Cranberry and Panko Stuffing
TRCC Cranberry Sauce Mini 110g
$6.95
Hand-packed and dispatched from our Corio, Victoria warehouse, with free delivery Australia-wide on orders over $100.
By Jodie Smith, Product & Hamper Manager at The Gourmet Pantry.
Cranberry and panko stuffing is a tray stuffing, baked in a dish rather than inside a bird. Panko keeps the top crisp, one 110g jar of cranberry sauce is almost exactly one tray, and the whole thing can be assembled two days ahead. Serves 8 as a side. Prep 20 minutes, cook 40 minutes.
Panko is the reason the top stays crisp
Fresh breadcrumbs are soft and already damp, so they take on stock the instant it touches them and collapse into something closer to a savoury bread pudding. That is fine at 1pm and dismal at 6pm, because there is no structure left to crisp a second time. Panko is dry and shard shaped rather than crumb shaped, made from a bread baked without a crust, so it drinks more slowly and keeps its edges while it does. The layer on top browns into flakes instead of sinking, and it comes back after a reheat, which fresh crumb never does.
We stock one panko, the Pereg Japanese fine panko crumbs, which is a single line in its own small panko crumbs category rather than one crumb among ten. Fine grind is the useful one here. It takes on the stock evenly through the body of the stuffing instead of leaving dry pockets and wet patches, and the handful you hold back for the top still browns into shards once it has been tossed with oil.
One 110g jar, finished on the day
The Cranberry Sauce we sell is a 110g mini, and a tray this size takes almost exactly the jar. Half goes through the mixture in streaks, half is dotted over the surface before the crumb top, where it darkens and catches at the edges. Nothing goes back in the fridge to be rediscovered behind the mustard in March. Split like that the sauce reads as acid rather than as sugar, sharp pockets against savoury crumb instead of one sweet note the whole way through. If a larger jar is already open at your place, what to do with the rest of the cranberry sauce covers the other places it goes.
It comes from The Regimental Condiment Company, whose minis are the size you cook with rather than the size you keep, and the crumbs are made by Pereg Natural Foods. Both sit on the same shelf as the rest of our gourmet condiments.
We do not sell the turkey, the ham or the bread, which is part of why this is built as a tray rather than as something you spoon into a cavity. What we do sell is the jar, the crumb, the nuts and the oil, and they sit with the rest of the festive entertaining essentials.
Method
Method
- Heat the oven to 200°C, or 180°C fan-forced, and butter a baking dish of about 20cm x 30cm.
- Melt the butter in a large frying pan over medium heat.
- Add the onion and celery with a pinch of salt and cook for 12 minutes, stirring, until soft and translucent but not coloured.
- Stir in the garlic, sage and thyme and cook for 2 minutes more, until the sage smells toasted.
- Take the pan off the heat and stir the lemon zest through it.
- Tip 150g of the panko into a large bowl with the 60g of chopped macadamias, the rosemary garlic salt and plenty of black pepper.
- Scrape in the onion mixture, butter and all, and stir until every crumb is coated and glossy.
- Fold half the jar of cranberry sauce through in three or four turns only, so it stays in streaks rather than dissolving.
- Whisk the eggs in a jug, then pour in the hot stock in a thin stream while you whisk, so they loosen instead of scrambling.
- Pour the egg and stock over the crumbs and stir until everything is damp and no liquid pools at the bottom of the bowl.
- Leave the bowl to stand for 5 minutes so the panko drinks, then add a splash more stock if it has gone dry and crumbly.
- Spoon the mixture into the dish and level it with a fork without pressing down, because the air in it keeps the middle light.
- Dot the rest of the jar over the surface in teaspoons, spaced out rather than spread.
- Toss the remaining 50g of panko with the olive oil and the last 20g of macadamias until the crumbs are evenly glossy.
- Scatter that crumb over the top in one even layer, right to the corners.
- Bake for 35 to 40 minutes, until the top is deep gold and a knife pushed into the centre comes out hot.
- Rest for 5 minutes before serving, so a spoonful holds its shape on the plate.
Make it ahead, and the day after
Assemble through step 13 up to two days ahead, cover and refrigerate, but leave the oiled crumb top off until it goes in the oven. Crumb sitting on a cold wet surface overnight is soft crumb. From the fridge, add 10 minutes and check the centre is hot rather than trusting the colour on top. It freezes unbaked for a month, well wrapped, and thaws overnight in the fridge.
Cooked, it keeps 3 days covered in the fridge. Reheat uncovered at 200°C for 12 to 15 minutes and the panko comes back crisp. A microwave is faster and gives you exactly the soft top this recipe avoids.
Questions we get asked
Can you make stuffing the day before?
Yes, and a tray stuffing is the version that makes it easy. Assemble it up to two days ahead, keep it covered in the fridge, and hold the oiled crumb topping back until it goes into the oven so it stays dry. Bake from cold with an extra 10 minutes. What not to do is bake it the day before and reheat the whole tray, because the second bake dries the middle before the top catches up.
How do you cook stuffing outside the bird?
In a shallow buttered dish at 200°C, or 180°C fan-forced, for 35 to 40 minutes. Shallow matters more than the shape. A 20cm x 30cm dish gives a layer about 4cm deep, moist enough in the middle and thin enough for the surface to brown. It is done when the top is deep gold and the centre is steaming, and far easier to judge than the cavity version.
What can I use instead of breadcrumbs in stuffing?
Panko, and it is an upgrade rather than a compromise. It is drier and coarser than a fresh or dried crumb, so it takes on stock without turning to paste and holds a crisp top through a reheat. Use it gram for gram in place of dried breadcrumbs, and hold back a quarter to toss with oil for the surface. Oats, crushed crackers and cooked rice work as bulk, but none of them will crisp.
The 110g TRCC Cranberry Sauce is $6.95, the Pereg fine panko crumbs are $12.95 for 255g and the oven roast macadamias are $7.95, all three with the rest of the festive entertaining essentials. Shipping is free Australia-wide on orders over $100, and orders placed before 12pm on a weekday are dispatched the same day from our Corio, VIC warehouse, tracked with Australia Post. The same jars turn up inside our Christmas hampers if the cooking is somebody else's job this year.
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