing in separate dishes, so I figured why not combine them into one super awesome dressing?  When making this recipe the trick is to prepare in advance, then you’ll have all your ingredients ready to go the day you want to stuff the turkey.  Making stuffing in advance just results in a mucky mess.

Sourdough and Rice Stuffing Recipe

• 1 loaf of sourdough bread (makes 4 cups)
• 1 cup uncooked brown rice (makes 3 1/2 cups cooked)
• 1 carrot
• 3 celery stalks
• 10 cloves of garlic
• 1 can of cream of chicken soup
• 2 tbsp fresh parsley
• 1/2 tsp paprika
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp pepper
• 1/4 tsp tumeric

Stuffing in the food processor

To start your stuffing you’ll need to lay out the sourdough bread on a large turkey roasting pan.  These usually have tall sides that enable you to lean the bread against the sides so none of them are really overlapping.  If they are stacked or overlapping it typically takes longer to dry the bread out.  You need to be able to get the bread sufficiently dry and crunchy to be able to use it.  I had it out 5 days beforehand, but I think it can be prepped in as little as 2 days in advance.  Using pretty much the same process as I did with my previous blog post about making your own breadcrumbs, once the bread is dried up, break up into smaller pieces, then toss it into the food processor.  With this recipe we’re not aiming for breadcrumbs though, so only blend until all the bread is down to pea sized pieces.

Stuffing before it's cooked

Cook the brown rice as per the instructions on the bag the night before, then toss it into the fridge. Chop the carrot, celery, garlic, parsley, paprika, salt, pepper and tumeric in the food processor, then store the mixture in a separate container in the fridge.

On the morning you are preparing the turkey, combine the bread, rice, vegetable mixture and the cream of chicken soup in a large bowl right before you are ready to stuff the bird.  Fill the rear and neck cavity of the turkey with stuffing, making sure not to overstuff, as this can create problems during the cooking process.  With this recipe I was able to fill a 20 lb turkey front and back, and have additional dressing to cook in a side dish in the over.

I was pretty happy with how the dressing turned out, though I would possibly add some ground sausage into this recipe the next go around.  Have to experiment a bit.