For me chopping up onions and celery for paleo stuffing feels like one of the first moments of the holidays. While this is certainly not a recipe from my childhood (I’m pretty sure that we often had boxed stuffing for our Thanksgivings. Not that I’m complaining, I loved boxed stuffing. It’s magic and delicious and I miss it.), many of my mother’s “company” dishes involved the stinging eyes of chopping onions. But ever since I made this stuffing recipe for our first Thanksgiving after going paleo, seven years ago, my mother texts me at the end of November and asks me for this recipe. Since my mother is not the only person to ask me for the recipe recently, I thought I would put it up here. (It was originally inspired from A Perfect Paleo Thanksgiving recipe by Brianna Hobbs of Flippindelicious.com) There are two things that I love about this recipe.
First, it is delicious. Savory sausage bits in a sea of soft and caramel-roasted butternut squash, apples, onions, and celery with enough sage to make it taste distinctly of Thanksgiving. It doesn’t really taste like stove top box stuffing (although I’ve heard great things about Sarah Ballantyne’s green plantain stuffing from her amazing Paleo Thanksgiving Feast (p.55) that comes close or her wonderful classic bread stuffing. ) but somehow the texture of the roasted butternut squash and apples mimics the texture of toasted-stale-bread baked with broth and spices of traditional stuffing. When we have brought this to Thanksgiving and friendsgiving celebrations over the years, it’s always a big hit.
Second, it can be a complete meal. It has meat and vegetables (of the starchy and green variety) which meets the basic requirements for a meal in my book. So when we show up with this, I know that we are going to have something to eat even if everything else turns out to have some ingredient that doesn’t work (like grains or dairy or nightshades or legumes). This makes showing up to a shared meal so easy, and without seeming like I brought a whole separate meal for our family. And if I knew that there would a strong possibility that all we’d be eating is paleo stuffing, I could easily add a little bit of spinach or roasted Brussels sprouts to up the veggie content.
In trying to write out this recipe, it becomes abundantly clear to me why I am not a recipe blogger, because all my “recipes” go something along the lines of “take some chopped vegetables and cook them until they are done adding enough salt and herbs so they taste good.” Super clear, right? This is probably a combination of my dad (a wonderful cook, who did and continues to do most of the cooking for our family) who is an intuitive cook, and descriptions of prairie women cooking biscuits just by scooping ingredients up by hand and mixing up corn bread or biscuits. The great thing is, in my opinion, my recipes aren’t fussy! Half your onions are rotten? It’ll be fine with half the onions. Have some extra apples, throw those in! When I took pictures, I only had one butternut squash, so I made a smaller than normal batch but usually I like to make a double or triple batch of the stuffing.
Ingredients
2 large apples cored and chopped (with or without peel)
1 celery stalk chopped
1 large butternut squash peeled and chopped (fresh-pre-cut works great too)
1 large onion peeled and chopped
1 lb Sweet Italian Sausage (we really like the one from Trader Joe’s or Costco, and if you want this recipe to be completely AIP, go with the Costco one because the one from TJ’s has a little Paprika in it.)
2 tbsp Extra Virgin Olive Oil (coconut oil also works well)
1 tsp each ground salt & garlic powder (more or less to taste)
1 tsp each sage & onion powder (more or less to taste)
Directions
Roast (or saute) the sausages (whole) and the chopped vegetables with the seasonings. Then let the sausages cool, chop them up and add them to the roasted and seasoned vegetables. Now, I’ve done this a couple of different ways.
Cooking Option #1. The faster (and probably yummier way) is to (1) saute the onions and celery on the stove in some olive oil and half the salt until the onions are soft and sweet to taste, (2) roast the butternut squash and apples drizzled with more olive oil and the other half of the salt and herbs on a big baking sheet one layer deep with room for the air to circulate in a 400 degree oven and (3) roast the sausages separately in a cast-iron skillet. Then, let the sausages cool and add the sausages and drippings to the roasted and sauteed vegetables.
