Simplest Stuffing

1. Brining the bird

Ingredients

• 1 cup non iodised salt
• 4 Litres cold water
• ½ cup brown sugar
• 1 Tbl black peppercorns
• 1 Tbl coriander seeds

A large bucket

Method

Place the thawed bird in the brine, in the large bucket for 8 - 16 hours. Turn the bird halfway through.
When it's time to cook. Rinse the bird and pat dry with paper towel then stuff and cook.

2. Richard's Simplest Stuffing

Ingredients

• 2 loaves sliced bread, roughly torn
• 6 large onions roughly chopped
• 15 cloves garlic
• zest and juice of a lemon
• 1/2 cup of fresh rosemary leaves
• 1/2 cup of fresh thyme
• ½ cup of celery leaves
• 1/2 cup fresh parsley

Method

Place the thyme and rosemary in a food processor and blend until finely chopped, remove from the food processor and combine with the onion and bread.

Then process the mixture in batches using the pulse button to chop the bread, onions, garlic and herbs together into a coarse crumb. 

Tip: don't over fill the processor bowl and don't over process! It has to be a coarse crumb NOT A PASTE!!

This will take 8-10 batches.

Toss all together again to mix… then stuff the bird.

Things you might like to add or things to do to make it a slightly flasher stuffing.

• Saute (until soft but uncoloured) the onion and garlic in butter before making the stuffing.
• Thinly slice and sauté 10 rashers of good bacon and add this to the stuffing mix
• Add 1 ½ cups of walnuts to the mix.
• Or add a similar amount of canned Chestnuts to the mix.
• Add 1 ½ cups of diced, cooked chorizo
• Add 500 g of sausage meat. 
• Use a mixture of breads. Consider cornbread. GF bread works.
• Add 2 apples grated just before stuffing the bird.
• If you used stale bread, moisten the stuffing with a little stock before filling the bird.