Old Fashioned Cracker Dressing Stuffing – Do You Dare

Here we go again, delving into the treacherous topic of changing up your traditional Thanksgiving side dishes. This time, it’s an old-fashioned cracker dressing vying to be that surprise, uninvited guest.

Sure some you alternative lifestylists may go for the cornbread, but generally, bread-based variations rule the day. There’s a great reason for this; they’re easy, delicious, and most importantly, very familiar. Therein lies the problem.

Why mess with past success? Your loved ones wait all year for your Thanksgiving feast, so why take the chance of disappointing them on the big day? You have the entire rest of the year to do that.

Anyway, I’m not going to try and convince you that this is a superior dressing, or that you should change your regular routine, but if you’re someone whos looking for a change of pace dressing, that’s still very familiar and comforting, this could be the one.

Of course, you can use whatever ingredients you normally add to your bread dressing, and it should work just the same. By the way, I never stuff my turkey, so if you choose to use this as a stuffing, please refer to the roughly one million Thanksgiving turkey cooking guides linked online. Enjoy!

Ingredients for 16 portions:

1 pound saltine crackers (4 sleeves)

1/2 cup butter

1 large or 2 small yellow onions, diced

3 or 4 ribs of celery, diced

1 tsp salt, or to taste

1/2 tsp freshly ground black pepper

cayenne to taste

1/2 tsp dried sage

1/2 tsp dried thyme

1/2 tsp dried rosemary

2 3/4 cups chicken or turkey broth

1/2 cup cream or milk

1 or 2 eggs

*Tip: you can cook a small nugget in a pan and taste for seasoning

Bake at 375 degrees F. for bout 45 minutes

View the complete recipe

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Things to do with Estonian black pudding aka verikäkk

Someone left a comment on my blog this morning:

Just brought back home from Estonia some Verikäkk and still wondering what to do exactly with it :D Aitäh also from Spain for your blog ;)

I thought Ill help Enlil out and share some of the recipe ideas and photos with him :)

Verikäkk is basically a dense black pudding (also known as blood pudding or blood dumpling). Its a mixture of (usually pigs) blood, flour (rye, barley or wheat), fried onions, lard/bacon and seasonings. Here in Estonia its sold widely, and it comes in large dumplings, weighing about 450 grams. Traditionally it was made in late Autumn/for Christmas, but is now available throughout the year. I personally dont think of verikäkk as a Christmas product at all (as opposed to verivorst or black sausages), and happily buy it all year round.

Here are some of the ways of consuming black pudding.

Fried black pudding with sour cream:



1 black pudding
lard, butter or oil for frying
250 g sour cream

Cut into thick (about 1 cm) slices, fry in butter until browned and crisp on both sides. Pour the sour cream on top at the end and heat gently. Serve at once.
Pickled pumpkin salad and lingonberry or cranberry jam/sauce work well as condiments.

Fried black pudding:




1 black pudding
lard, butter or oil for frying

Cut into thick (about 1 cm) slices, fry in butter until browned and crisp on both sides. Serve with a dollop of sour cream and/or lingonberry jam. (If you forgot to buy that in Estonia, then head to your nearest IKEA food isle).

Fried black pudding crisps:



Ive already blogged about this, see recipe here.

MÕNED EESTIKEELSED VIITED:
Ülle tore ood verikäkile
UMA MEKK video verikäki tegemisest

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