Recipe: Celery Nut Stuffing for Turkey

By popular request, Al’s mom’s recipe for turkey stuffing. Quote: “It tastes just the way stuffing is supposed to taste!”

Note that I was short of breadcrumbs, and ended up using only about 8 cups instead of the 10 cups in the recipe. However, I used the recipe measurements for the rest of ingredients. This smaller amount managed to completely stuff my 15 lb turkey, so I suspect that 10 cups of crumbs would have been too much anyway.

The turkey itself was smeared with a mixture of Worchestershire sauce, garlic powder, barbeque spice, tabasco, poultry seasoning and pepper.

Finding the correct amount of time to roast the turkey was a challenge. Various sites all gave different amounts of time per pound, and from them we calculated that it would take sometime between 3 1/2 to 6 1/2 hours to be done! The only point of agreement was that the internal temperature should be around 170° to 180°, and the oven temperature 325°.

At the 4 1/2 hour point we lugged the turkey out of the oven, only to find reddish liquid seeping from it, and the meat temperature at 148°. It went back in for another 3/4 hour but, with the temperature at 159°, it still wasn’t done. Another 3/4 of an hour and the result was perfect!

So the correct amount of time was, at least in our case, 24 minutes a pound. The turkey was covered with tin foil for about 4 1/2 hours, and then the foil was removed and the skin crisped and browned for another hour and a half.