Traditional Rice Stuffing For Christmas

Traditional Greek stuffing is one of the best! A rice and ground meat stuffing with a mixture of sweet, fruity, and earthy flavors of dried fruit, nuts, spices, and herbs. I'm telling you this stuffing has it all, except bread!

Greek rice stuffing is always the tastiest food on the table on Christmas day (or perhaps Thanksgiving for you). It's the best stuffing for turkey, whether you cook it inside the bird or cook it on the stovetop and serve it as a side.

This traditional Christmas stuffing tastes like Christmas!

Table Of Contents

• Ingredients
• Christmas Stuffing For Turkey Or...
• Cooking Stuffing In Oven
• Stove Top Stuffing
• Recipe

Ingredients

To make this Christmas stuffing recipe you need the following:

• Ground meat. I use ground beef but ground pork works as well or a mixture of both. You can use even sausage meat by uncasing a sausage.
• Long grain white rice. I prefer Basmati rice. You can also use brown Basmati rice if you prefer.
• Chestnuts, either roasted or boiled. You can buy them cooked or cook them yourself. See here How To Boil Chestnuts, or How To Roast Chestnuts.
• Dried Prunes.
• Raisins, either golden or red. You can swap for cranberries or dried apricots.
• Pine nuts toasted.
• Red wine, sweet or semi-sweet.
• Leeks.
• Onion.
• Herbs like thyme and sage. I used both dried, though you can use them fresh as well.
• Spices: ground fennel seeds, ground allspice, and ground cinnamon. You can swap ground allspice for ground anise.
• Optional: If the poultry you are using contains its innards, you can use them in the filling as well. Mostly the stomach and liver. Chop them and add to the filling. The liver especially adds a unique meaty flavor.

Christmas Stuffing For Turkey Or...

This rice stuffing for turkey can be used also as a rice stuffing for chicken or goose. Because it's meaty, moist, and so loaded with flavors it goes perfectly with all the white meat poultry.

Cooking The Stuffing Inside The Bird

Traditionally, stuffing is added into the body and neck cavities of the poultry and cooked in the oven together. For the rice stuffing in turkey to cook properly, you need to cook it on the stovetop first. Cooking the rice with some liquid, either water or stock until it softens a bit and then stuffing the bird ensures the rice cooks all the way through.

Also baking the stuffed poultry covered helps to ensure the stuffing cooks properly by creating extra moisture.

NOTE: You will need only ½ to ⅓  of the stuffing to stuff the poultry (depending on its size). Leftover stuffing, you can either add to the pan around the bird with some water or stock. Or finish cooking the stuffing on its own. Either in the oven or on the stovetop as mentioned below.

Cooking Stuffing In Oven

If you don't want to stuff the bird you can finish cooking the stuffing inside a baking dish covered. To cook the stuffing in the oven, turn the temperature to 375°F /190°C. Add also some extra hot water to the dish as well. For baking all of the stuffing you will need about ¾ cup of hot water or stock.

To bake leftover stuffing (after using half of it, more or less, to stuff the bird) use ¼ to  ⅓ cup of water. Taste the rice to see if it has softened otherwise add an extra splash of water if needed.

Stove Top Stuffing

The easiest way to cook this Greek stuffing for turkey is to cook it all the way through on the stovetop. It won't make any difference in flavor when you simply cook it on the stovetop.

After all, the whole purpose of stuffing a turkey or any other bird is to flavor the bird itself.

Basmati rice stuffing cooks beautifully on the stovetop and you can check for doneness at any time, something you can't do when the stuffing is inside the bird's cavity.

Other Ways To Use It

This delicious homemade stuffing recipe is also great to stuff a pumpkin or butternut squash with it (like Jamie Oliver does). No need to add extra liquid in that case.

You can even use it to stuff portobello mushrooms. However, in that case, you need to finish cooking the rice stuffing on the stovetop before using it to stuff the mushrooms. Lastly, another great way to use this rice stuffing recipe is to stuff red onions with it and bake them just like we do in the Greek Yemista recipe.

Recipe