Rachael Ray's Method For Serving Stuffing Is A Thanksgiving Essential

Stuffing is a key side dish for a traditional Thanksgiving spread, as it adds a flavorful and savory element to the overall meal. If you're not someone who enjoys eating stuffing on its own, however, Rachael Ray has the perfect solution. She turns classic Thanksgiving stuffing into muffins, which can be served alongside your meal.

Ray's Apple and Onion Stuffin' Muffins recipe, which she shared with Food Network, couldn't be easier to make. According to the recipe, it should only take about 40 minutes to make from start to finish. You'll need apples, veggies, seasoning, and your favorite store-bought packaged stuffing mix if you aren't making it from scratch.

To use Ray's recipe, make the stuffing according to the instructions on the box or your favorite homemade stuffing recipe. Then grease a muffin tin with butter or cooking spray, or use paper or silicone muffin cups. Fill each cup using an ice cream scoop.

Ray recommends forming the stuffing into a mound at the top of each muffin. Unlike traditional muffin batter, the stuffing won't rise or expand while cooking, so you want to make sure it looks like a muffin as you fill the cups. Bake them at 375 degrees Fahrenheit for 10 to 15 minutes. They can be served at room temperature with the rest of your Thanksgiving meal — you can even use gravy for dipping.

Achieving the right texture is crucial to your success with this recipe. If your stuffing is too soggy, the muffins will fall apart when you take them out of the tin. If it is too dry, they will crumble. The best way to ensure the perfect texture for stuffing to use in Ray's muffin recipe is to keep the add-ins simple so that the bread crumbs can act as a binder, keeping all of the ingredients together in muffin form.

You can also use a simple ingredient ratio to guarantee perfect Thanksgiving stuffing every time. For every 5 cups of diced bread, add 1 ½ cups of chicken stock and 1 egg. This will keep your stuffing perfectly moist and allow the bread to act as a binder. Using fresh crumbs is one of the biggest mistakes everyone makes when cooking stuffing. Bread that is too fresh will make your muffins soggy, but bread that is about a week old will be firm, a little crunchy, and the perfect texture for mixing with wet ingredients to form stuffing muffins.

Ray's Stuffin' Muffins recipe has five stars on the Food Network site. One reviewer said, "Been using this recipe for stuffing for years, and I pull it up every Thanksgiving." Another commented, "[This] was a huge hit and everyone agreed we wouldn't wait until Thanksgiving to make it again!" And you can make them ahead of time, notes one reviewer, who added, "I've made these the day before and just reheated in foil in the oven. They saved time on Thanksgiving and tasted just as good as same day."