Mulled Wine Stuffing with Sausage and Chestnuts

Here's another special holiday family recipe from my mother that I had to make sure I learned how to make. This stuffing is possibly my favorite culinary aspect of the holiday season!

I love how the wine gives this stuffing acidity and a little bit of bitterness to cut through the richness of butter, sausage and bread. Most stuffings can be be a little stodgy and bland, and the use of the mulled wine brightens it up.

I've written about this stuffing on my slow cooker mulled wine recipe, as that is the ingredient that really makes this stuffing.You can add in dried fruit or nuts, or remove the meat entirely. It will still be acceptable to me. However, if you omit the mulled wine, it just won't taste right in my book. This is the only stuffing for me!

Now, the big trend for food photography for stuffing is giant pieces of bread that toast up nicely in the oven and make for a glorious picture, however I don't think that tastes as nice because everything doesn't have a chance to incorporate. If you prefer a drier stuffing, reduce the liquid to 1 cup each of broth and mulled wine. I like mine nice and mushy and don't really care if that's not as attractive to photograph. 

Slow Cooker Mulled Wine

Some of these recipes on this blog are really for my own use. I needed to record them in some lasting way so that way I would be able to recreate them. My mother's Turkey and Hominy Soup, for instance, is a behemoth of a recipe that really stands out like a sore thumb compared to my usual repertoire.

I like simple and fast recipes that usually feed one or two people. Her recipe uses a twenty pound roast turkey and six pounds of hominy to start.

Her recipe takes two days to make normally (one to roast the turkey, another to simmer the bones all day to make the broth), while most of my recipes take less than 30 and some can barely be called "recipes" but more "mildly fun food ideas" in actuality.

So why do I feel the need to record these recipes that really aren't my style? Because someday my mother won't be able to make them. Some day it will be just me in charge of holiday celebrations, and I will be lost as how to capture the nostalgia.

Slow Cooker Lemon Chicken

If you follow me on Pinterest, you might have come to the conclusion that recently I've become obsessed with slow cooker recipes. There's so many recipes on Pinterest for slow cookers, but until my birthday I didn't have one. So now that I have one, I must admit I'm obsessed.

Mr. Mochi got me a very colorful Crock-Pot for my birthday, and I must say he did a great job. Everyone who has seen the slow cooker says that it is definitely a perfect fit to my tastes. I love bright colors and it goes well with my kitchen.

After unwrapping, I immediately demanded that my mother hand over her recipe for lemon chicken. She even surprised me and picked me up some chicken thighs from Sprouts to get me started.

I'm not a huge meat fan. In fact, I've never even cooked chicken in this apartment we've been in for going on 3 years. I'm the type that likes popcorn chicken because there's little to no chicken in it. Crazy, I know. If Mr. Mochi is craving chicken, he is in charge of picking up a rotisserie chicken from the market or heading out to eat for wings.

I love it! The only crock-pot with orange hehe!

But this chicken is delicious. The chicken is slow cooked until it is almost shred-able, and the sauce is made for spooning over rice. It tastes like cheap take-out Chinese. And I mean that in the best way possible. Definitely not authentic, but has that comfortable sticky sweet-and-sour combination that is so crave-able!

This recipe is a little more work than some slow cooker recipes, where you literally just dump ingredients in a slow cooker, but the little bit of extra prep really makes the chicken better.