My Family's Standard Thanksgiving Dressing

This is one of my wife’s recipes, as opposed to one of mine, but I'm the one who always makes it. We spent the first few years of our marriage trying to convince each other of what’s good to eat and what the "right" way is to fix various things, but this is one we've always agreed on.

We've been hosting Thanksgiving for her extended family here in south Louisiana for a couple decades now. Everybody in the family is famous for something and that's what they bring, whatever it might be. And the day before, I make a big pot of this dressing. This doesn’t come from a book or the back of a box, by the way. My wife worked this up and refined it over years of experimentation. And it takes some time and effort, but it's not difficult.

What you need:

• 1 lb Jimmy Dean Country Mild Sausage [personally, I would prefer a spicier variety of sausage but I'm outvoted]
• 1 lb Pepperidge Farm Dry Herb Stuffing [this is the kind that’s in crumbs; if you use the "Country Style," which is in little cubes, they’ll just get soggy]
• 1 medium onion, chopped fine
• 2 bunches green onions, chopped
• 2 bunches parsley, finely chopped [Italian parsley is best; whack off the florets and discard all but the smallest stems]
• 2 stalks celery, chopped
• 1 can (16-oz) mushroom pieces & stems

I find that chopping up all the green stuff takes me 1½-2 hours, so I try to time it to coincide with Prairie Home Companion (I know all the words to the Powder Milk Biscuit jingle), and I accompany my labors with a cold bottle or two of Sam Adams.

The remaining celery in that bunch gets eaten later with pimiento cheese. It's good for you.

What you do with it:

1. Brown the sausage well in a 5-quart pot and set it aside. Depending on how much meat you like in your dressing, you can use two pounds instead of one . . . but then you’ll have to start with a larger pot, because a 5-quart will probably overflow. Also, doing the sausage first, and then cooking down the green stuff in the remaining juice, means you won’t have to add butter.

2. Set the burner to medium-hot and cook the celery down, then add the regular onion, then the scallions, then the parsley (in that specific order), cooking it all down as you go.

3. Add back the browned sausage and keep stirring. Stir in the mushrooms. Then stir in the packaged stuffing and mix everything together completely. (I spend 5 minutes just on this part.)

4. Cover and bake at 400° for about 30-45 minutes, depending on how moist or how dry you like it. As it bakes, the steam from all the veggies suffuses everything and the stuffing fluffs up and it all remains moist. If you’re not a purist, it’s also possible to do this last step in the microwave rather than the oven — about 45 minutes at 60%, stirring up the pot thoroughly every 15 minutes.

I suppose you could stuff a turkey with this if you were so inclined. Personally, I gave up on whole turkeys when the last kid left home. So we have the stuffing on the side of a turkey breast, or maybe pork loin, with the cranberry sauce which I also made an extra batch of. And we have several days of easy lunches to look forward to: A nice bowl of reheated dressing with a little Heinz-57 on top.

bon appetit