Call it dressing or call it stuffing, but Mom's Sausage Stuffing is a classic must-make for Thanksgiving or other holidays. Using savory breakfast sausage with bread and spices, it has been a family favorite for over 40 years.
It's good enough to be the main event but an excellent side dish that can easily adjust to the needed amount.
Ingredients
Bread—cheap white
Breakfast sausage
Eggs
Milk or broth
Onion and celery
Pantry ingredients—thyme, sage, dry parsley, salt, black pepper
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Featured Comment from Dolores: "5 stars. Me too! LOVE it."
This recipe is my wife's development. She did some tweaking early on, but it has not changed in decades—it is perfect and appears at all our family homes on Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners every year.
This smaller recipe (6-8 servings) can be scaled down with the instructions below to a "stuffing for two" size. Or make it larger for the "small army" amount.
👨🍳How to Make Mom's Sausage Stuffing
Start by ripping or cutting about 15 slices of bread (about one loaf) into small pieces or cubes—dice 2 ribs of celery to make about 1 cup and one small onion.
Prepare spices if fresh—¾ teaspoon dry thyme leaves or 3 times that if fresh. ¾ teaspoon dry ground sage or double if fresh. And dry parsley 3 tablespoons or ½ cup of fresh parsley.
In a Dutch oven or large skillet over medium heat, cook 1 lb sausage until brown. With a slotted spoon, remove the sausage into a medium bowl and set aside.
Pour all but 2 tablespoons of the drippings from the pan. Cook the onion and celery in the drippings over medium-high heat until tender (about ten minutes), stirring occasionally.
In a separate bowl, mix two eggs-beat slightly, ¼ cup milk, the parsley, thyme, sage, ½ teaspoon salt, and ¼ teaspoon black pepper. You can use turkey or chicken broth instead of milk if you wish.
Mix all together in a large bowl with a wooden spoon or clean hands, but reserve about ⅓ of the bread and add it slowly at the end of mixing to get it completely covered but very dry mix. You may not need all the bread. You may need to add a bit more milk or broth if you add too much bread and can't get it all moist.
Place in an oven-safe pan. Bake at 350° for about 1 hour until well browned and at 165° internal temperature.
For more details, keep reading about food safety and make ahead options. See the Recipe Card below for complete instructions and to print.
Note: Images are for a double recipe. The discussion and the recipe card are not doubled.
🍞Ingredients options and variations
The Bread
We usually use standard white bread, but use the bread you want. You will need about 15 standard slices of bread, more if thinly sliced. This will be a little under one standard-size loaf.
We have tried a variety of special "stuffing" breads over the years, but they did not add anything to the final results. If you use pre-made spiced-up "stuffing" bread, you may need to adjust the spices since they are frequently seasoned.
We either hand-rip it into small pieces or dice it into small bread cubes.
We do the bread first and let it set out exposed to the air while doing the rest of the preparation. More drying does not seem necessary.
Sausage
I recommend breakfast pork sausage, although many recipes will use Italian sausage. We are a Bob Evan's sausage household, but use the sausage you love for sausage stuffing.
The sausage seasoning will significantly contribute to the taste, so I don't recommend unseasoned ground pork.
The Seasoning
Much of the taste will come from your choice of sausage and any special bread.
In addition to salt and pepper, the savory flavors of thyme, sage, and parsley are used. Some people will add rosemary or poultry seasoning.
Fresh is preferred if you have them available, but the dried version is a good substitute.
The Vegetables
The standard celery and onion are added after sauteing a bit in the sausage fat. Some people will prefer to use butter, and that is fine. The dressing cooks too fast to skip the saute.
The Liquid
Part of the fluid comes from the eggs needed to hold the stuffing together. You only need a small amount of liquid, so generally, we use milk or broth.
We use Penzey's turkey base to make our turkey broth for the gravy and commonly use that in the dressing.
When adding the liquid/egg/herb mixture, get all the bread coated, but do not over-mix.
