Date Night Dinners - I'm Stuffed

11/28/2014 tringel 0 Comments

I will admit it, the pictures from this bloggers recipe got me - that and my love of stuffing. With a week full of Thanksgiving prep and festivities stuffing has been on my mind, well, quite frequently. It is my favorite Thanksgiving food after all, that and my uncles sweet potatoes with marshmallows on top. Yum, nobody makes them quite like his. But back to stuffing; I could eat that everyday.

But, first thing first, Happy Thanksgiving, or now that it is past, I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving filled with a ton of great food and family and friends.



It occurred to us early on that Brenden and I would have to rearrange our schedule a bit this week. Thanksgiving is a busy day between the prepping and eating and family and eating and friends and eating...do you sense a trend. Brenden and I always try to contribute something delicious to the Thanksgiving table, but also something new - at least for us; my cousins are chefs so they have tried pretty much everything.

With that, our prep and my anxiety for making the perfect dish to share usually ends up taking multiple days. Thus, when it came to date night, we were already in the mood for some Thanksgiving food after prepping our sweet potato biscuits all day. We weren't sure what to make except that we had to keep the night in the spirit of the holiday.

Through my twitter feed, I found a photograph that looked amaze-balls. The many colors from the stuffing looked gorgeous in the deep purple colored onion, and the different textures contrasted so perfectly. I of course clicked on the photo to analyze the recipe and it only reassured my decision further. I immediately knew what my heart and stomach wanted. I read the recipe to Brenden and he was just as excited as me. Brenden and I decided to end our Thanksgiving prep with a little Thanksgiving inspired meal, stuffing stuffed in onions.

In our endeavor to recreate the dish, we slowly realized that the onions were all for show. Don't get me wrong, the stuffing itself was amazing, and if I didn't have days worth of left overs from Thanksgiving, Brenden and I would soon be making it again. But to us, the onions were an unnecessary addition to the dish, in terms of flavor.

Hollowing out the onions were time consuming, and although not as difficult as I anticipated, difficult nonetheless. My eyes watered, my nose ran, the cuts I did not know I had one my hands stung, and being forceful enough to core the onion yet delicate enough not to break the whole thing quickly got old. But we weren't giving up on the onions yet. After all, all great things come with hard work.

The stuffing was looking great and we thought baking them in the onions would give the flavor a little extra flair, like our stuffed peppers from Halloween (I am sensing a theme with our holiday inspired meals). Unfortunately it was not quite the same. Onions are a bit more overwhelming, at least to me and Brenden, then bell peppers.


Once the stuffed onion stuffing was baked, everything looked great and smelled perfect. We dug in immediately, and while we devoured the stuffing itself, our onions were left almost untouched and just as hollow as before we baked them. All that work for nothing but a pretty plate. Perhaps if we had made this as our Thanksgiving dish to share it would have been perfect, wowing people with the display factor, but just for ourselves, it was not worth it.

Although, the stuffed onion was a bit over kill, the stuffing itself hit the spot. All the flavors intertwined perfectly. The sweetness of the apple balanced the with the spices in the sausage and the bitterness of the small amount of diced onion that was mixed in. The seasoning of sage was fragrant throughout and added depth to each bite. The bread was crunchy on the outside from being baked to perfection with the chicken broth keeping each piece moist.

The hearty sausage and apple and celery elements also allowed a traditional stuffing side dish to be transformed into a dish that could stand on its own. Brenden and I lost all will power with this stuffing, and hungry from our long day of prep, we ate it all. If it weren't for the giant bowl stuffing waiting for me on Thanksgiving, amongst a plethora of other delicious food, I would have been very sad we had none left over.

Apple, Sage, and Sausage Stuffing Stuffed Onions
Recipe adapted from theendlessmeal.com, Sausage Stuffing Baked In Onions

Ingredients

• (Optional) 4 small onions (2 white, 2 red), if desired
• 1 lb Italian Turkey Sausage
• 1/2 onion, diced small
• 2 celery stalks, deiced small
• 2 Tbsp ground sage
• Salt and pepper to taste
• 1 cup stuffing bread cubes
• 1/2 panko bread crumbs
• 1/3 cup chicken stock

Directions

1. (Optional) Carefully hollow out onions using a teaspoon and set aside, if desired, and try not to cry too much.
2. Preheat oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit.
3. Cook the turkey sausage in a large sauté pan until fully cooked, about 7 minutes.
4. Once turkey sausage is cooked through, remove to let cool, and crumble when cool enough to handle.
5. In the same sauté pan, add the onions, celery, and apple, cooking until onions are transparent,
6. Add the sage, salt and pepper, stuffing bread cubes, panko bread crumbs crumbled sausage and the chicken stock. Note: You should add only enough chicken stock to moisten the bread.
7. Mix thoroughly, until everything combined and softened.
8. If using hollowed onions, stuff them and place on a greased baking tray. If not using onions, spread the stuffing evenly in a greased, glass baking tray.
9. Bake in the oven for 30-35 minutes or until the stuffing is golden brown on top.
10. Remove from oven and enjoy.