Carla Makes Thanksgiving Stuffing | From the Test Kitchen | Bon Appétit

What a time to be alive, you know? Thanksgiving day. I think in general, with stuffing, simple is best. And this recipe was developed by Victoria Granoff, who in her own right is a legend, a living legend, look her up. She worked on a Thanksgiving recipe story with us a few years ago, came up with this stuffing recipe. We come back to it again and again because it is kind of like everything you want about stuffing, straight down the middle. The other thing I really like about the stuffing, and while I am talking about the stuffing, I will tear the bread, which is the first step in the recipe, leaving the crust on the bread. The other thing I'm doing about the bread, thanks, Tommy saved me from a total brain melt, not dicing the bread, tearing into craggy pieces because you get better texture that way. You get all these thin parts and shaggy parts and raggedy parts and just rough parts, and so you don't need a perfect little dice. And I like the way it looks also, rustico, you know? First thing is tearing this bread and drying it out. It's going to absorb all of the liquid that's the base of the stuffing because you're really making a custard between the chicken stock and the eggs, and that liquid is almost like a custard that the stuffing bakes in. It's not actually stuffing at all, it's dressing, but we call it stuffing because the word dressing is just weird, but the stuffing isn't stuffed in the bird. Still tearing bread. All right, so I'm pleased with these pieces. That was a one pound loaf of bread, which is the right amount if you have a really big loaf, obviously, scaled down, but it's crusty without being an incredibly hard toasted because it is going into the oven. 250 for about an hour. I could do this with my hands or I could do it with a paper towel. Paper towel, buttering the dish as if there's not, there's plenty of butter in the recipe, but one of the great parts of stuffing is those corner pieces, and the butter is going to just help crisp everything up. You need so much butter at Thanksgiving, I mean, and you know the best place to store the butter is in the freezer. Just start stocking up now. All right, so checking on the bread. One hour has elapsed. Okay, so what you're looking for, there was no fat added to these, so they're not like croutons, but they're thoroughly dried out without being rock hard. They still have a beautiful shaggy texture with lots of crispy bits later, and it's also just more, I don't know, it just feels more natural, and then the drying out is for absorption of our delicious broth, egg, aromatic mixture that's gonna get tossed in. Okie dokie. When these cool down, I'm gonna put them in a really big bowl, and that'll just be ready. In the meantime, very classic lineup. Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme. The whole band together. A large amount of butter is being used to cook down these vegetables. So I'm not looking to get a ton of color on these vegetables. I am looking to really sweat them out and get all of their natural sweetness going. When will my butter melt? The Carla music story. There's a lot of physics, again. Cutting the butter into smaller pieces so it melts faster. That's physics, right? This is the simplest best, the Victoria Granoff? I thought, legend. Why is it? It's a real favorite of the kitchen. I mean, it's the only stuffing recipe that I actually follow. And why? Just because it hits all the right notes. It has like the enough amount of savory herbs, onion, yeah. Yeah, all right, so that's the onion. This is the celery. And the goal here is, I mean, it's a really glorious amount of butter. All right, so we're gonna cook this until totally softened, just beginning to brown, which will be like an indication that it has cooked thoroughly and all the water has released. And things are happening now where you're like starting to brown in the fat that's left in the pan. But slow and steady, takes like 10. My instinct tells me to season the onion and the celery. I'm not doing it because the recipe says not to and to season after it comes out. Salt's gonna come in in a couple of other places. We're gonna salt this mixture once it's combined with the bread, the eggs, and the broth. And the broth that I'm using also has seasoning in it. So it's really just a way to like control for that. Normally, like a mirepoix like this, you expect to see carrot. The idea of carrot and stuffing, is anything more wrong? That just seems insane. The celery, however, with all the herby things, I don't know, just feels very right. Okay, I'm almost ready over there. Everything is really soft. I started to see a little bit of browning around the edges. So just to get ready, you do need a really big bowl. I have my dried out, not toasted, just dried out bread pieces. And I'm just gonna get this into this big bowl so I can add the vegetables right on top. So this is just gonna go right into that bowl. Oh yeah. I'm gonna distribute, and I'm just kind of coating everything and distributing the veg. Parsley. Sage. Stay with me now. Rosemary. Time on my mind. All right, another toss. Oh. Oh