New Turkey Stuffing Ideas for Christmas or Thanksgiving - Chinese Sticky Rice

Are you bored with cooking and eating the bread stuffing you put in the turkey during Christmas and Thanksgiving? Do you want to try something different? Well, ever since I moved to Canada from Hong Kong many years ago, my dad cooked our traditional family turkey dinner using his own recipe. He doesn’t use the western style bread stuffing, our family just doesn’t really like it. There is nothing wrong with bread stuffing, just not our preference, that’s all.

So…my dad uses Chinese sausages with steam sticky rice as stuffing. Trust me, it tastes great and it’s not that hard to make. The tender juice came from the turkey slowly penetrated and sipped into the rice, giving it a true, oven baked turkey taste in the sticky rice.

Below are the steps to prepare the Chinese sausages with steam sticky rice:
(NOTE: Everyone has a different way of cooking it, but that’s what my dad uses and it tastes great!)

Step 1: Go to a Chinese grocery store to purchase Chinese sausages. Now, there are two types. One type looks like a red sausage and the other is dark colour looking. Mind you, traditionally, these sausages are being packaged in an individual rope/string and tied up on the ceiling and the staff simply cut the string for you. (long story short, that’s how they make them and that’s how they package them)

Chinese sausages

Step 2: When you are at the grocery store, buy some green onions and herbs (see photo below).

herbs and green onions

Step 3: Also buy a bag of sticky rice. (NOTE: You don’t need a big bag, a small bag is fine). They often called sticky/sweet rice. There is a difference between sticky rice and normal white rice. Ask the staff if you aren’t sure because it makes a lot of difference in terms of taste and texture.

sticky rice/sweet rice

Step 4: At home, wash the green onions, herbs. No need to wash the Chinese sausages as it’s harder to cut when wet and you don’t want some of the flavour to be gone after washing. Chopped up the green onions, herbs and Chinese sausages into pieces. (see photo below).

chopped green onions, herbs & Chinese sausages

Step 5: If you have a rice cooker, put the sticky rice into the cooker, add a relatively good amount of water so it can steam. If you don’t have a rice cooker, that’s OK, it’s not as best but it will be fine. Grab a wok with water in the wok, grab a metal stand, put sticky rice in a metal bowl and place it on top of the metal stand, turn on the stove and put a lid, that way, the sticky rice can still be steamed.

Rice Cooker

NOTE: Reason why we want to steam the sticky rice beforehand is because we want it to rip and steam a bit when we put into the the turkey slot. If you just shove the raw rice in the hole and not use the rice cooker, the rice wouldn’t be able to be cooked properly. You sure don’t want to eat raw rice in the turkey.

Step 6: Once the steam rice are cooked, mix in the green onions, herbs, Chinese sausages and little soy sauce. You don’t want that much of soy sauce because you don’t want the sticky rice to be super salty and the oil from the Chinese sausages will slowly sip out to penetrate into the rice, giving it an unique flavour.

Step 7: Like you normally do with your bread stuffing, shove the sticky rice into the turkey slot and use the needles to sew down the ends of the turkey. Place in oven and you got your tasty sticky rice turkey stuffing!

Voila & Bon Appetite!

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