↕️How to make this a smaller or larger recipe
The full recipe makes 6 to 8 servings. Perfect for our "for two" household since we love leftovers and plan for several meals of leftovers or can freeze some. This fits in a casserole dish of about 1 ½ quarts, and the double size fits in a 2 ½ quart dish. The exact volume can vary due to the type of bread you use.
Make the amount you want by adjusting the serving number in the recipe card.
- Use the recipe card and adjust the number of servings.
- Use the amount of ingredients in the ingredient list, not the instructions—those do not adjust.
- If the scaling of the amount leads to a fraction of an egg, round up to the higher whole egg. And don't be afraid to add more sausage or other ingredients.
- Use an oven-safe baking dish. The dressing should be 1 to 2 inches thick.
- Cook until browning and 165° for safety. Thicker and bigger will take longer. Thinner or smaller will cook faster.
Making stuffing ahead
The USDA recommends NOT making stuffing ahead and refrigerating. You can fully cook the dish and reheat it to 165° later. Or freeze the uncooked stuffing immediately, then when ready to cook, place it in the oven frozen and cook to 165°.
I prefer to cut the bread and the vegetables, then cook the sausage ahead. Store appropriately until needed—assembly goes quickly with those things done.
❄️Food Safety
Sausage stuffing has eggs, so it must reach 165° to be safe to consume. But even without the egg, the turkey's cavity is a contaminated area, and the cavity and everything in it must also reach 165° to be safe to eat.
So you have four choices.
- You can stuff the cavity and cook to the 165° temperature for the center of the dressing. But the meat will be way overcooked and dry. (Not good from the taste standpoint.)
- If you stuff the turkey and cook it to the correct endpoint of 165° in the breast, the dressing will never reach a safe temperature. (Not good and very dangerous.)
- Use the Cook Illustrated (CI) method of putting the stuffing in the cavity in cheesecloth, then remove it halfway through the cooking. Put it in a baking dish and finish cooking to a safe temperature. (Very CI, very fussy.)
- Or cook the turkey and the sausage stuffing/dressing separately and safely. (Great all around.)
For more safety tips, see the USDA Food Safety Page.
Serving
This sausage dressing is usually served with Roasted Turkey Breast, Sweet Potato Casserole, Green Bean Casserole, and many other holiday traditions. See Thanksgiving Recipe Roundup for more recommendations.
❄️How to Store Leftovers
After cooking, sausage stuffing is good for 3-4 days, sealed airtight in the refrigerator. Reheat in the oven or microwave and serve with gravy. Reheated leftovers should be heated to 165° before serving.
For more extended storage, use your freezer after cooking. Store in an airtight container and freeze for up to 3 months.
❓FAQs
The egg is there to stick things together. Without eggs holding the stuffing together, it will just fall apart.
The short answer is that it is not safe. The dressing must reach 165° in all parts of the stuffing to be safe to eat. This is due to the eggs and the location inside the turkey.
To reach 165° in the center of the stuffing, the turkey will be way overcooked and dry out.
👨🍳Dressing vs. Stuffing
I grew up using the term stuffing over 50 years ago. It was always cooked in the cavity of the turkey. Many differentiated the two terms in those years by using "stuffing" if cooked in the bird and "dressing" if cooked outside the bird.
But in recent years, we also developed a better understanding of food safety, and the two terms have merged. They are now used interchangeably, even by the National Turkey Federation.
So, use the term you want. I seem to go back and forth frequently, but stuffing is the term I tend to use since I grew up using that term.
For many years, stuffing went in the bird. Now, it is baked in a pan for safety, but it is still a great treat at holiday gatherings with lots of herbs, celery, sausage, and crunchy bread, thanks to the baking in a pan.
This recipe is listed in these categories. See them for more similar recipes.
Have you tried this recipe, or do you have a question? Join the community discussion in the comments.
