Grandpa Linton’s Turkey Stuffing

Grandpa Linton’s Turkey Stuffing

Makes enough for an 18 pound turkey.

Ingredients

• 2 loaves white bread — dried (three days)
• 3 medium onions
• 2 green peppers
• 3 carrots
• 2 small apples
• 3 stalks of celery
• Heart, liver, giblets, neck (cooked)
• Sage (maybe 1 Tablespoon)
• Salt and pepper to taste (maybe 1 Tablespoon of salt and ½ teaspoon of pepper)

Directions

My memory of — and the real secret — of my Grandfather’s stuffing is getting up before dawn to grind all of the ingredients using an old-fashioned hand grinder. I use a Porkert® type 5 Meat Mincer. Clamp your grinder to the edge of a convenient work surface. I keep a small shallow pan under the grinder. As it fills up, I pour it into a much larger bowl that will hold the whole lot for seasoning at the end.

Start by collecting the liver, giblets, and neck from the turkey. Place them in a small saucepan with just enough water to cover them. Simmer on the stovetop for 45 minutes. When done, drain the meats and allow them to cool. Pick the meat from the neck.

If your bread is not quite dry, spread it out on the racks of your oven and set the oven at the lowest setting (maybe 200°F) for the 45 minutes while you are cooking the meats on the stovetop. Be sure to crack the oven, otherwise you will simply make a steam bath for your bread.

Quarter your onions, peppers, and apples, and cut the celery and carrots into manageable sticks. Then gather all of your ingredients around the grinder.

The wetness, or dryness, of the dressing as you make it is a function of the order you grind it. You will make your life easier if you keep the mixture uniform. If parts of it are too wet, they will make a puddle in your pan and the dressing will stick. If parts of it are too dry, they will wad up when they hit the dry parts.

Here is what I do. Start with a piece of bread. Run it through the grinder to form a bed of breadcrumbs to keep the first wet ingredient — the wet ingredients are everything but the bread and seasonings — from forming a puddle. Next, choose a wet ingredient — a piece of onion, pepper, carrot, apple, or celery and the meats — and grind it. Then, switch back to bread. Then choose another wet ingredient. Choose a different wet ingredient each time to keep the mixture uniform. Continue, alternating wet and dry.

Save two slices of bread until after you have ground all of the wet ingredients. Grinding them last will help you get all of the juices into the stuffing instead of leaving them in the grinder.

When you have ground up everything, add the seasonings to the stuffing a little at a time while you stir.

Grandpa always stuffed the cavity, but I have been so conditioned that the world will end — and it will be my fault — if I stuff the cavity, I will be making this stuffing separately (technically, I guess that makes it dressing and not stuffing). In order to do that, I will need to account for the juices the turkey would have imparted. I am going to cook it in a greased, 9- by 13-inch baking dish in the oven along side the Turkey during the last hour before it finishes. Since the Turkey will still be in the oven, I will not have the opportunity to get the drippings, so I will use 1 cup of prepared chicken broth.

Nutritional Information

Serving size: ¾ cup.

Makes 15 servings.

Bread: 3040 calories

Onions: 125 calories

Green peppers: 64 calories

Carrots: 93 calories

Apples: 125 calories

Celery: 19 calories

Heart, Liver, Giblets, Neck: ??? maybe 100 calories (a chicken liver is about 40 calories)

Total: 3566 calories — or 238 calories per serving.

Preperation time: 2 hours.

Cooking time: 45 minutes.