First, I'll start off by giving you my recipe for dressing. It's based on my mother's, but I make mine a little bit differently than she does.
Dressing Recipe
Ingredients
2 loaves white bread (I just buy the cheapest shit because it really doesn't matter)
5 stalks celery, chopped up finely
1/2 cup white onion, chopped finely
2.5 cans vegetable broth (I've never found anything bigger than the small cans)
dried sage (and lots of it!)
salt and pepper to taste
Directions
Preheat oven to 350. Chop up your celery and onion, put into a saucepan over medium-low heat with about a half cup of water, and let cook down for about 30 minutes. You want the vegetable blend to get very soft without turning golden brown (we're not trying to saute here people). In the meanwhile, shred up your bread into relatively small pieces - we don't want this to be all crumbly like cornbread stuffing, it needs to be mushy because otherwise, when we go to fry it later it's not going to hold together, instead it will just fall apart. After you've shredded up your bread, put it into a big, oven-safe dish and go ahead and pour 2 cans of your vegetable broth over it and sprinkle with salt and pepper (just eyeball it). Then, you want to add in your cooked celery and onion mixture (leave the juices in the saucepan and just pour in the vegetables). Next comes the sage, and I like to go heavy on it, using about 2 to 2 1/2 tablespoons - blend everything together. If it's soggy enough and everything has mixed together and represents a dough-type texture, don't bother with the other half-can of vegetable broth, but if you've got some dry spots, go ahead and pour it on and mix it all up again. After that, you want to pop it in the oven for about 30 minutes, just until the edges and top are getting golden brown.
Now, how to make the fried stuffing bites!!
Ingredients
leftover dressing (duh)
1 cup flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 cup melted vegan butter (or one beaten egg if you're not making this vegan-style)
3 cups light olive oil (not extra virgin for this)
Directions
Start heating up your oil over medium-high heat in a relatively deep saucepan. Mix salt and flour together in a bowl, and either melt your vegan butter or beat your egg (that makes me giggle for some reason) in a bowl. Use a melon baller to scoop out bite-sized pieces of leftover dressing. Dip it in your butter/egg (this is so the dressing is moist enough for the flour to really stick to it good), then roll it around in the flour. Repeat with all the dressing balls until they're all coated. Using a spoon, drop them in the heated oil. After about a minute, they'll start floating to the top. Make sure you turn them over so all sides of the bites get fried evenly. Transfer from oil to a plate covered with a paper towel after all the bites are a warm golden brown. Serve while still warm.
They're good just plain like that, or you could think up some kind of dipping sauce to go with them if that's what your little heart fancies. Happy Thanksgiving Leftovers to you!
