The best part of the traditional Thanksgiving feast is the dressing, unless you call it stuffing. The basic recipe for both is the same: bread, turkey broth, onions and celery, and spices. My recipe calls for cornbread and lots of sage, others use white bread, sometime sausage or oysters, and an article at Lifehacker mentions eggs, although I never found eggs necessary.
In the South, it's called dressing. If you call it stuffing in the South, people will think you are making Stovetop Stuffing, the instant stuff that comes in a box. In the West, it's more likely to be called stuffing. Other areas vary between the two terms. Semantically, it is stuffing if you put it inside the turkey to be cooked, and dressing when it is cooked separately and served on the side. Still, people tend to use the word common in their region instead of by how it is used.
No matter what you call it, you shouldn't cook the stuffing inside the bird, though, regardless of what your ancestors did. The reasons why are spelled out at Lifehacker.
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-chuckle- I'm in. I've also got this chocolate chip cookie recipe that's really hard to get to the baking step. . .
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Now that I think about it, my dressing recipe doesn't need to be cooked at all, since the ingredients are as cooked as they need to be before I combine them. That's a good thing, since I constantly taste-test it to get the spices right. One that contains eggs to hold it together would certainly require baking. I bake it anyway, to get that crust on top, to make it more aromatic, and to serve it hot. With turkey gravy, it's heaven.
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that being said, louisiana oyster dressing is insane
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I boil the neck and gizzard for broth, and then give them to the cats to keep them happy while we eat turkey.
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-oi- I've been 'stuffing' turkeys, like my ancestors before me, for 40+ years. And here we are. And because there's never enough room for all that deliciousness, there's always a side dish of the same.No mention of the gizzards that come with the turkey. Stuffing is what they're for you know. Years ago, Butterball provided instructions on how to prepare them. Cup or so water and microwave the neck and heart for 30 minutes, add the liver and microwave at 50% for another 10 minutes. Dice everything up and add it in. I'll also add celery and onion to the hot gizzard water to soften them up a bit and spread the flavor. And butter, because, you know, butter. . .
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