The other day, I mentioned the bacon and biscuit stuffing that I make every Thanksgiving (pictured above), and someone in the comments wanted the recipe. It got me thinking: Why don’t we do this more often? Our summer salad afternoon chat was EXTREMELY fruitful, so let’s keep it rolling. We might be too late to add to people’s Thanksgiving menus — then again, maybe not! — so let’s open it up to all holiday food. What are your go-to recipes? What are the ones that knock people’s socks off? And if you have links, would you consider sharing them (as well as your recipe notes)? Fug Nation is full of smart people who eat delicious things, so we might as well look out for each other’s taste buds, no?

(Keep all talk of holiday cooking disasters until tomorrow… SPOILER, that’s the chat we have in the queue.)

Here are some of my go-tos:

I always make this Bon Appetit kale and Brussels sprout salad at Thanksgiving and Christmas. (So do I! It’s the official GFY kale salad! – J)

Kevin likes this potato gratin from Cooking Light, so that gets served at Christmas Day dinner. Sometimes Cooking Light recipes that attempt to healthify cheese dishes end up being disappointing, but this one delivers.

Bacon-bourbon butter is a delight on any roll or cornbread.

And my favorite is Christmas Eve, when we buy proper imported English bangers (sausages: both the thick ones and the skinny chippolatas; they import them frozen at my local British pub’s food shop) and do those on the barbecue (trust me — and they are MAGNIFICENT the next day cold and in sandwiches, also). We serve it with mashed potatoes — which my dad switched to French fries after he secretly bought a deep fryer at my high school’s silent auction, which my mother ONLY allowed him to use like twice a year, because cholesterol — and caramelized onions. And we have to eat it around the coffee table in front of the fire. Even if it’s warm outside.

Oh, and as for the biscuit stuffing, I’ll repeat the links and notes I put in the comments the other day. The recipe calls for 5 cups of chicken stock and that is BANANAS because it simply doesn’t absorb all that liquid. I tend to use 2.5 cups. I make it Thanksgiving morning, chill it, then bring it back to room temp before baking, at which point I drizzle it with a little more chicken stock before bunging it in the oven. If you like really wet stuffing, by all means, use more. But 5 cups is nutballs. Oh, I also dice and toss in some carrot, and I cook the bacon whole and THEN crumble it rather than cutting it raw and cooking the pieces. Because cutting raw bacon is really annoying. FINALLY: The cream biscuits that go in it are make-ahead because you toast them as part of the recipe anyway — you could even do THAT ahead — so I advise doing that. I also make an extra half-batch just because I like to shove them into my gaping mouth hole.

YOUR TURN. GO! Make me hungry.