Cooking Option #2. However, it also works to just roast everything at 425 degrees in one cast iron, chopped vegetables on the bottom drizzled with olive oil and half the salt, whole sausages on top of the vegetables. This takes a lot longer, but has the distinct advantage of very little hands-on time after you chop things up, which with two toddlers is great.
In the roast-everything-lazy-mom way, you will just have to keep checking the oven every 20 to 30 minutes. The sausages probably will need to be turned after about 30 to 40 minutes in a 425 degree oven, or when they are brown on top. (In the picture below I was also roasting sausage in our big cast iron over a bed of pureed onions and mushrooms for our breakfast. But the temperature is flexible, so if you’re cooking something else in the oven at the same time that’s more temperature sensitive, like a pie, this stuffing will be fine at 375 or 350, it’ll just take longer.)
Check if the sausages are done after another 15 to 20 minutes. Set the sausages aside and let them cool. (Later chop them up into bite-size bites). Here’s what the veggies look like when I took the sausage off, still pretty firm but the edges were starting to get brown. This is when I added the sage, onion powder, and garlic powder (but you could do it earlier if you want; just watch the herbs browning faster than the vegetables).
Cover the veggies in tin foil to prevent them from browning, and keep checking them every 30 minutes or so. If the pan is as full as this one, it’ll probably take a couple more hours. Take the foil off when the veggies are soft and let everything brown up for 15 minutes or so. (To test if they are done, I just take a fork and try an onion. When it’s soft and sweet, almost caramelized, I know it’s done.)
Add the chopped set aside sausage. And, voila, your stuffing!
I think the stuffing is even better the next day, so it’s a great recipe to make ahead of time. (And it freezes well too.) I think it’s one of the best things to take to someone else’s Thanksgiving as a side dish. (And you know you can eat it, even if you end up not being able to eat other things!) I don’t think this recipe would work very well as an actual stuffing inside the bird (so to many, it’s technically called a dressing), but if you really wanted to try it I’d follow the directions for this sausage based stuffing.
…
Last year we brought this stuffing recipe down to Wheaton to celebrate Thanksgiving with my dear friend Julie’s family. (My goddaughter is the beauty on the left in the photo below.)
We had the stuffing (and a paleo pie) all made the day before and got up that morning and drove the two hours into Illinois to spend the day. It was so lovely to be there for the cooking, lending a hand if a baby let us, but not needing to actually do any prep for ourselves.
Look at that tiny six month old Lily!
I had planned a couple things with Julie menu-wise that would work for us: A green salad with pomegranate seeds and apples.
We made sure that the turkey didn’t have any gluten or spices that would be a problem.
They set aside some sweet potatoes for us that didn’t have their special crumble on it.
It was such a beautiful feast! We even had an appetizer of this amazing Chinese soup from friends of Brett’s brothers who were in the country for some special Montessori training.
And we ended the evening with having Brett give Lily the priestly blessing from her baptism service (we had our deacon do the service, so that particular prayer had been skipped).
Heavenly Father, we thank you that by water and the Holy Spirit you have bestowed upon this your servant the forgiveness of sin, and have raised her to the new life of grace. Sustain her , O Lord, in your Holy Spirit. Give her an inquiring and discerning heart, the courage to will and to persevere, a spirit to know and to love you, and the gift of joy and wonder in all your works. Amen. Liliana June, you are sealed by the Holy Spirit in Baptism and marked as Christ’s own for ever. Amen.
It was such a special day. When you have food restrictions it can make holidays and celebrations difficult. Navigating them from the weekly celebration of the Eucharist to the holy days at Christmas takes extra planning and communicating. But it is worth the effort to come together and celebrate. Even having the end of Lily’s baptismal blessing felt like just a little extra way that even when you have to work around something (not having a priest for a time, or a bunch of food intolerances) there are times when your hearts are full to bursting with feast and abundance of blessings.
What are your favorite Thanksgiving dishes and traditions? Have you had to alter them over the years for yourself or people that you love?
