Easy To Make Ina Garten’s Apple Stuffing, But Vegetarian

This copycat recipe of Ina Garten’s apple and sausage stuffing is a real mash-up. Inspired by Ina, we took quite a few liberties with her recipe.

Since this was a dressing, we were going to go vegetarian style and eliminate the sausage. We substituted raisins for the sausage. We would use butter, but definitely not chicken stock in this dressing recipe. The results were amazing. Coming out of the oven the dressing was moist, sweet and savory, flavorful and delicious. Absolutely not your Mother’s stuffing. No offense Mom.

Watch How We Made Ina Garten’s Apple Stuffing

Review: Ina’s Apple Sausage Stuffing

Ina’s dressing is amazing. Filled with large chunks of bread from a boule, large chunks of apples and fresh herbs with sausage. The bread is cut into larger chunks than you normally see in a stuffing or a dressing. The chunks of bread are about 1 inch in size and it seems that the whole recipe is actually quite chunky. All in all quite delicious and loaded with flavor.

Ina does not stuff the turkey with this dressing, but as many of us do, makes it on the side in a casserole dish. The recipe turned out a little dry, because it was baked in the oven and not stuffed. We made sure to add more stock when we baked our copycat mashed-up version.

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How To Make Thanksgiving Dressing From Scratch

Step 1

Preheat oven to 250 degrees F. 

Cut the bread loaf (1 pound) into slices, then into  cubes about ½ inch in size.

Put the bread cubes on a  baking sheet and bake them in the oven for 30 minutes. Cubes will be lightly toasted and dry. Can be done a day ahead.

Step 2

Dice the onion (1 large), celery (3 stalks). Chop the parsley (2 tbsp).

Peel, core and dice the apples (2) 

Step 3

In a large sauté pan, melt the butter and add the onion, celery, apples, parsley (2 tbsp.), poultry seasoning (1 tsp.), salt and pepper (1 tsp) and marmalade (1tbsp). Sauté the mixture for 10 minutes, until the mixture is soft. 

Step 4

Combine the bread cubes, cooked vegetables and raisins in a large bowl and then add the vegetable stock (2 cups ). Mix well.

Step 5

Butter or spray a casserole pan 13 x 9. Pour the stuffing into the pan and layer the top of the stuffing with thin slices of butter (4 tbsp.) Cover with plastic wrap. Refrigerate for 2 hours but best overnight. 

Step 6

Preheat an oven to 350 degrees F (180 C)  Cover the dish with foil and cook for 45 minutes. Remove the foil and cook another 15 minutes. Keep warm or serve immediately.

What Kind Of Bread Should I Use?

You can use almost any kind of bread when you’re making stuffing but the best type of bread is any bread that is dry. You could even use cornbread. Cut up bagels or 15 grain wheat bread would be fine. However, because the bagels are so dense, they may need to soak a little longer. You could use French bread. Even a whole loaf of cubed white bread would work well in this recipe for Ina Garten’s apple stuffing.

Again, the key is make sure that the bread is dried out properly before completing your recipe. If you don’t try out the bread correctly you’ll end up with a soggy dressing. 

For our dressing, we went to the day-old bread rack at the grocery and bought a 1 pound of loaf of artisan french bread. Even then we let it go another day before slicing, cubing and toasting.

What Kind of Apples Should I Use For The Dressing?

There are several Apple choices to consider. The most obvious choice would be a Granny Smith apple. Granny Smith apples are available year-round and you can easily recognize them by their bright green skin and extra tart flavor.

You might also consider a Honeycrisp in this dressing. Honeycrisps are very popular, crisp and juicy. When they’re baked, they don’t break down too much, and they have a very sweet flavor that intensifies as it bakes.

We actually prefer a Gala apple in this recipe. Gala apples are nice and crisp and have a subtle sweetness will really compliment the raisins, celery and onions in our dressing. 

Flavor Profiles: Celery, Onions and Raisins

Celery is one of those fascinating vegetables that doesn’t seem to do a lot for a dish. This vegetable has a very refreshing taste and adds a herbal texture and flavor to our stuffing.

Many cooks would choose a yellow or sweet onion for stuffing, because it’s a safer choice. However, the white onion provides a sharper and sweeter flavor in our dressing. When a white onion is cooked it releases all the natural sugars and adds a distinct depth of flavor.

Go ahead and begin your prep of the vegetables for the stuffing. Dice the celery, onions and apples. Melt 4 tablespoons of butter in a medium hot pan and add the vegetable mixture to the pan. Season the mix with poultry seasoning, salt and pepper. Stir and cook for about 10 minutes until the vegetables are fragrant and soft. Set these aside, ready to add to our bread cubes when they come out of the oven.

Raisins really bring life to this stuffing. When you cook with raisins, they no longer are the childhood dried fruits from a box. They become something completely different. Because we decided to make a vegetarian version of Ina’s dressing we used the raisins almost like a substitute for the sausage.

It’s important to soak the raisins in warm water for at least 30 minutes to hydrate them before adding them to the bread cube and vegetable mixture. 

Putting The Apple Raisin Stuffing All Together

All of our prep is done for our copycat version of Ina’s Apple stuffing. Now it’s a matter of putting it all together.  Put the bread cubes in a large mixing bowl and then top the dry toasted cubes with the vegetable mixture, poultry seasoning, salt and pepper and drained soaked raisins. Mix up the ingredients with a spoon or use your hands. Add in one cup of vegetable stock at a time and mix well.

Lightly spray a casserole dish with vegetable oil or butter the dish. Go ahead and just dump the stuffing into the casserole dish, spread evenly and cover with plastic wrap.

Refrigerate the stuffing overnight so that the toasted bread cubes have a chance to absorb most of the vegetable stock. The dressing should retain its structure.

Mashed-Up Copycat Ina Garten’s Apple Stuffing Recipe