Dave Arnold's Mom's Stuffing (Recipe Club)

During COVID, Amanda and I got hooked on Recipe Club. We were stuck at home cooking like everyone else, and it offered a great way to think about the structure of how recipes come together. We didn't exactly cook alongside every recipe, but one we have made more than once is this Dave Arnold stuffing. It's just perfect. I had to hunt around for it recently, so I wanted to republish it, properly credited, to make it easier to find and therefore eat. Enjoy, and do not skimp on the butter!

For those that don't know, Recipe Club is the podcast from The Ringer and Majordomo Media, hosted by Dave Chang (the chef behind Momofuku) and Chris Ying. Dave Arnold brought this recipe to Recipe Club's 2022 Thanksgiving episode. Highly recommended to give the pod a listen if you haven't!

It's white sandwich bread, breakfast sausage, mushrooms, a lot of butter and a can of mandarin oranges. You don't taste the oranges. They add a little sweetness and keep it moist. We made it for our Thanksgiving test run on Halloween, and it's the one we're making on Thanksgiving Day.

Recipe Club shared Dave Arnold's mom's original with the episode. Below is how we made it, in our own words.

What you need

Fills an 8×8 baking dish. It fed four of us with a ton of leftovers.

• ½ loaf dense fresh white sandwich bread, 10–12 slices (we used Pepperidge Farm)
• 8 oz bulk breakfast sausage, sage if you can get it
• 1½ sticks unsalted butter (12 tablespoons), divided in three, plus a little for the dish
• 1 cup finely chopped onion
• 1 cup finely chopped celery
• 5–6 oz button mushrooms, sliced
• 1 can mandarin orange segments, drained
• 2 eggs, beaten
• ¾ tsp poultry seasoning
• ½ tsp kosher salt, plus black pepper

Cook the vegetables, sausage and mushrooms (25 minutes)

Tear the bread by hand into rough 1-inch pieces and put them in your largest bowl. Use it fresh from the bag. You don't need to dry or toast it.

Melt a third of the butter in a skillet over medium heat. Cook the onion and celery with a pinch of salt until soft and sweet but not browned, about 10 minutes. Stir in the second third of the butter and pour everything in the pan over the bread.

Brown the sausage in a dry skillet over medium-high heat, breaking it into small pieces. Lift the sausage out with a slotted spoon into the bowl, then pour the fat from the pan over the bread too.

Don't wipe the pan. Melt the last third of the butter in it and cook the mushrooms until their water cooks off and they brown. They pick up the browned bits from the sausage as they go. Add the mushrooms and their butter to the bowl.

Mix and bake (about 50 minutes)

Heat the oven to 375°F. Break the mandarin segments into rough pieces with your fingers and scatter them over the bowl. Add the eggs, poultry seasoning, salt and pepper.

Mix with your hands, folding gently instead of squeezing. The stuffing should look glossy and hold a loose shape. We didn't add any stock. If yours looks dry, add stock a tablespoon at a time.

Butter an 8×8 baking dish and spoon the stuffing in without packing it down, or it bakes up dense. Cover with foil and bake for 25 minutes. Take the foil off and bake 15 to 25 minutes more, until the top is browned and the center reads 165°F.

Timing on Thanksgiving Day

This is the dish to bake before the turkey needs the oven. Let it rest 10 minutes out of the oven, cover it again with the same foil and leave it on the counter for up to 2 hours. Before dinner, reheat it at 340°F for 15 minutes, then take the foil off and give it a quick broil to crisp the top.

On the table

It goes on the plate next to turkey and our make-ahead gravy, which we make the day before with our chicken demi-glace, made from pasture-raised chicken bones from New York farms.

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