One thing I’ve truly missed at my last few Thanksgiving dinners is my Dad’s stuffing. It’s one of those dishes we had at every Thanksgiving without fail, and it’s sooooo good. But since I’ve been gluten free (read about my celiac disease journey here), it’s one dish I haven’t had a chance to recreate into a gluten free dish…until this year!

My sister has been one of the ladies in my Happy Gut Reset Program, and she’s feeling ah-mazing, so she didn’t want to introduce gluten quite yet. And, it also meant that I needed to modify my Dad’s recipe to be gluten, dairy, AND egg free. Yikes!

Turns out, the details were in the bread, because all gluten free bread cubes that I could find also contained dairy or egg. So I hunted for a gluten free bread that I could use for my own bread cubes and landed on Schar white bread. It is gluten, dairy, and egg free!

The rest of the recipe only required a butter substitution, which is easy with ghee or even a plant-based butter spread. I used a combination of the two and it turned out wonderfully – my family raved about it! Yes, even the gluten and dairy eating folk thought it tasted exactly like Dad’s. Winner winner turkey dinner!

So without any further delay, here it is!

Ingredients:

• 14 ounces gluten free dried bread cubes (about 9 cups)
• 1 pound ground pork sausage (I recommend Jimmy Dean)
• 1 medium onion, minced
• 1 ½ cup chopped celery
• 1 cup mushrooms, canned or fresh
• 1 cup butter, ghee, or other non-dairy butter substitute
• 1 tablespoon minced garlic
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 3/4 t. freshly ground black pepper
• 1/3 cup chopped parsley leaves (dried is fine)
• 2 tablespoons rubbed dry sage
• 1 teaspoon dry thyme leaves
• 2 cups gluten free chicken broth

Instructions:

If making your own bread cubes, you will need approximately 2 loaves, minus a slice or two (I may have made a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with a couple of slices, shhhhh). I use the Schar white bread as it is also dairy and egg free. It yields about 10 cups.

Simply cut the bread into ½ inch cubes, place on a cookie sheet, and bake at 300 degrees for 10-15 minutes. You can even do this ahead of time! Cool completely and place in Ziploc bag.

Fry sausage until crumbled and no pink is showing.  Drain the grease and set aside. This can be done ahead of time too, so that assembling this on the day of your feast is super fast!

Sauté onions, celery and garlic until just tender. Add mushrooms and combine. Add butter to melt.

In a very large bowl, mix bread cubes, sausage, salt, pepper, parsley, sage, thyme. Mix in butter/vegetable mixture. Add chicken broth until mixture is moist. If stuffing a turkey, leave a little on the dry side.  If baking separately, moisten thoroughly and bake, covered, at 350 degrees for 45 minutes or until heated through.

Note: As there is no egg in this stuffing, it is not “sticky” like some stuffings are. If you can tolerate eggs and do want the stuffing to hold together well, simply mix in 3 beaten eggs prior to adding the broth. You may need to adjust the amount of broth and also bake it a bit longer.

And that’s it! Enjoy!!