📖 Recipe
Mom's Sausage Stuffing
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Ingredients
- 15 slices bread - a little under a loaf, do a little extra
- 2 ribs celery - diced
- 1 onion - small
- ¾ teaspoon dry thyme
- ¾ teaspoon dry sage
- 3 tablespoons dry parsley
- 1 lb breakfast sausage
- 2 eggs - slightly beaten
- ¼ cup milk - or broth
- ½ teaspoon salt
- ¼ teaspoon pepper
Instructions
- Start by ripping or cutting about 15 slices of bread (about one loaf) into small pieces or cubes—dice 2 ribs of celery to make about 1 cup and one small onion.
- Prepare spices if fresh—¾ teaspoon dry thyme leaves or 3 times that if fresh. ¾ teaspoon dry ground sage or double if fresh. And dry parsley 3 tablespoons or ½ cup of fresh parsley.
- In a Dutch oven or large skillet over medium heat, cook 1 lb sausage until brown. With a slotted spoon, remove the sausage into a medium bowl and set aside.
- Pour all but 2 tablespoons of the drippings from the pan. Cook the onion and celery in the drippings over medium-high heat until tender (about ten minutes), stirring occasionally.
- In a separate bowl, mix two eggs-beat slightly, ¼ cup milk, the parsley, thyme, sage, ½ teaspoon salt, and ¼ teaspoon black pepper. You can use turkey or chicken broth instead of milk if you wish.
- Mix all together in a large bowl with a wooden spoon or clean hands, but reserve about ⅓ of the bread and add it slowly at the end of mixing to get it completely covered but very dry mix. You may not need all the bread. You may need to add a bit more milk or broth if you add too much bread and can't get it all moist.
- Place in an oven-safe pan.
- Bake at 350° for about 1 hour until well browned and at 165° internal temperature.
Recipe Notes
Pro Tips
- Use the bread and sausage you like. Feel free to change the ingredients to suit your taste. We use just white bread and Bob Evans breakfast sausage.
- Do a little extra bread; you may want it.
- The recipe, as written, is cut down. How to adjust up or down is covered in the post.
- The pan size should allow for a 1 to 2-inch thick casserole—if it fits, it will cook fine. A single recipe usually fits in a 1 ½ quart casserole dish or a 6 by 9 dish. A double recipe needs a 2 ½ quart dish or a 9 by 13 dish. This will vary some by the type of bread used.
- Do not try to cook inside the turkey. It is not safe.
- You can cook the giblets on the stovetop ahead of time, add the broth for the milk, and add the cooked meat.
- I prefer to dice up the bread first and let it dry while getting the sausage cooked, the veggies cut, and the wet components mixed.
- Cook until golden brown and 165° internal temperature (for food safety.)
- Leftovers are good refrigerated for 3-4 days. Or frozen for about 3 months.
Your Own Private Notes
To adjust the recipe size:
You may adjust the number of servings in this recipe card under servings. This does the math for the ingredients for you. BUT it does NOT adjust the text of the instructions. So you need to do that yourself.
Nutrition Estimate
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Editor's note: Originally Published November 29, 2011. Updated with expanded options, refreshed photos, and a table of contents to help navigation. Enjoy this Thanksgiving Classic.
Dan Mikesell AKA DrDan says
Any recipe on this site and almost every recipe site will state cover if it should be. This is uncovered.
Carolyn Stephens says
I have plenty of "small army" recipes. I was looking forward to a stuffing recipe for two (with leftovers). That's why I subscribe to your blog.
DrDan says
Hi Carolyn,
Welcome to the blog.
This one is easy to adjust. I left it this one in the version we usually make.
You can easily adjust the ingredients in the recipe card. Set it to 3 servings and you will have a nice for two with large servings. It will not adjust the instructions.
Hope that helps.
Dan
Leslie says
How far in advance can I make the turkey sausage stuffings?
DrDan says
With the raw egg, I wouldn't make ahead. You can get the sausage cooked etc but assemble and cook that day.
DrDan
Chris says
I don't need anything besides that for a meal. I crave savory sausage stuffing and have been known to eat it for breakfast....cold.
Dolores says
Me too! LOVE it.