Stuffing

[magid]

I've been thinking about the canonical parts of Thanksgiving dinner¹. Most of it's straightforward:
turkey (baked, smoked, roasted, or even deep-fried)
cranberries (fresh relish, cooked sauce, or the jelly stuff from a can)
winter squash and/or sweet potatoes (mashed or in a pie)
pie (apple and/or pecan and/or pumpkin and/or almost anything else).

And then there's stuffing². Which varies from person to person, year to year. My basic stuffing involves sauteed onions, mushrooms, and celery (its one other use beside soup) mixed into a starch (bits of stale bread (notcroutons), or mashed-up potato, or broken matza with egg and poultry seasoning (sage, in my case) added. Sometimes I add nuts (walnuts or pecans are very nice), or fruit (apple or raisin, if everyone coming to dinner eats raisins), but it's all similar variations on a theme. And I like it, but I read about stuffings with cornbread (which would involve making the cornbread first), or croutons (ditto), or sausage, or [seafood I don't eat], and I wonder what those other stuffings are like, whether real people make them, or it's all just magazine writers making it up.

What's your favorite stuffing³?

(And if I didn't keep kosher, I might even think about having a turkey day dinner where everyone brought different stuffings, just to compare.)


¹ I serve more than this, everyone does⁴, but really, if this were all I had for the meal, it would still feel Thanksgivingish.
² Also known as dressing in some parts of the country. I didn't know this for years, and wondered why on earth people were serving their turkey with salad dressing.
³ Those who dislike stuffing are exempt :-)
⁴ Must have green vegetables! Must not be overwhelmed by starch!

Comments

[ruthling.livejournal.com]

When I make stuffing, it's very simple. Celery, onions and carrots, vegetable stock, some decent wheat bread, staled, and salt, pepper, parsley, sage and thyme. Baked in a shallow dish for greater crunchiness. Sometimes I add nuts, or a little hot pepper.

[magid.livejournal.com]

I'd never think to put carrots in stuffing, nor hot pepper. Neat.

[magid.livejournal.com]

Does the vegetable stock make it hold together? I always assumed my mom used eggs not just for liquid but for the stick factor.

[fetteredwolf.livejournal.com]

I like my mom's stuffing best. Old challa, sage, celery, onions, apples, raisins... She stuffs the turkey loosely, and bakes the rest, so some is crunchy on the outsides of the pan. Mmmm...

I forgot to add our fresh cranberry-orange relish to the list, and your list reminded me! Thanks!

[magid.livejournal.com]

I like the inside-the-bird stuffing and the outside-the-bird stuffing; which one I like more depends on my mood.

Glad to help with the cranberries! (I'm a cranberry addict: it's time to restock the freezer and make lots of cranberry canned things so I have enough cranberries through the year :-)

[danger-chick.livejournal.com]

Yet Another Example of How My Family Is Not Normal:

We don't do cranberries or winter squash or sweet potatoes. We do mashed non-sweet potatoes. Oh. And Jello. It's a midwest thing.

[magid.livejournal.com]

Lots of people do mashed white potatoes; I never think to because it always feels like enough starch with the stuffing, while I can justify mashed orange root vegetables as being actual vegetables, rather than another starch :-).

As for Jell-o... my opinion is that the cranberry stuff in a can really is Jell-o in disguise, and lots of people really like it. (I never had it growing up, and still fail to understand why anyone would choose that over real cranberries.) (I have heard of the midwest Jell-o thing. I don't understand it, but I've heard of it.)

[danger-chick.livejournal.com]

You are right about the cranberry stuff in a can.

My mom makes the "fancy" jello salads for the holidays. You know, the pretzel salad and the pistachio salad.

[magid.livejournal.com]

Pretzel salad?! Um, ew! I'd not heard of that one before....
Pistachio sounds more reasonable, somehow.

[bitty.livejournal.com]

Wow. It's a good thing my stomach's already unhappy, because I'd just have to kill you if you ruined my dinner with that.

[powerfrau.livejournal.com]

Ewww, my family does jellied cranberry sauce_ew I do not. They also do fruit cocktail in thick syrup from a can. I do not. I am picky (so they say) and eat exotic foods -- like fresh cranberries homecooked with a bit of citrus and maybe nuts, or croissants -- or free range or organic....
Stuffing should be cooked outside the bird for hygenic reasons.

