There is something magical about tasting the first bite of Thanksgiving stuffing – especially when it’s pulled fresh from the oven. The warm, savory flavors swirl around my pallet; a teaser for more enticing things to come. This year, we’ll be serving up a savory stuffing made with cranberries, toasted nuts, apples, celery, carrot, shallots, quinoa and steel cut oats: a twist on a traditional combination.
I have to confess that in testing my Thanksgiving stuffing recipe, completely out of habit, I started assembling ingredients from around our kitchen: tasty bites that I regularly use to make stuffing — nuts, some kind of grain or wild rice, fresh herbs, bread to toast and make into breadcrumbs…
As I removed the toasted bread from the oven, a thought hit me like a ton of bricks.
Hold your horses woman! Breadcrumbs?
The low-sodium energy flow came to a screaming halt.
Rewind the breadcrumb idea (because often, [processed] bread can be a hidden source of sodium).
…and mid-way through cooking, I re-designed my whole stuffing recipe. So much for mis en place (having everything in place/set up).
The final taste bite was delightful; my surprisingly satisfying creation shifted my best intentions — the “one fork taste” somehow shifted into a half-empty bowl. Good thing it wasn’t really Thanksgiving.
Please note that this recipe probably isn’t the kind of stuffing that I’d want to put inside a turkey, simply because the quinoa is pretty small. It seems like it would be a lot of work to dig out all of the small bites before carving up the turkey. We made this in a casserole dish and the stuffing came out fluffy, as quinoa should. If you want to read more about quinoa, click here to read our blog post on Peruvian Quinoa Fields.
Ingredients
- 1 3/4 cup Quinoa, rinsed
- 2/3 cup steel cut oats (dried)
- 1 cup roasted nuts (we pan roasted fresh, unsalted 3/4c pecans, 1/4 c walnuts - it's what I had on hand).
- 1 cup celery, chopped
- 1 cup carrot, chopped
- 1 cup shallot, diced
- 1/2 cup dried cranberries
- 2 cups apple, diced
- Roughly 5 cups low-sodium chicken stock (+ some extra in case you need to add more liquid - this will vary based on the cooking time)
- 3 Tablespoons fresh sage, chopped
- 2 Tablespoons fresh oregano, chopped
- 1 teaspoon dried marjoram
- 2 Tablespoons poultry seasoning (no-salt added);
- 4 tablespoons cooking oil (olive or grapeseed).
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 400F
- In a fry pan, heat the oil until it is hot. Stir in the apple/carrots/celery/shallots for roughly 5 minutes, or until the vegetables "soften". Make sure you don't brown the vegetables (overcooked). Remove from heat.
- In a stockpot, heat the 5 cups of chicken broth, add the quinoa and steel cut oats. Bring to a boil, and let the quinoa cook for approximately 10 minutes, until the germ starts to separate from the grain (quinoa will still be al dente at this point). Remove from heat.
- Combine and toss all of the ingredients together (sautéed mixture above, quinoa/oats, roasted nuts, cranberries, and herbs).
- Place in a casserole dish and cover. Place in the oven for approximately 1 hour, until the quinoa is light and fluffy, and the liquid has completely evaporated during cooking. (You may want to perform several checkpoints, as everyone's cooking time and liquids will vary, depending upon the heat and size of the pot used to boil, oven calibration, etc.).
- Remove from heat and serve.
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