Alternative Dressings and Glazes for Thanksgiving Turkey

I do not always want to "do turkey" for Thanksgiving and an informal poll among my friends shows that some of them feel the same. Sometimes it's about just doing the turkey a new way. Sometimes it's about doing something entirely different. Doing turkey a new way is relatively simple and requires little money or effort for stunningly different effects. Here are some ideas from friends, family, and my own kitchen.

The first thing we talked about was radically new stuffing treatments for the bird. My husband uses lots of chopped apples, raisins, onions, celery, and bell peppers in his ever popular bread dressing so it is fruity and savory at the same time.

I like sage dressings but not everyone does so here are some recipes for "other than sage" dressings.

Chorizo and Walnut Stuffing

Use about a pound of cooked chorizo with the casing removed and crumble it up small.

Chop one to one and a half cup of celery and one really large onion or two medium ones.

One teaspoon of Mama Dash original seasoning

You can salt to taste or use salted butter or margarine.

One quarter teaspoon of pepper will be plenty

Two cans of chicken broth

One and a half cup of broken walnut meats

32 ounces of bread stuffing or croutons unseasoned

Cook the sausage, onion and celery in a heavy pan until the onion is transparent and the celery is tender. Drain the excess fats.

Leave the sausage, celery and onion mixture in the pan and add the butter, seasonings and broth and simmer gently for about forty five minutes.

Add the bread stuffing and the walnut meats and gently stir to moisten all the bread pieces. Stuff the turkey and bake as usual.

A little note about this is that if you want the sage you can put it in also. You will note that this stuffing is lower in salt and you can add salt to taste if you like.

We all agreed that if you make your stuffing in a big, heavy pan and stuff the bird with hot stuffing and put it right into a hot oven it helps the bird stay moist and also cooks it faster.

Wild Rice stuffing was a favorite idea with some of us but then we decided that it would really work better with roast goose or duckling. Not a bad idea and certainly a great change from turkey.