Sausage and Leek Stuffing Recipe (2024)

Made a half-recipe to trial before Thanksgiving and we weren’t impressed. The top came out beautifully crunchy but the majority was a bit mushy. It also was quite oily and lacked depth of flavor- sage dominated, and I wanted it to be sweeter and saltier. It’s a serviceable stuffing but we won’t be making it again.

You don't mention whether you used homemade broth or store-bought. The body of the stuffing is soaked in cream and stock, so I expected it to be "a bit mushy" as you call it. It sounds like you had a pre-conceived notion ("sweeter and saltier") of what it would taste like. That makes an objective review difficult. I like savory, and my homemade broth was a bit salty, so I was well pleased with the result.

A Pullman loaf is a white, nearly crustless, loaf of bread, baked in a pullman pan (a rectangular loaf pan with a removable lid which limits crust formation). Any white bread could substitute here.

I've made this twice and would definitely recommend using all the stock the recipe calls for. After adding the egg, heavy cream, 2 cups stock, the stuffing seemed very saturated, like any more would pool at the bottom, so I didn't use the 3rd cup. It came out dry and not like a custardy stuffing. Also, I could only find mild Italian sausage, not sweet, and that note was missing. Take 2: I used about 3/4 cups more stock and added ~1TBS brown sugar when cooking the sausage - everyone loved it!

Two bread brands frequently recommended for this type of dressing are Pepperidge Farm Hearty White Bread and Arnold Brick Oven Premium White Bread.

Never mind, just saw that I can make 2 days ahead & bake day of ... thank you

Richard - yes, having had a variety of stuffings over the years at Thanksgivings, I do have a "notion" of what it should taste like. That doesn't make it difficult to objectively say that this recipe yielded something underwhelming. Plus, aren't all recipe reviews subjective at the end of the day? Glad you were pleased with yours.

Made as directed, except for the pullman loaf. I used the densest loaf I could find locally, dried it out over several days. The result was lovely, but I think it would have been divine with the specifed Pullman. For those of us outside NYC area, is there a good pullman loaf substitute?

This was amazing! Everyone loved it.

My new go to stuffing recipe! Simple and amazing, Made it the day before and used duck truffle sausages (good butcher here!)…fantastic!

Made this for TG and doing it again for Xmas due to popular demand. Prepared exactly as described and it came out great. Only change was that my market only had hot sausage so I substituted chorizo. It gave it a nice spice.

Cooked the recipe exactly as written, swapping regular sausage with beyond sausage and veg chicken broth and it was amazing.

This recipe produced an excellent stuffing. Pullman loaf is necessary as it is denser than regular white bread and not pre-sliced so you can make chunky cubes. I did not add extra broth as suggested at the end of recipe nor did I put pats of butter on the top of the casserole. Stuffing had crispy top with soft, not mushy, interior. Claire Saffitz forthe win!

Thanks to this recipe, am becoming convinced, belatedly, that you can have a delicious non-dry stuffing without putting it in the bird. The sausage and cream do the trick here. We compared the within-bird to outside bird versions and preferred the latter this year.

Made this for thanksgiving and it turned out great. I ended up using about 1/2 cup more stock after I added the stock/egg/cream mixture. Presentation was excellent.

I made this for Thanksgiving this year and it was delicious. I made half the recipe and did not bake the bread crumbs - I let them get stale for a day or so. I also did not add any additional chicken broth after adding the cream, egg and broth. Finally, since I was cooking a turkey I baked it at 400 for a total of 60 minutes, 30 covered with tinfoil and the last 30 uncovered.

This was delicious! I had already bought the ingredients before seeing the negative comments about this being mushy and/or dry, so i was nervous. I put it together the Wednesday evening before Thanksgiving. I didn't use the full final cup of broth, but rather 1/2 cup. We wanted a "wet" stuffing because we made turkey breast roulade and didn't have a bird to stuff. Really rich and flavorful.

If your oven is crowded, this works well with an Instant Pot. At step 5, I put the stuffing in two 1.5-quart round baking dishes. I cooked them one after the other in a 6-quart instant pot using the instructions in Melissa Clark's book, "Comfort in an Instant." Use 2 cups of water, 25 minutes at low pressure, natural release for 10 minutes and crisp the tops under the broiler. The stuffing was delicious and the texture was perfect, custardy but crispy on top.

“No notes” from my impossible to impress husband. Dried bread at 275 per Kenji for about 50 minutes. Added the tablespoon of brown sugar to the sausage per someone’s excellent recommendation because I too merely had mild instead of sweet sausage. Added champagne vinegar when combining everything. As always, tasted for salt after mixture had somewhat saturated bread crumbs to ensure proper seasoning.

We chilled our homemade broth and skimmed the fat off the top once it solidified. We then used it in step five of this recipe to dot the top of the dressing before putting it in the oven instead of butter. This recipe was easily one of the favorites this year. Amazing work as always, Claire!

My Friendsgiving guests all exclaimed this is the best stuffing each ever had!

I thought this recipe was great. The only changes I made were that I added corn bread to the mix. The combinations was terrific. And I couldn’t find Pullman bread but Whole Foods had a nice dense white sandwich bread that was perfect for it. Flavor was excellent.