God, I got a breach. Okay, I also have an amount of salt. I'm gonna add about half of this. And then I'm gonna taste and see where we're at. Salt and pepper. It's my dad's sauce. I'm gonna just wing it. So the chicken broth right now is gonna rehydrate the bread and it's gonna get it to start absorbing all of these flavors. Because it is kind of like, it's dry. The butter is something, it kind of coated. The chicken broth right now is gonna get into the fibers of the bread, and it's gonna start to rehydrate. And this is an important stage where if you underdo it and there's not enough liquid, then you're going to have that kind of dry, just a dry stuffing. Nobody wants dry stuffing. If you overdo it, you could have something that goes to soggy and never turns the corner to crisp. Feel already that the bread is getting rehydrated and that's really from the broth and the butter at this stage. So your hands really are the best tool for this. And I really wanna be able to feel, like they're starting to feel the tiniest bit malleable, but they're still really, really crisp. Gonna be a little bit more generous. And this is another important thing. The recipe says what the recipe says, but the end point, you need to pay attention to not just the measurements, but the texture that you're going for. So we're gonna let this cool down for a little bit because in the next stage, I'm gonna add even more broth and a couple of eggs. And I don't want the stuffing mixture to be hot when the eggs go in or else it'll start to cook. And we want them to cook in the oven, not in the bowl. Cool. Smells good. Looks good. Very herby. I wanna give it a taste. It's like panzanella at this stage. So we hydrated the bread with our broth. We've seasoned it. We have amazing vegetable herb medley situation going on. That's gonna be the backbone. That's really like the stuffing part of the stuffing. I've got two eggs. I'm going to add the remaining cup and a quarter of chicken broth. And that is really going to, if this was just about getting the bread moistened, see, somehow the word moist, I really object to. The word moistened, it's not as much, it's not as offensive. This amount of liquid is really going to surround the entire mixture and give it that pudding-ish, custardy, savory, all the way baked through kind of texture that you're looking for. You wanna spoon into a stuffing and have a crispy layer on the top and then kind of like an everybody melded together on the insides. And you need the egg to set that mixture. So that's why we have two eggs. Couple of eggs in there. And then again, I'm adding another cup and a quarter of the Swanson broth. Okay, so now this egg and broth mixture is gonna go in. And now I really want everything to feel like thoroughly encased in that custard mix. It feels like a saturated sponge that is not turning to mush, but there's moisture all the way to the core. And that's what I want. Okey dokey. We have our beautiful buttered dish over here. Everybody in the pool. This is gonna bake at 350 degrees. Then it can come out and it can kind of hang out a little bit. So if you're cranking the oven or having other things that are in the oven, you can have some in-between time before your stuffing has to go back in because the oven real estate is also a real thing. Okay, so now that's gonna bake until it's totally set. And the custard itself is at 160 degrees. Then we're gonna uncover and finish baking. 40 minutes has elapsed. Remove the foil. It's completely set, but still like nice and bouncy. It's absorbed. It looks perfect. And the second stage is really about getting that top brown, crispy texture going. And that'll take like another half an hour, 35 minutes. At the same time. Just went on the turkey trot. I feel so refreshed. I really like, it was like a six miler and then for the last mile, I sprinted. I feel really good. I feel like I earned my dinner. The stuffing while I was running has become like a really magical and beautiful experience. Oh la la. See the amazing volume of beautiful herbs. I think it assumes that like leading up to the Thanksgiving meal, you have so much stuff going on, stuff going on that the stuffing is gonna hang out while you're carving and while you're plating up your mashed potatoes. But in this scenario, we're just going straight into it. Oh my God, it's so crispy. I can't even kind of deal with it. Okay. That's what people fight about, the corners. But it's kind of like brownies. You have to be careful strategically. Then you have to be like first in line. Or if you're plating up the stuffing and you're gonna eat the stuffing, then you can like hide the perfect thing for yourself. Not that I would do that. So opposite the idea of what Thanksgiving is all about. But I totally would do that. It's all of the herbs. It's all of the butter. It's that delicious poultry flavor. It's rich, but not too rich, but it's crispy. But it's soggy. It's crispy gone soggy. It's all of the things. It's simple and it's the best. It's simply the best. But I have to say, this stuffing has made me like genuinely in a weird way extremely excited about Thanksgiving. I'm, I'm simply excited. Yum.