Weedy my mom taught me this recipe and I have been tweaking it ever since.
Depending on the size of the crowd...
I think last year I used 2 loaves of store bought white bread and 3 loaves of wheat. Keep the bread bags. Let it dry out lying around the kitchen for a few hours. (Put it on cookie sheets, etc but I do not toast it to get it dry).
Pull the neck and giblets out of the turkey, remove them from the paper wrapping, place neck and giblets in a 4-5" pot/pan with water covering them. Bring it to a boil, turn it down to a nice bubbly simmer, lid ajar on pan. Cook that for about 45 minutes if the neck isn't too big. You want the meat to be tender on that cuz it's a bear to pull the meat off of it. Add more water if needed during cooking You'll be wanting this liquid.
Cut up, chop, whatever, 3-4 stalks of celery; half an onion, small, large, whatever. Half a small package of regular mushrooms (OR NOT), chopped.
Love using fresh sage and thyme so I use a ton of it. Otherwise, a tablespoon of dried of each.
Melt some butter in a fry pan. Toss your chopped veggies into the fry pan, you'll just want to saute it gently and add the thyme and sage with the veggies.
Oh, darn, in the meantime! Tear up the bread into small pieces, like the size of a turkey heart. Or a large grape. Put the bread into two large bowls or deep pans. Ya know, if you're cooking for a crowd, increase the loaves, veggies, everything.
If you're cooking for a vegetarian, sorry about the butter and use olive oil.
After you're sure the giblets and neck are cooked, pull them out from liquid, remove liquid and pan from burner. Chop the giblets tiny and pull as much of the meat off the neck as you can. Tedious. Nerve wracking, time consuming.
Put some of the bread aside for your vegetarian.
Scrape veggies into the pans or bowls with the bread. Stir. Start slowly adding some of that broth you made with the giblets and neck. Add giblets etc to the bread mix too. Do not use all the broth you made. That will be one of the things you'll use for making your gravy the next day. Start using your hands to mix the stuff together. Using drier bread means the dressing balls will not be gummy sticky. Form them into a size smaller than tennis balls. Place on buttered cookie sheet or casserole dish. Bake now or next day, 350, 45 minutes.
The vegetarian will get some of the veggies in the mix with bread, I used apple juice instead of broth. VERY TASTY!!!
You can pack up the balls into bread bags, store in fridge or freezer.