[magid.livejournal.com]

The only way I had cranberries growing up was either fresh orange-cranberry relish, or that relish enhanced with more fruit (apples, raisins) and baked in a pie crust. I've branched out from there (chutney, jam, in savory things, pancakes...), but the only way I won't eat them is that jelled stuff. It's just too weird.

Go, you, eating all those exotic, free-range, organic, locally grown things :-)

[bitty.livejournal.com]

Only a turkey would get dressed on the inside!
oh, duh.

[magid.livejournal.com]

(Now all I can think about is that line about how "boys are fancy on the outside, and girls are fancy on the inside" ... like turkeys? ;-)

[bitty.livejournal.com]

"Your turkey's yummy/And so, is, mine"

[mayica.livejournal.com]

I make a stuffing much like yours -- including the celery and sage -- and often add some or all of dried apricots, apples, and chestnuts. I like the flash of a bit of sweet along with the savory.

[magid.livejournal.com]

Ooh, chestnuts! I love them but the nuisance of peeling them after roasting means I don't have them much. (I've not yet found already-peeled chestnuts with a hechsher, unfortunately.)

[treacle-well.livejournal.com]

I haven't tried (eating or making) very many types of stuffing and don't have a favorite. I have made cornbread stuffing (and liked it a lot), and I think I've made stuffing that included sausage, but still had some kind of bready base. But most usual is what I grew up thinking of as "standard" -- dry bread, onions, celery, and seasoning (I grew up with "Bell's seasoning" but these days I put in some combination of whatever I feel like that's on the spice rack). I also usually add walnuts but can't remember if that's something my folks did or something that I started doing on my own.

[magid.livejournal.com]

I've never had cornbread stuffing, because that would involve making cornbread first; I'm much more likely to have leftover bread. The only time I've had stuffing with 'sausage' it turned out to be bits of hot dog, which didn't seem to do what I'd want sausage to do in a stuffing.

[bitty.livejournal.com]

I've decided to try a cornbread stuffing this weekend. My mom will only eat/want/provide regardless of what I'm doing/ stovetop instant stuffing. So I decided to make some crappy stovetop stuff to shut her up, and then make some cornbread stuffing for me and my brothers.
I feel like I should test-run it first, though. Hm. I guess we're having corbread stuffing for dinner tonight ;)

[magid.livejournal.com]

Let me know how it comes out?

[treacle-well.livejournal.com]

But cornbread is easy to make. "hot dog" as sausage in a roast-poultry stuffing sounds incredibly horrible.

The more I think of it, the more I believe sausage stuffing I've made was with rice, not bread. And the sausage was quite certainly pork.

[magid.livejournal.com]

Cornbread isn't difficult, but I make it infrequently enough that I have to look up a recipe each time, so there's a extra step. Plus, the usual cornbread recipes seem to make just about enough for stuffing, rather than with bread, where I use whatever's left over after serving. Which is to say, it's a mental block.

[ichur72.livejournal.com]

So far as I know, stuffing is cooked inside the turkey and dressing is cooked outside. My favorite is the cornbread dressing my grandmother used to make. I can't use her recipe without modifications since it involves milk, but I've been able to make a tasty facsimile using parve creamer.

[magid.livejournal.com]

We just called it inside stuffing or outside stuffing :-).

I tend to prefer using soy milk (or rice, or almond) over the pareve creamers, since they've been available; I finally read the ingredients and didn't like the looks of the pareve creamer stuff nearly as much. That said, would you post the cornbread dressing recipe?

[hrafn.livejournal.com]

My favorite stuffing is the kind that gets no bits of itself anywhere near anything I'm going to eat. (Actually, I did once have something called "stuffing" which was actually not disgusting, but I don't remember what was in it, only that it wasn't the usual soggy, vile mess.)

[magid.livejournal.com]

See footnote 3 ;-)
(I did think of naming you there, but figured that was overkill.)

[powerfrau.livejournal.com]

Yum, stuffing. I think that I will go and make matzo ball soup.....

[magid.livejournal.com]

Yum. I never make mato balls, 'cause I'm lazy, so it sounds particularly nice. I hope they have much healing power. (Plus, today is totally a soup day.)