Every year now it seems that newspapers, food blogs, and radio shows debate the merits of turkey or sides as the highlight of Thanksgiving dinner. Personally, I’m all about the dressing–cornbread stuffing baked in a separate pan for those of you who don’t have Southern roots. I’ll never forget the year that my sister, accompanied by my mother, ended up in the emergency room the night before Thanksgiving. The task of
making the cornbread for the dressing fell to my father. He made the mistake of picking a sweet cornbread recipe and using that cornbread for the dressing. It’s the only year that I didn’t pig out on the dressing. Needless to say, it was genuinely disgusting. (Sorry, Dad!) That dressing is part of family legend. So is our regular recipe, anchoring us to our ancestors like Americans’ gastronomy nationwide reflect their origins.
As I’ve moved around the country, I’ve discovered that asking the simple question “Dressing or stuffing?” can place a person’s ancestors faster than any other question. If you want to get more specific within the South, you have to ask more detailed questions about the recipe. For example, the Georgia dressing recipe that I grew up with included the traditional cornbread as well as a sage stuffing mix, celery, onions, broth, and eggs. The result was a mixture as solid as canned cranberry jelly. We could cut it into neat slices. (I use an all-scratch method now that stays fluffier, and I like it much better, but don’t tell Mom.) Mr. Homesteader grew up in south Arkansas, and his dressing recipe included chopped boiled eggs. Those chopped boiled eggs seem pretty consistent across the flatlands of the state and can mark a delta Arkansan faster than any accent. Newer recipes that are tasty include squash dressing.
I confess to an endless fascination with dressing and stuffing recipes. I’ve always wanted to compile a catalog of regional variations. Will you help me to start that catalog? You can build the recipe catalog one of two ways. For both cases, you’ll need to answer the following questions. You can answer directly on the blog, but if you prefer not to tie your ancestry to your regular name here, you can send answers to my email (Ozarkhomesteader AT yahoo DOT com), and I’ll remove names before I post them under anonymous listings. (And, yes, I’ll preserve your privacy and not share your information with anyone else.) You may also email photographs in jpg format to that address, and I’ll upload them with this post. Folks from outside the US are welcome to join in too!
1. What’s the recipe? This can be a precise recipe or a vague one, but it needs to include the key components (like boiled eggs, chiles, giblets, fruit, nuts).
2. What consistency does the product have? Can you slice it? Do you spoon it? Is it fluffy? Can you see discrete pieces of bread?
3. What do you call it?
4. What place do you call home, as in where you learned the recipe?
5. What is your primary regional and/or state influence in cooking? For most people, we’re talking about where your mother and grandmother(s) originated.
6. Do you have any relatives who aren’t from that region? If so, from where are they?
7. How long have you used this recipe?
I hope you like mapping food history as much as I do! Join the fun, and spread the word so that we can get a good sample here. Remember to include your food origins location!
Update, November 23, 2011: Please continue to submit your recipes and memories of dressing and stuffing at your house for Thanksgiving. We’ve still got lots of the country to cover!
Copyright 2010 Ozarkhomesteader.
Turkey Stuffing, made with stale white bread crumbled, chopped onion, celery, and finely diced cooked giblets, poultry seasoning, salt, pepper, and broth from the giblets. That was how my mother and grandmother made it. Baked in the turkey it turned out spoonable. Many generations going back to the 1700′s in Chenango and Delaware counties of upstate NY. I’ve made it this way for many holidays, but have also tried other recipes just to see if there was something out there I liked better.
Lately, I’m most likely to use the Pepperidge Farms seasoned dried bread cubes and in addition to the celery and onions I like fried button mushrooms too. Sometimes the giblets get added sometimes not. I like lots broth and often use chicken if I don’t have turkey broth. I season to taste with more sage and pepper and bake in a pan rather than inside the turkey. This stuffing turns out not as mushy as my mother’s or my grandmother’s, but I like it better. My adult kids still call it stuffing even though the only place it gets stuffed is in their bellies.
Welcome to the blog, Sheila, and thanks for your recipe! You’ve reminded me of another question I probably should have asked: giblets or no giblets?
OK, here’s mine:
1 recipe cornbread, made with a couple of extra eggs
1 diced, sauteed onion
2 hardboiled eggs, diced, yolks crumbled
2 fresh eggs (so you should probably have 6-8 eggs in all in this)
Salt and pepper to taste
1-2 tbsp ground sage, to taste
1 quart chicken broth
Crumble the cornbread and let it dry out for a few hours. Put in a bowl with salt, pepper and a tablespoon of the sage. Beat the eggs and add.
