Back to the office this morning, sporting my stretchiest and most forgiving pants with the taste of turkey still on the brain – I hope everyone had a great, great, great Thanksgiving weekend 🙂
The last four days were full of:
Turkey…
Dessert…
“Mikey (or my cousin Jack) likes it!”
Some kitchen mishaps…
After attempting to make/blog my Grandmother’s amazing pecan rolls, I accidentally left the dough out overnight and THIS is what it looked like in the morning – I won’t confirm or deny if a few T-day eve cocktails were to blame…nope…
And now Christmas is in full effect at the Schoon house!
But still, I was itching to make good use of our leftovers, especially the stuffing. I don’t know about all of you, but for me Thanksgiving isn’t about the turkey or the pies – it’s about the stuffing. I.love.stuffing. I could eat it for days (and did). And I feel as though it never tastes as good at any other time of year than it does on Thanksgiving. This year, I made the standard and also a Cornbread Bacon stuffing from Martha Stewart that was so delicious! We had so much of it leftover, I did all kinds of googling to see what I could do with it. But I wasn’t finding anything that I thought sounded good. Then for some reason, meatballs popped into my head, not really sure why. But I thought “Why not take the stuffing as the ‘meat’ you’d use in a meatball, and prepare a ‘stuffing’ ball in a similar fashion?”. So I pulled up the recipe for Paula’s Crockpot Meatballs, made a few adjustments, gave it a shot, and most times when I go at things in this fashion, there’s always something that goes awry, but not this time!
Leftover Stuffing Bites
INGREDIENTS
*yields 10 larger size balls or 20 smaller ‘bite size’ ones
1.5-2 cups leftover stuffing
(If you don’t already have stuffing, Pepperidge Farm has a really nice stuffing mix that is super fast and easy to make that would work well with these too!)
1 egg
1/4 cup plain breadcrumbs
1/2 cup freshly grated parmesan cheese
1/2 tsp. garlic powder
FOR DIPPING SAUCE
1 cup mayonnaise
2 tbsp. honey mustard
1) Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2) Combine egg, breadcrumbs, parmesan cheese and garlic powder in a small mixing bowl to form a paste.
3) Add the leftover stuffing to the paste, mixing with a spatula (or just your hands) until it becomes a dough like consistency.
4) Take 2 tbsp of the stuffing dough (for larger sized balls – 1 tbsp. for bite sized) and roll between the palms of your hands to form a ball. Place stuffing balls on a baking sheet coated with non-stick cooking spray.
5) Bake in preheated oven for 10 minutes – flip over and then cooking for another 10 minutes on the other side (20 minutes total).
6) Mix honey mustard and mayo together in a small mixing bowl and serve with stuffing balls as a dipping sauce.
I asked Dave to try one, and he said “It tastes like stuffing” (deep thoughts). Which it did – but it has a nice moist texture, similar to that of a meatball, with the same great flavor that everyone loves about stuffing. It’s a great way to re-purpose your leftovers, or if you don’t have the stuffing leftover, you could whip up a quick Pepperidge Farm batch and serve these as an appetizer at your holiday parties. And people will say “Hey, these taste like stuffing! YUM!” – GENIUS! Feel free to adjust the spices/seasoning if you wish – I wanted to go light on that aspect of it, only because the stuffing itself already has so much flavor that you don’t need to add a whole lot to it.
Well folks, that’s my last T-day recipe for ya – next will be ALL Christmas – ALL the time – get excited – I know I am!
*Many apologies for the less than appetizing picture – I was preoccupied with skipping through the house putting up Christmas Decorations when I realized I needed to snap a pic of these yummies before it got dark at 4pm – damn you natural light! They taste MUCH better than they look in the pic, swear!