This is my grandmother’s Italian dressing (stuffing) recipe. We don’t cook it inside the turkey anymore, so make sure you have room in the oven. There are no measurements in the original recipe, so these amounts are approximate but should be close enough.

Ingredients

• 1 loaf sweet French bread, torn into chunks
• 3 cans chicken broth (14.5 oz cans)
• 2 lb mild Italian sausage
• 1 lb ground chuck
• 1 cup pine nuts, toasted in a little bit of butter
• 2 ribs of celery, chopped
• 1 bunch Italian parsley, chopped
• 3 onions, chopped
• 1 tbsp each of: salt, pepper, poultry seasoning, marjoram, sage leaves, Italian seasoning
• 1/2 tsp each of: cloves, nutmeg
• 3 eggs, beaten
• 1/2 cup grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese

Preparation

Soak the French bread pieces in the 3 cans of chicken broth. (Note: if you want more of a turkey flavor, make your own turkey giblet stock ahead of time and use it instead of the chicken broth.)

Brown the Italian sausage (crumbled, casing removed) with the ground chuck in a medium/large pot. When cooked, remove the meat into a separate bowl with a slotted spoon, leaving the fat in the pot.

Saute the chopped onion, celery, and parsley in the pot until soft. Add the meat back to the pot, then add the seasonings. Cook for 5 minutes, then add the soaked bread and toasted pine nuts. Stir in the beaten eggs and Parmigiano-Reggiano.

Add to a buttered baking dish and cover with foil. Bake at 350 degrees for 1 hour. (Can be cooked at the same time as other dishes. Cook slightly less than an hour if cooking by itself.)