Start with two cups of stock, and stir; you want the dressing the thickness, roughly, of pound cake batter. You may need to add more. Reserve what you don’t use.
Taste, and up the salt, pepper or sage if you need to.
Turn into a greased baking dish and bake at 350 until golden brown on top (about 45 minutes or so). If it commences to look too dry during baking, carefully pour a little more broth over it.
Serve with giblet gravy, a big slab of turkey, and cranberry sauce.
Welcome to the blog, Kay. Ah, those boiled eggs! I’ve got to ask: where are you from? Was it anywhere close to the flatlands of Arkansas? Did you you have influence from that part of the country, or have I missed other states and regions that use boiled eggs in the recipe? I need that info to map your recipe.
Oh, I just saw your reply over on Food52. Fellow readers, Kay is from Hot Springs, Arkansas, and, yep, there are those boiled eggs.
I grew up in Massachusetts, north of Boston, with turkey stuffing made from stale white bread, chopped celery and onion, broth and butter. A few simple seasonings, but not much more. It was stuffed and baked inside the turkey and, if not packed too tightly, could still be spooned out. It was rich, heavy stuff! As an adult cook, I’ve tried other options like rice stuffing and cornbread/sausage stuffing. All stuffing is good stuffing. By the way, what the heck is dressing?
Okay, I see that smile, so I’m guessing you know that dressing is cornbread-based and baked in a pan but otherwise can be similar to your recipe.
I’m thinking that stuffing the turkey that way would make the stuffing taste fabulous but the turkey a bit dry. Am I right?
I grew up in NJ. But my mom & her family are from Hot Springs.
I make stuffing partially the quick & easy way, my own recipe. My husband adores it, I have to both stuff the bird and make a dish on the side (yeah, I know stuffing the bird is “bad”, but you just have to watch the internal temperature.)
1 bag pepperidge farm cornbread stuffing
1/2 lb ground sweet sausage
8oz white mushrooms
3 cloves garlic, minced
Fry up the sausage, mushrooms, and garlic. Toss it all in the food processor to grind it up. Not to a paste, but so the sausage is in small bits. Prepare stuffing by using the amount of turkey or chicken stock called for on the package. Use only half the butter called for. Before adding the stuffing, pour the sausage/mushroom mix into the water. Add dry stuffing and stir. For making on the side, I buy turkey thighs, bone them and butterfly them and lay them on top to add more turkey flavor while the stuffing bakes.
Next year maybe I’ll try it with homemade stale cornbread.
Thanks, Marie, and welcome. Did you mother make cornbread dressing? and how about those chopped boiled eggs that I keep finding in Arkansas dressing?
I’m grew up in Maryland, right outside of DC, though I haven’t lived there for 40 years! I’ve eaten three variations of Dressing (ahem) there. Mom’s was a dry cubed white bread dressing with the usual celery, onions and giblets, broth and seasonings. It was on the dry, fluffy side, and I could/would pick the giblets out. My mother didn’t care if we ate it or not because she said it was mainly used to season the turkey and gravy! At my Grandparents home, we had oyster dressing which they said was for eating. I refused to eat it so I don’t know what else was in it! At my former Mother in Laws home, it was a fresh hand torn white bread “stuffing” with celery, onions, giblets, raw eggs as a binder, milk and seasonings, that you could slice. It was okay, it was certainly mild enough, but I ate it to be polite after picking out the giblets! I was (am) a seriously picky person! In all these homes, there was one constant side dish, that is popular in the region. Sauerkraut. I hated it as a kid, but I love it now and so does my family and it wouldn’t be Thanksgiving without it!
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I live in CA now for the last 40 years and have made dressing a lot of different ways, but most of the time I make it similar to my Mother’s dressing, but without the giblets. I use french bread, mushrooms, garlic, celery, onions, carrots, fresh herbs, a little lemon zest, dry cranberries and homemade turkey broth. I like it on the drier, fluffier side. I’ve also had a southwestern style dressing with added chilies and chorizo, which was good, once! I’ve tried a wild rice and herb dressing with all the usual vegetables and seasonings, it was too granular for my taste. So now I’m back to the bread dressing. This year I will make it with homemade french bread and I’m toying with adding some rye bread to it. It’s all good now!
Thanks, Susan, and welcome to the blog. Oysters make sense near the coast. And I’m with you on the giblets; I give them to the cats.
Our family dressing recipe comes from my dad’s family in the southeastern part of Washington state. We use stale bread cubes (though I now prefer Mrs Cubbisons herb dressing – 2 bags), 1 lb Jimmy Dean sausage, sauteed with a whole diced onion, crumbled, then drained, 4-5 large apples, peeled and diced, celery, 2 eggs whisked with milk and turkey broth, poultry seasoning, salt and pepper. Half broth, half milk. It is pretty well-seasoned with the poultry seasoning, salt and pepper. Nothing mild about this dressing as a result of the sausage.
