449417 Wed Oct 10 06:51:11 -0700 2007 24 31 Home Cooking 0 3020875 ...food safety be damned! My Auntie used to make a stuffing where she put raw sausage into the bird...you know the kind you have to slice up to serve. I believe it was plain old pork saugase she used. She passed away in the spring and no one in the family knows exactly how to make her recipe for this. Anyway......my cousins (her children) are coming from out of town this weekend and I would love to attempt to make this for them. I believe I know what she used for seasonings by the taste of it...but am unsure of measurements and all of the ingredients. Does anyone have a recipe for this???? Wed Oct 10 06:51:11 -0700 2007 90553 rayrayray 1 3020921 Hmmm... the sausage needs to be cooked to about 140, I think... and if the breast cooks much beyond 160-170 it will be ugly dried out... that's a fine line, indeed. When you pull the "cooked" stuffing out of the bird, just set the pink stuff in the center of the stuffing mass off to the side... But wait: those pink juices will still co-mingle with the "cooked" stuffing around it, so... Have a happy! Wed Oct 10 07:05:30 -0700 2007 3020875 92288 woodburner 1 3020944 My husband makes a sausage stuffing every year, but browns the crumbled sausage first in a skillet before adding it to the raw dressing, and stuffing the bird. Otherwise, it's pretty much a standard onion/celery bread recipe, seasoned with sage & poultry seasoning primarily. Be sure to use a decent quality sausage, that does not have cereal fillers. We typically use Bob Evans Sage, although our grocery store seems to have discontinued carrying the sage variety. Wed Oct 10 07:14:42 -0700 2007 3020875 25595 masha 1 3021052 IIRC, the sausage gets stuffed in the neck cavity ONLY. If you stuff it into the body cavity, its mass will be too large and it won't heat through enough by the time the bird is done. Wed Oct 10 07:46:39 -0700 2007 3020875 13700 ricepad 1 3021089 sorry...should have made this post a little clearer. i'm not saying it's the best or safest stuffing idea....just that it's nostalgic and we miss her cooking. also...her turkey was always overcooked (i think probably to get the stuffing part done). overcooked turkey is no issue and totally fine as I will have tonnes of gravy...the stuffing is what matters and the stuffing went into the bird raw...that I know for sure. sounds weird....i know. she was from the UK if this helps........it may be a British recipe..I have never seen anyone else in Canada do it. thanks for your assistance!!! Wed Oct 10 07:52:53 -0700 2007 3020875 90553 rayrayray 2 3021270 Are you my Aunt? She thinks overcooked turkey is totally fine , too! ;-) The probe thermometer I bought her didn't help. I say just buy a really good quality organic sausage and be prepared to eat it a little raw. I'd rather have raw-ish sausage than overdone turkey. BTW, my aunt advises basting the turkey with wine. She says it will not be dry that way no matter how long you cook it. She's wrong, of course.... Wed Oct 10 08:40:48 -0700 2007 3021089 10471 danna 3 3021320 sorry...not your aunt...but sounds like i would love her! sure miss mine! ...thats what i miss most around this time of year...crazy auntie tricks that may not work, but they mean well! oops.......btw...........still need a recipe!!! Wed Oct 10 08:54:47 -0700 2007 3021270 90553 rayrayray 3 3021359 I would guess that the trichina worm is more to be present in organic sausage Wed Oct 10 09:03:15 -0700 2007 3021270 26666 FrankJBN 3 3022729 Problem is the "rawish sausage" might be soaked with bacteria-laden turkey juice... and have been so for quite some time at an unsafe temp. I've never heard of stuffing a turkey with slices of sausage. Wed Oct 10 14:20:12 -0700 2007 3021270 43893 C. Hamster 4 3025139 sorry.............you stuff it with raw sausage uncased, kind of a mound of ground sausage and then when its cooked you remove it as a whole and slice to serve. maybe mods will let me split to a uk board for more info. cousins are coming this weekend...and looks like a british recipe would help. Thu Oct 11 09:58:33 -0700 2007 3022729 90553 rayrayray 5 3028957 Our family uses a British stuffing recipe for tday but the sausage in it isn't sliced. Also, it is stuffed between the skin and the breast meat. Doubt that's what you are looking for through. Fri Oct 12 11:07:31 -0700 2007 3025139 12444 calpurnia 4 3025635 So, you're saying it's the whole problem of things in the middle of the bird not cooking at the same rate as the outside? So, even if the stuffing were all breadcrumb, no undercooked sausage, you still would have the turkey