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 200°C (180°C 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.