Bacon Upside Down Stuffing
In order to make this recipe, you will have to prepare three separate components: bacon, stuffing, and sweet potatoes. I’ve broken them down into three steps for you. Remember, any of these parts make great side dishes on their own! Let’s start with the bacon.
Bacon You will need: 1lb Freedom Farms Bacon
To begin: Lay out bacon in the bottom of a 9x13 inch baking pan, lining the entire pan. Place in oven and set oven to 375ºF. Bake for 20 minutes, or a little more or less depending on your bacon preference. We like our bacon crisp, so I made sure ours was well done. Remove from oven and set aside.
Stuffing You will need: 2 cups water 1 stick butter 1 cup diced onion 2 cup diced celery ½ loaf bread, dried and cubed 2 eggs ⅛ cup powdered chicken bouillon Dried spices to taste. I suggest rosemary, thyme, oregano, and sage
To begin: In large saucepan, melt butter and lightly sauté celery and onions until tender. Add water and bring to a boil, and add powdered chicken bouillon. In a separate bowl, place dried, cubed bread. (Note: to create my bread cubes I used half a loaf of Freedom Farms multigrain bread, place in the oven at 250ºF for 10 minutes. If you have more time, you can use my mother’s method, which is to leave bread out overnight on a cookie tray.)
Pour liquid mixture over bread crumbs and stir. Do not pour all the liquid at one time, because you don’t want excess moisture. You want just enough to hold the bread crumbs together. After liquid is added to bread cubes, whisk two eggs and mix into liquid / bread mixture. At this point, you can add fresh, dried, or frozen spices to taste. I always use rosemary, thyme, oregano, and sage. This is also a great time to add any personal twists to the recipe. You can add whatever you’d like – pine nuts, walnuts, craisins.
Sweet Potatoes You will need: 2 medium sweet potatoes, cubed and frozen
To begin: About a week before I made this recipe, I cubed and froze the sweet potatoes for this recipe in a gallon freezer bag. This really cuts down the prep time, because there is no cutting time and frozen
vegetables cook much faster. Simply pull frozen and cubed sweet potatoes out of the freezer and place immediately in
boiling water. Boil until a fork goes through them. This should take about 5 minutes. Drain.
Bacon Upside Down Stuffing – Bringing it all together!
You will need: Fully prepared bacon, sweet potatoes, and stuffing.
To Begin: In the 9x13 inch bacon lined pan, layer boiled and drained sweet potatoes over bacon. Top with stuffing. Return to oven and bake at 350ºF for about 20-25 minutes. Remove from oven, and let cool for 5 minutes. Run a knife around the edge, place large serving platter over the top, and flip the dish quickly so that the bacon creates a beautiful and tasty topping.
Take out, add sweet potatoes, top with your stuffing. Return to oven and bake at 350ºF for about 20-25 minutes. I run a knife around the side, place serving dish over the top, and flip the dish quickly so that bacon creates a beautiful and tasty topping.
Originally published by Lisa King in the 2015 November issue of Freedom Farms Magazine.