juice issue? Actually, I should not be giving advice, the "stuffing" business is new to me. Southerners (at least the ones I know) make "dressing" and cook it in a separate container. Thu Oct 11 11:55:05 -0700 2007 3022729 10471 danna 5 3025831 Yes. Stuffing in a bird is a food poisoning risk. You need to use a thermometer and make sure the stuffing has come up to at least 165 degrees or it's not safe to eat. After all, it's soaked in raw turkey juice that itself needs to come up to that temp to kill bacteria. Problem is, by the time the stuffing gets to 165, chances are the breast meat will be overcooked. The solution is to bake outside of the bird or remove the stuffing when the bird is done, dig it out, place into casserole dish and continue baking it till it comes to safe temp. Thu Oct 11 12:42:49 -0700 2007 3025635 43893 C. Hamster 5 3027831 I never stuff the bird any more. Partly this is due to food poisoning concerns, and partly it is due to the fact that I now always always always brine my turkey (Alton Brown's recipe for turkey is perfection), and brined turkeys don't make either good pan juices or good stuffing (and that's not Good Eats). So now I have turkey base that I buy from Penzey's, and I make turkey broth from the neck and giblets, support it with a little base and herbs and spices, and I mix that in with my stuffing recipe and bake the stuffing in huge pans in my bottom oven. It's just as wonderfully flavoured as if it had been in the bird, but no risk of contamination. Plus I can control when things will be ready with a great deal more accuracy. Fri Oct 12 05:54:33 -0700 2007 3025635 119275 Morganna 6 3029042 Brined turkeys make fine pan juices. I've brined for at least 10 years now and just combine the pan juices with some unsalted giblet broth. I agree on the stuffing, though. Fri Oct 12 11:26:01 -0700 2007 3027831 43893 C. Hamster 7 3031052 Hmmm I've just been discarding the pan juices! I'll try your method this year. :) Thanks for the idea. Wonder why I didn't think of it before? Probably taking Alton too much to heart. :) Sat Oct 13 05:33:24 -0700 2007 3029042 119275 Morganna 8 3031860 They're salty for sure, but it's easy to even them out with the unsalted broth. Good Luck! Sat Oct 13 13:33:01 -0700 2007 3031052 43893 C. Hamster 2 3021463 No recipe here, but my S-I-L is from the UK (West Yorkshire), and is the only person I know who stuffs sausage in a turkey...but only in the neck cavity. She removes it and slices it for serving, IIRC. If I had to guess, I'd say she started with basic pork sausage and seasoned it with some poultry seasoning and little else. Wed Oct 10 09:24:32 -0700 2007 3021089 13700 ricepad 3 3021708 k...i'll try from your guess. i figure my auntie used poultry seasoning, sage and lots of cracked pepper. for some reason i thought she might have used an egg and bread crumbs...but maybe that was to strech the sausage.......she may have done that due to depression era cooking style. Wed Oct 10 10:21:50 -0700 2007 3021463 90553 rayrayray 1 3027825 Back when your auntie was doing this, she probably was getting local sausage from healthy, clean sources. The food chain in the US is simply no longer this reliable, and unless you're certain of the cleanliness of your meat source, this is really unwise. Fri Oct 12 05:50:50 -0700 2007 3020875 119275 Morganna 2 3027917 So there was some golden era of food cleanliness after The Jungle and prior to today? When did start? When did it end? Sorry, I just don't think this kind of thing was ever safe or will ever be safe, short of irradiated foods, And lord knows the scaredy cats that mob the media will never stand for mass nuking of food... Fri Oct 12 06:34:24 -0700 2007 3027825 87093 renov8r 3 3031076 Fortunately you don't have to just rely on your own impressions (or mine, for that matter) for these things. You're sitting in front of the most comprehensive information source that has ever existed. While pork has always had problems because of how pigs tend to wallow in their own feces, most of the animals domesticated for human consumption were clean and disease free. They didn't range far from where they were born. They were well-kept in general, and since they didn't come into a lot of contact with a lot of other animals, and people didn't travel far from home, the exposure to a variety of diseases and viruses was minimal. Also, there weren't as many varieties of diseases and viruses to spread. So if someone kept their animals well, they were generally clean. You didn't -have- salmonella infected poultry to deal with, there was no cross contamination between flocks of birds or