Christmas Stuffing

Whether you’re planning on cooking these holidays, be it turkey or a pork roast, it’s almost guaranteed you’ll need a great stuffing recipe.

And even though it’s called “stuffing”, don’t feel the need to actually cook it within your choice of roast. Placing it within the meat give it a more flavourful finish, but some chefs argue that cooking your stuffing on its own avoids the possible issue of overcooking the meat to get the stuffing perfect.

Ingredients

50g butter

2 large red onions, peeled and finely chopped

2 garlic cloves – crushed using your

1 tablespoon of fresh sage – chopped

1 tablespoon of fresh parsley – chopped

350g fresh white bread – broken up into small pieces

50g dried apricots – sliced

50g sultanas

50g whole hazelnuts – roughly chopped

Salt and pepper

2 medium eggs – beaten

25g butter

 Method

Preheat the oven to 200c (180c fan oven) Mk 6.

Melt the butter in a large frying pan and sweat the onion and the garlic for 5 minutes over a low heat.

Take off the heat and stir in the sage and parsley.

Add in the bread, apricots, sultanas and hazelnuts. Season well. Turn into a bowl and leave to cool for 10 minutes.

Add enough of the beaten egg to bind the mixture together and spoon into a shallow buttered oven proof dish.

Dot over the remaining (25g) butter, cover with foil and bake in the oven for 30 minutes, uncover and then cook for a further 15 minutes or until crisp and golden.