Simple Classic Stuffing

With all the other side dishes on your holiday table, does your Thanksgiving stuffing recipe really need all those extras? Our best stuffing recipe leaves the sausage, pecans, cornbread, sweet potatoes, and dried fruit—we love a cranberry, but save it for the relish—on the cutting room floor. The result is a buttery, vegetarian-friendly jumble of torn country or sourdough bread and aromatics perfectly suited to sidle alongside roast turkey and mashed potatoes.

The only prep you’ll need to do is dry the torn loaf of bread in a low oven and sauté the diced onions and celery. Toss it all together with beaten eggs, store-bought chicken stock (or vegetable broth for vegetarian stuffing), and a quartet of fresh herbs, including parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme, and slide it into the oven. Want to simplify this classic stuffing recipe even further? Go ahead and substitute dried herbs for the fresh ones; we won’t tell.

For truly crispy stuffing, it’s important to oven-dry the bread cubes rather than letting them simply go stale on the counter. (But that doesn’t mean you can’t use stale bread!) Stale bread isn’t actually dry, it’s just hard, and it won’t absorb stock at the same rate—so go ahead and give it a spin in the oven too if that’s the kind of bread you’re using.

Finally, traditional stuffing is baked inside the bird on Thanksgiving; baking this version in a casserole dish technically makes it dressing, but it’s your Thanksgiving dinner, so call it whatever you want. Feel free to bake this homemade stuffing recipe ahead of time, refrigerate after letting it cool down, then reheat the stuffing at 350° while the turkey rests, just until warmed through.