Thanksgiving in July: Slow Cooker Stuffing

"Tomorrow, I'm going to make stuffing in the slow cooker."

As a single person, I tend to accumulate a lot of half-loaves of hardened bread in my freezer. It's too stale to make a decent sandwich with, but it's not moldy or bad for me.

So, in the spirit of minimizing food waste, I got to thinking about what to do with hard bread. STUFFING!

Hamilton Beach 4-Quart Oval Slow Cooker

 (Amazon Affiliate Link)

Bought for myself as a reward 

for finishing NaPoWriMo.

Then, in the spirit of being obsessed with my new slow cooker, I did a Pinterest search for slow cooker stuffing, and found out it's totally a thing.

Slow Cooker Stuffing

Ingredients:

12 cups dry bread cubes (The original blogger baked the bread cubes to dry them out, but my bread was already so dry from squatting in my freezer, I skipped that step.)

2 cups celery (about 4 stalks)

1 cup finely chopped onion

1/4 cup dried parsley (or 1/2 cup fresh chopped parsley if you plan ahead better than I did)

2 tsp dried sage

1/2 tsp dried thyme

1/2 tsp salt

1/4 tsp pepper

14.5 oz can broth (1 3/4 cups)

1/3 cup butter, melted

1. Combine everything except the broth and butter. Pour the broth and butter over the top. Mix well.

2. Transfer mixture to slow cooker. Cover and cook on low for 4 to 5 hours.

It smelled too good, so at hour 3, I broke into it early. The celery and onions were still raw but the flavors had saturated the bread well. I ate it with a turkey breast and side of mashed potatoes I got at a deli. (What am I, supposed to cook 3 things?! Preposterous.) I let the rest of it finish cooking and stored it to make a week's worth of Slow Cooker Stuffing Sandwiches.

Original recipe from The Kitchen is My Playground. With thanks.

Today's art print is "Bread and Butter" by Robo Rat. Just too cute.