In Washington, there are so many great apples, that of course they had to find their way into the turkey dressing. We stuff the turkey with it and cook a large pan of dressing separately. The one from the bird is pretty solid. The one made in the pan is fluffier, with less liquid to it. Everyone has their preference for one or the other and the dressing is most definitely everyone’s favorite part of the meal in our family.
Welcome, Washington State, and thank you for the recipe. Do you know your family’s origins before the far west? I understand about the apples–I’d bet we’d find a campaign for using Washington apples in dressing some time in the recent past if we looked hard enough–but I’m wondering about the sausage. Hmmmm.
From Belle in EASTERN KENTUCKY on a recipe forum where I posted my request:
Dressing….a side dish. My late husband’s Mother’s recipe. Appalachia Mountains…..Eastern Kentucky. Over the years it has become my recipe. I saute’ a couple large onions, cut up; a bunch of celery, cut up; in a stick of butter, add water or chicken broth if more liquid is needed….the house smells wonderful while this is cooking. I make a skillet (8-10 inch) of cornbread…please do not make it sweet. I tear up the cornbread and put it in a large bowl; tear up and add 6 slices of stale white bread; add cooked onion and celery, a couple beaten eggs, chicken broth, sage, poultry seasonings, go easy on the salt because there is sodium in the broth….personally, I taste the uncooked dressing to check if the seasonings are correct. I do this after it has had a chance to integrate all the ingredients, which I refrigerate, because of the eggs and broth. You can add pieces of chicken or oysters if you like. I like a moist dressing and add small amounts of broth if needed during baking. It gets crispy around the edge. The size of the baking dish/pan depends on the amount of dressing I have. Sometimes I add oysters to a smaller pan while baking most of the dressing in a larger pan. Bake at 350 until hot and bubbly. As you can see, I am a “from scratch” cook, and cook by taste and sight. I live in Indiana. I have made this recipe for about 48 years.
Jones brand sausage,browned. In same skillet melt butter, saute onions, celery. Add Pepperidge farm bagged stuffing cubes chicken broth and lots and lots of Bells seasoning.
I live in Massachusetts south of Boston. Bells seasoning is made in the next town over (big claim to fame!)
It has always been Stuffing. You don’t “dress” the bird you “stuff” it!!
The best part is that little area on the bird in the back that you stuff more to keep a pretty shape than anything else. That is always the one piece for the cook! Can;t wait.
Welcome to the blog, and thanks for the recipe! I remember seeing Bell’s when I lived in that part of the world, I think. I also did a consultation job for Mr. Jones of said sausage fame many years ago. He was a very sweet man.
Gosh, I didn’t like dressing much when I was growing up because my grandma used the giblets. The rest was celery, onions, white bread, broth. In Colorado, we did stuff the bird though as opposed to using a pan. Now, I love the recipe from the Silver Palate Goodtimes which has Grand Marinier! Good thing I only make it once a year.
Thanks for the recipe, Tammy. That cookbook is great! I used a roommate’s copy years ago but don’t have my own. Grand Marnier, eh? Do you know where your family hailed from before Colorado?
Kansas and before that Virginia and before that France and Germany.
Something about your recipe made me think due east, but I can’t tell you what it was, just a hunch. I am seeing patterns but am not sure entirely what to make of them yet.
This is a good blog message, I will keep the post in my mind. If you can add more video and pictures can be much better. Because they help much clear understanding.
thanks Vladalekseev.
Welcome to the blog, Vladalekseev. I’m sorry I missed your post earlier; the spam filter thought it was spam. I’ll post photographs for my own dressing by Christmas.
O.H., while I’m in Hot Springs now, the dressing recipe came from West Tennessee, where I grew up. Sometimes my grandmother would put “light bread” in with the cornbread, and sometimes not; if so, it was always the “heel” pieces off the loaf that she’d collect in the freezer. I prefer mine with nothing but cornbread. The chopped hardboiled eggs (they also went in the giblet gravy) came from her. But when I lived in Eastern Arkansas, near Memphis, for several years, the dressing was similar….yet without the eggs. I’ve had, or cooked, dressing like this all my life — 55 years.
Hmmmm. So the hard-boiled eggs trace back to west Tennessee. Hmmmmm.
