I need a new chestnut stuffing recipe!
November 1, 2010 6:31 AM Subscribe
Your most favorite chestnut stuffing recipes, please?
When I was a kid, my aunt used to make an incredible chestnut stuffing for Thanksgiving every year. It was easily my favorite food in the world, and I can still remember what it tasted like. One year, my aunt used a different recipe and suddenly, the stuffing was just . . . stuffing, nothing superlative or transporting like the stuffing I remembered. She couldn't remember what she'd done with the previous recipe. I am still sad about this twenty years later. Every year we have the same stuffing now: Dry bread cubes moistened with cream and butter and then mixed up with celery and chestnuts and baked.
Please give me your favorite chestnut stuffing recipes. I'm awful at identifying flavors in foods I love, so I'm just going to have to start making batches of stuffing until I find a suitable replacement for my beloved of yore and surprise my family with it for Thanksgiving this year. I'd love your help!
When I was a kid, my aunt used to make an incredible chestnut stuffing for Thanksgiving every year. It was easily my favorite food in the world, and I can still remember what it tasted like. One year, my aunt used a different recipe and suddenly, the stuffing was just . . . stuffing, nothing superlative or transporting like the stuffing I remembered. She couldn't remember what she'd done with the previous recipe. I am still sad about this twenty years later. Every year we have the same stuffing now: Dry bread cubes moistened with cream and butter and then mixed up with celery and chestnuts and baked.
Please give me your favorite chestnut stuffing recipes. I'm awful at identifying flavors in foods I love, so I'm just going to have to start making batches of stuffing until I find a suitable replacement for my beloved of yore and surprise my family with it for Thanksgiving this year. I'd love your help!
Response by poster: Well, mostly, I'd just love a good stuffing to act as a substitute, not to replicate the one I loved. If I find the one I loved, that's a bonus, but it's a long shot. I just hate the recipe my family's been using for the past couple of decades and want to shake us out of our stuffing stupor by putting something terrific on the table this year. So if anyone wanted to point me to their most-loved recipe that makes me feel the way I used to about stuffing, I would appreciate it!
posted by pineappleheart at 8:40 AM on November 1, 2010
posted by pineappleheart at 8:40 AM on November 1, 2010
Whenever I can, I try to make two fillings. I'll give them both here; chestnut is the second.
First filling: the cleaned and chopped livers; a similar amount of finely chopped or ground pork shoulder; one small finely diced onion, pre-sauteed for a minute or so; a philosophical squeeze of garlic; thyme, pepper, salt; and about a quarter of an apple in small dice. Push this filling all the way into the bird.
Second filling: a handful or so cleaned chestnuts, first cooked in a dash of white wine together with a tablespoon of butter, until the wine is gone*, and blended with a handful of diced dry white bread, more thyme and a sprinkle of salt. Fill the remaining empty space with the chestnut mix.
*Here's my more elaborate way of explaining what you do after buying chestnuts in the shell:
While a suitable amount of water comes to the boil, I cut a cross in each chestnut shell and boil the chestnuts for about 8 minutes, drain them, let them cool slightly and shell them. I also peel or scrape away as much of the brown inner skin as possible, breaking the chestnuts apart where the skin goes inward, while trying to be time-efficient about this: there is no need to get rid of every last bit of it. Dark areas of chestnut need to be cut out, of course.
The resulting strainer full of half-cooked, cleaned chestnut chunks gets rinsed and set aside (this is, incidentally, the stage where a larger batch of chestnuts would go into freezer bags for later use. I avoid canned chestnuts), while I slowly heat up the butter in a small pan. The butter foam has subsided completely before I add the chestnuts to the pan, but the butter should not have browned more than very slightly. We want to enhance the chestnut flavor, not mask it.
Stirring around on low heat, I wait until some of the butter has been absorbed and everything got hot and starts sizzling. Now I add a glass or so of white wine and a little salt, and adjust everything to a medium-low simmer, uncovered. The chestnuts should take about 30 minutes to cook; if the wine gets absorbed earlier, I add some more, or water; if some wine is left at the end, I boil it off until about a tablespoon of sauce is left in the pan. Now I set the chestnuts aside to cool. They will absorb most of the remaining sauce and butter.
posted by Namlit at 9:19 AM on November 1, 2010
First filling: the cleaned and chopped livers; a similar amount of finely chopped or ground pork shoulder; one small finely diced onion, pre-sauteed for a minute or so; a philosophical squeeze of garlic; thyme, pepper, salt; and about a quarter of an apple in small dice. Push this filling all the way into the bird.
Second filling: a handful or so cleaned chestnuts, first cooked in a dash of white wine together with a tablespoon of butter, until the wine is gone*, and blended with a handful of diced dry white bread, more thyme and a sprinkle of salt. Fill the remaining empty space with the chestnut mix.
*Here's my more elaborate way of explaining what you do after buying chestnuts in the shell:
While a suitable amount of water comes to the boil, I cut a cross in each chestnut shell and boil the chestnuts for about 8 minutes, drain them, let them cool slightly and shell them. I also peel or scrape away as much of the brown inner skin as possible, breaking the chestnuts apart where the skin goes inward, while trying to be time-efficient about this: there is no need to get rid of every last bit of it. Dark areas of chestnut need to be cut out, of course.
The resulting strainer full of half-cooked, cleaned chestnut chunks gets rinsed and set aside (this is, incidentally, the stage where a larger batch of chestnuts would go into freezer bags for later use. I avoid canned chestnuts), while I slowly heat up the butter in a small pan. The butter foam has subsided completely before I add the chestnuts to the pan, but the butter should not have browned more than very slightly. We want to enhance the chestnut flavor, not mask it.
Stirring around on low heat, I wait until some of the butter has been absorbed and everything got hot and starts sizzling. Now I add a glass or so of white wine and a little salt, and adjust everything to a medium-low simmer, uncovered. The chestnuts should take about 30 minutes to cook; if the wine gets absorbed earlier, I add some more, or water; if some wine is left at the end, I boil it off until about a tablespoon of sauce is left in the pan. Now I set the chestnuts aside to cool. They will absorb most of the remaining sauce and butter.
posted by Namlit at 9:19 AM on November 1, 2010
We make this every year for Christmas! It's AWESOME! Mmm...fennel and sausage.
There are a bunch of other dressing / stuffing recipes on the WS site too - just use the search thingy at the top.
posted by obiwanwasabi at 12:34 AM on November 2, 2010
There are a bunch of other dressing / stuffing recipes on the WS site too - just use the search thingy at the top.
posted by obiwanwasabi at 12:34 AM on November 2, 2010
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by BobbyDigital at 8:32 AM on November 1, 2010