[Smashy the Hammer] [An Aspiring Luddite]
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An aspiring Luddite
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[Jeff Berry]
Jeff Berry is an early adopter of the Internet and the Web, a late adopter of Twitter, and declines to adopt Facebook. With the death of Google+, he migrated to the Fediverse. He admins a medievalist Mastodon instance. He hates cell-phones.

Sausage and Sauerkraut Stuffed Chicken
20 October 2011
[The final dish]

As many people have explained over the years, there are problems associated with stuffing poultry. Chief among these are the increased cooking time and the associated problem of making some bits of the bird dry, typically legs and wings, while waiting for those bits surrounding the cavity to finish cooking. Suggested solutions include: cooking the stuffing separately, which means it's not really "stuffing," is it?; partly cooking or heating the stuffing before stuffing the bird; and only partially filling the bird, so that hot air can circulate more easily. Those last two are worth using, and even the first isn't a complete loss - if you like stuffing, cooking it outside the bird is better than running out.

Implicit in both the problem and those solutions is a certain assumption, that you are roasting the bird. If you are willing to forgo the pleasure of the crispy skin, there is a way both to cook a bird which stays moist, and to make lots of stuffing, stuffing loaded with all the flavor that is imparted when it is cooked with the critter.

Sausage and Sauerkraut Stuffed Chicken

[Stuffing] Cut the bratwurst into small slices, core and dice the apple. Toss them in a pot with the rice, broth and sauerkraut. Bring to a simmer.

While the stuffing is coming up to a simmer, pre-heat the oven to 350F and salt and pepper the chicken. If the chicken has giblets, save them for later, or cut them up and add them to the stuffing. If there is loose fat in the bird, definetely cut it up and add it to the stuffing.

When the oven and the stuffing are both up to temp, loosely stuff the cavity of the chicken. Then put the rest of the stuffing in the bottom of a high sided roasting pan. It should still be quite runny at this point, since the rice is not cooked. Place the chicken on the stuffing, breast down. Cover and put into the oven for an hour.

After that hour, check on the progress. Set the chicken aside on a plate for a moment and stir the stuffing. It should be setting up as the rice cooks. If it's too dry, add more liquid; if it's still pretty loose, don't fret about it yet. Return the chicken to the pot, breast up, cover and cook another half-an-hour.

[Nearly done] This time when you check on the progress, the bird should be done or very nearly so. Mine was nearly falling apart, which is just fine. Check the stuffing again, if it is still too loose, remove the bird and add some bread crumbs or some oatmeal or both. (I added about a 1/4 cup of each.) If your bird is done, and your stuffing was the way you like it, then you're done.

However, if your bird needs a bit more time, or if you've added something to the stuffing, or if you just want to try to get a little color on the bird, then pop it back into the oven, uncovered this time, for a little while - anywhere from ten minutes to half-an-hour, depending on what you want to accomplish.

The meat will not be dry, unless you overdo that last bit in the oven. This is because you haven't roasted it. Essentially, you've braised, stewed or maybe even steamed the bird in the broth you were cooking the rice in. You won't have many gravy options, sadly, since all the juices will have been absorbed by the stuffing. However, the stuffing should be plenty flavorful and moist, since, well, all the juices were absorbed by it.

This method is easily adaptable to a wide variety of stuffing modifications. I used brats and kraut, because I had some and thought they would play well with the chicken. Which, in fact, they did. You could use other sausages, if you want, or skip them entirely. Likewise, I used black rice because a kind friend gave me some, but any other kind of rice would do, or barley or wild rice (which isn't actually rice), or any sort of whole grain. You do want to use something which will absorb the broth and plump as it cooks, so a pure bread-crumb base is probably not a good idea.


© 2011 Jeff Berry
The Aspiring Luddite