This year, my friend and I cooked Thanksgiving dinner together and she was kind enough to make her stuffing without bread for me, and it was fantastic! What's great about having friends who understand that your choices are yours and that they don't need to follow them if they don't want to is that they can eventually also see how easy it is to just avoid certain foods. I didn't even really mention it to her, but she said “well, I can just make the stuffing and leave out the bread for yours.” YES! Exactly! I can enjoy all of the same flavors and stuffing awesomeness without the digestive discomfort and brain fog I used to experience with a grain-based version.
I don't think the recipe itself is highly calculated, just whatever proportions you find tasty will be just fine.
Grain-Free Sausage & Apple Stuffing / Dressing
Yield: Approximately 6 servings.
Click here for estimated nutrition facts.
(this really is all okay to make by-taste, all measurements here are approximate)
Ingredients
- 1 lb ground sausage meat (I used pork but you can use another kind if you prefer)
- 1 Tbsp butter or bacon fat
- 1 onion, chopped into 1/2″ pieces (medium-large)
- 3 stalks of celery, chopped into 1/2″ pieces
- 2 green apples, chopped into 1/2″ pieces
- 4-6 fresh sage leaves, chopped
- Sea salt & pepper to taste
- 1c chestnuts, roughly chopped (buy them pre-cooked or roast and shell them first- Trader Joe's and Whole Foods usually carry these)
- 1/4c dried cranberries (or fresh if you like 'em tart- I used fresh)
- 1/4c homemade chicken or turkey stock
Note: If you can't find a good quality sausage in a store, you can make it by simply add 2 tablespoons of Balanced Bites ITALIAN blend to 1lb of ground pork or chicken before browning it.
Preparation
Brown the sausage then remove from the pan and set aside.
Sautée the onion, celery, apples and seasoning in either the remaining sausage fat or add some to the pan.
Add the chestnuts (already roasted or bought pre-roasted from TJs), cranberries and stock and simmer together until well heated and the cranberries either hydrate a bit (if dried) or cook down and pop (if fresh).
Add the sausage back in to combine all of the ingredients.
That's really it. You can then set it up in a pan and brown it in the oven a bit, or serve it as is.
YUM!
Comments 16
This recipe was wonderful! Tried it last night with my pork chops and could have just eaten the stuffing and have been full and happy! Thank you! 🙂
This recipe was wonderful! Tried it last night with my pork chops and could have just eaten the stuffing and have been full and happy! Thank you! 🙂
This recipe was wonderful! Tried it last night with my pork chops and could have just eaten the stuffing and have been full and happy! Thank you! 🙂
This recipe was wonderful! Tried it last night with my pork chops and could have just eaten the stuffing and have been full and happy! Thank you! 🙂
This recipe was wonderful! Tried it last night with my pork chops and could have just eaten the stuffing and have been full and happy! Thank you! 🙂
This sounds amazing…since I’m allergic to chestnuts I wonder how it would be with almonds instead?
I might recommend walnuts or even cashews (though I don’t generally recommend eating cashews regularly). I think the cashews would mimic the chestnuts most closely, especially if soaked for an hour or so ahead of time in some warm water.
I could not find chestnuts, used Macadamia nuts as they have a similar texture. Delicious! I over salted it a bit – my Bad
What kind of sausage did you use? I went to Whole Foods the other day, and all of their pork sausage had sugar in it. 🙁
I ended up using Bilinski’s chicken sausage, which is already cooked (I just diced it up into little chunks), but I’m very much interested to know where you got sausage meat sans sugar!
Thank much!
I usually get some from a local farmers market, but I don’t fret much over the sugar content, to be honest. It’s usually not that much. I don’t think chicken sausage that’s pre-cooked would do this dish justice. You could also check the meat counter for bulk sausage that’s not in casings yet- that would work well for this recipe and I think that’s what we used last year.
Thanks for the delicious recipe! Not all of us are grain-free in my house so I added some gluten-free pecan bread which melded really nicely with all of the other flavors. This was the perfect Thanksgiving side (I’ll probably make it for Christmas as well). Yum!
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DO you think that adding in some GF corn bread would taste okay? We are not paleo or grain-free, just gluten-free. I have some from Monday night.
You can, do that, sure! Or another type of sturdy GF bread.