Stardew Valley #45: Stuffing

Ingredients: Bread, Cranberries, Hazelnut

Item Description: Ahh... the smell of warm bread and sage.

Alright I'm ready! I've got some bread slices I left to go stale, cranberries (dried this time! much more sweet and fun), hazelnuts (roasted), onions, garlic, celery, sage and butter. I've never made stuffing this way before, and I wanted a recipe that assured me I can use dried cranberries, so im following a betty crocker recipe I found on the American Internet. (the regular internet)

First we chop the stale bread into little crouton cubes, and only some of them explode into crumbs and fly all across my kitchen. Is this the american way?

Bowl of bread, get.

Next I dice up the onion, celery and garlic... the recipe says to fry it (well, skillet cook). Won't it get cooked in the oven...? Oh well, we do like a good frying.

And using a very generous amount of butter! After all, I think we want the hot butter to moisten up the rest of the dry mix as well surely.

While that fries up I can sprinkle on the dried cranberries and find a way to smash up the hazelnuts... I chose violence. A bag and a meat tenderizer, to be precise.

I realise so far we've only got sage and garlic for herbs, and thats cool, but stuffing is all about the christmas herbs so lets get some dried thyme in there too, and some salt and pepper.

Makes sense to throw them in with the vegetables. Time to pre-heat the oven as well.

Once thats looking cooked and lightly browned, we can throw our hots in with the colds. This still seems.... so dry. Like theres no chicken broth or anything. Its like a museli... will this really work? To be safe and delicious im going to drizzle just a bit of olive oil on it too. I might have been stingy with the butter.

*****

Wow this is great!! Out of shot i sneakily made a chunky pan-fried chicken breast to go with it...

And its such a delicious combo! You could definitely take it to another level with some gravy, but just on its own I ended up not needing any extra sauce, it was like eating a super crunchy caesar salad, with extra fruity herby nutty savoury flavours. I was very unsure about the hazelnuts, when I first put them in they seemed overpowering with that dessert-like smell.. but in the end they balanced really well with the strong flavours of sage and cranberry. I've never had stuffing like this before, ive always had it more like a sorta... herby.. oaty... sausagemeat falafel... Is this... "American Style Stuffing"?