herds of cattle. Most people were slaughtering their own, or they were purchasing the meat from locally slaughtered, clean herds/flocks and either preserved immediately, or eaten immediately. The industrialization of farming, the advancement of shipping, and the development of refridgeration had a lot to do with changes in the cleanliness of the food supply. With animals being sent to large meat packing plants for slaughter, clean herds/flocks come into contact with tainted ones. Disease spreads, and the meat that comes out the other end is not as clean as it might have been when it went in. Also, meat packing practices are not especially clean, and it is a major challenge trying to get these industries to clean up how they do things. Meat packing in Europe is much cleaner and stricter than in the US from what I've heard, and they can serve things raw with little concern about taint that we can't really consider doing here. It was serious problems with food quality and food processing practices, especially with the food coming into the cities, that led to the creation of the Food and Drug Administration in the US in, I think it was, either the late 1800s or early 1900s. The food was actually killing people because of poor practices put in place by manufacturers to save a few pennies in this newly created industry. So, really, if you know the people you're buying the meat from, and you can see the herd and see that they're well cared for, and you live in a more rural area, even today you can get untainted meat, even chicken you can trust eating raw eggs from. The main reason for all the concerns the FDA has and all the bulletins they issue about cooking whatever to whatever temperature has to do with the fact that very few people in the US have any idea where their meat is coming from, or the conditions under which it was processed. It is now no longer realistic to expect the FDA will be able to force the industry to clean up its act completely so we have safe meat again because there has been so much disease spread now, but there are certainly improvements that could be made. In any case, you don't have to take my word for it, a little research on google will turn up a lot of information on the history of food processing. There's reason that the local foods movement is gaining so much ground the last X years. Sat Oct 13 05:49:52 -0700 2007 3027917 119275 Morganna 1 3028420 Well, when you say it's the kind of sausage that you have to slice up to serve, it almost sounds like smoked - i.e., cooked - sausage. If this is the case, then all you have to worry about is the raw turkey juice soaking into the stuffing.... Fri Oct 12 09:08:26 -0700 2007 3020875 98500 Bat Guano 2 3039409 update: as i did not get an exact recipe from the board and my head chef (google) could not find a recipe for this so i winged it. the results were ok but not the same. basically i bought some regular sausage from a local market and took them out of their casings. i mixed the sausage meat with enough plain breadcrumbs to keep it from being to wet plus the sage, poultry seasoning and pepper.i stuffed in both cavities.......i know most advised against it, but my auntie definetly did this. i used a thermometer to ensure that the stuffing was cooked to 160. the turkey and the stuffing reached temperature at around the same time. turkey was great! not too dry...but not the moistest turkey either. ok with me because i never find turkey is very moist. removed the stuffing from the bird...came out whole. sliced and served. everyone was happy...but we all agreed that it was still not the same. if anyone has a recipe for raw sausage stuffed in a turkey... i still want it! thanks to everyone for their help...it was almost as good as autie's! Tue Oct 16 10:02:03 -0700 2007 3028420 90553 rayrayray 3 5095752 I don't know if anybody will read this as the post is so old. My family has always made sausage stuffing with raw sausage meat. I buy 1lb frozen "chubs" from the grocery store. I don't really have a recipe, just "the way we've always done it". 1lb sausage meat 1 - 2 cups bread crumbs 1 onion diced 1 cup celery diced 1 egg poultry seasoning (no real measure - a T or two, I think) salt and pepper Mix as you would for a meat loaf and stuff in the main cavity. Monitor the temperature of the stuffing as you would a meatloaf (160, I think) Very good day one, even etter \sliced on sandwiches day two. We've been cooking it this way as long as I can remember and indeed as long as my Grandma (86) recalls. The turkey is never dry and noone has ever gotten ill. Sun Oct 11 16:48:21 -0700 2009 3039409 1115579 kmcrdab