Wonderful Holiday Oyster Stuffing

A couple of years ago I was called upon to cook the turkey for a family gathering on Christmas. I chose a bread based oyster stuffing. After the dinner one or the guests commented that was the best oyster stuffing they had ever eaten. Talk about your words that make a cook happy. Wow!

Commercial mixes for stuffing about anything or even cooked on a stove top alone, are available. I usually avoided such mixes because of all the additives used for storage stability, appearance, etc. I would rather start from scratch for that reason alone, even though I have eaten some commercial products that were very tasty.

When I decided to make an oyster stuffing, I looked at several cookbook recipes, then came up with a hybrid of my own. It is one of the "made from scratch" recipes but it didn't really take that long. to make. Because oysters have such a distinctive and rich flavor, I felt that I didn't need many other seasonings to make a flavorful stuffing so it was fairly simple and easy to make.

The addition of stuffing to a dish can make a good thing even better. It also allows the cook to use some odds and ends that might otherwise be thrown out. Because we use a whole wheat nut bread, this is what I chose for the bread part of the stuffing. It's not only more nutritious, but also more flavorful than white bread. Although in this case the stuffing was used for a turkey, it could be used for almost anything you can stuff, like pork chops, or any other kind of food with a pocket where the stuffing can be placed. Although I haven't yet tried it, I think an oyster stuffing might be great for stuffing a fish before baking

Instead of surf and turf, you could call it surf and more surf.

BTW, you can find this recipe on my website, along with over 600 other recipes for all kinds of goodies.

The recipe below was made as a double batch. It was then split into halves and one half was used to stuff the turkey and the other half was prepared in a separate oven proof dish.

Ingredients1 1/2 cups onion, finely chopped

-3 cups celery, finely chopped
-2 cups butter
-18 cps soft bread (cubes and pieces)
-4 tsp salt
-3 tsp powdered sage
-2 tsp powdered thyme
-1 tsp black pepper
-1 pint oysters
-1 cp milk to moisten

Instructions1 - Melt the butter over low heat in a large skillet, (I used a black iron chicken frying skillet), then sauté' the onions and celery until tender but not brown.

2 - Add the seasonings and spices, then the bread cubes (and torn off larger pieces) and continue to saute' until bread is just starting to toast.

3 - Add the milk with constant stirring until the mixture becomes gooey, then add the oysters with their liquor, and stir until thoroughly mixed.

4 - Remove from the heat, divide in half and use one half to stuff the turkey and the put other half in a greased ovenproof casserole.

5 - Bake the casserole for 45 minutes in a 350 degree (moderate) oven.

1 - I have been advised that tearing part of the bread in pieces by hand, give a more flavorful dressing. My guess is that the larger pieces probably hold the moisture and flavorings better than bread crumbs or even cubes.

2 - The comment about the gooey stage is really a judgment call. I have always like the kind of stuffing my grandmother made over the years, which was gooey, as opposed to crumbly."

I hope you like this recipe as much as my family does!