Hi, well something different from me, I am from South Wales in the UK where we always have turkey for Christmas. Every year the cookery magazines have ‘new’ recipes for stuffing. My mother always used a packet sage and onion stuffing with added sausage meat for moisture but I now make my own. Firstly I fry onions in butter (turkey is a dry meat and needs moisture) then add what I fancy and have to hand that year, usually though chopped celery which gets gently fried this mix is then added to fresh white bread crumbs with a little chopped fresh sage. and thoroughly mixed, fresh sausage meat joins the mix with chopped apricots or any dried fruit and any nuts you might fancy – not too much but enough to added texture and flavour the a seasoning of salt and pepper. We always stuffed the body of the bird but this seems not to be thought a good idea now, so the neck end of the bird gets stuffed. Firstly insert your hand and gently ease the skin away from the breast meat as far as you want to have to stuffing, this also helps the breast to keep moist and adds flavour. Any stuffing left can be made into balls and cooked around the bird or (as we do) into the main cavity of the turkey, but not too tightly. Remember bread swells with moisture. Love your blog by the way and have found this entry very interesting. Off to France tonight but will follow you again on my return in 12 days.
Welcome to the blog, Wendy, and thank you for the kind words and recipe! I’m delighted to have a recipe from across the Atlantic. And I wish I were going to France for twelve days. Travel safely.
Readers may appreciate a quick history note about the turkey’s journey around the world. Turkeys originated in the Americas, but they were so popular with European visitors that they quickly joined local birds with a place at festival tables in Europe. Think, for instance, of Ebenezer Scrooge in Charles Dickens’s 1843 tale A Christmas Carol. What bird did Scrooge send to the Cratchit home?
You silly goose!
Goose? No, it really was a turkey!
I grew up in CA and my parents moved there from Lowell, Mass. My mother’s parents came over on the boat from Eastern Europe and my Dad’s family from Ireland.
My mom always made the Mrs. Cubbison’s stuffing…some years the white bread and others the corn bread, just as printed on the box: onion and celery sauteed in butter then added to the stuffing mix with broth, stuffed tightly inside the bird. It was dense,stiff and spoonable when scooped out of the turkey. It was also loaded with fat.
I now live in WA and make mine from scratch using cornbread, herbs, broth, sauteed veggies (always onion, garlic and celery and sometimes squash or carrots as well) and each year I try a different ingredient. I’ve done sausage and apple, walnuts and dried cranberries, bacon and pecan and others I can’t remember. I like a fruit/meat combo the best. This year it’ll be Italian sausage, cranberries and walnuts.
I now prefer to make mine outside the bird (for clearer stock) in muffin tins (hmm, think I ripped off that one from a Rachel Ray show) and they are fluffier with nice crusts on each one.
OMG OZ.. I love you. I was trying to find a good recipe.. but I should always just come here first.
I hope you are doing well.. I have been REALLY busy with the new house remodeling project. If it ever gets done I am posting pics DARN IT!
*hugs*
Hi, Upinak! Working on a house can take so much time. I know; we’ve just done our doors, and that alone has sucked up so much time.
Now you’ve got a dozen recipes to choose from! Happy early Thanksgiving.
It’s been great reading all these recipes. The stuffing and dressing (we used both words — stuffing for what was cooked in the turkey and dressing for what was cooked in a separate pan, which was what I preferred) that my mother made (grew up in the Midwest, but mother from CA), was the typical bread stuffing, with onion and celery sauteed in butter, and also crumbled and browned pork sausage, walnuts (or sometimes pecans), a couple of beaten eggs, chicken or turkey broth, and lots of poultry seasoning. Her eventual evolution was to add a couple of chopped (with skin left on) Granny Smith apples.
When I started to cook Thanksgiving dinners, more than 30 years ago, I started with her basic approach, and began to evolve the recipe, making it more Italian, first by changing the type of bread, usually stale baguette cut into croutons and toasted, or mix of baguette and corn bread, lots of celery and onion satueed in butter, then in addition to the sausage, adding some chopped proscuitto, lots of chopped fresh herbs (sage, rosemary, thyme, and parsley), substituted toasted pine nuts for the walnuts, a generous handful or 2 of freshly grated parmesan, and dried cherries and/or dried cranberries. If I had it on hand, would also drizzle with a little white truffle oil. Moistened with chicken or turkey broth, but no eggs. As you can tell, very rich and delicious. My husband loves stuffing, so I would have to cook some in the bird, but would also cook the rest in a separate pan, and we all woofed down with gusto. Because my family loves to have dressing on their turkey sandwiches, I would make a huge amount – a double recipe. I would also make a gluten free variety, with the same ingredients as above, but use a mix of cooked short-grained white rice and wild rice, cooked in chicken broth, instead of the white bread/corn bread, for those who were gluten intolerant.
The above was my ‘go-to’ and constantly requested recipe until 3 years ago, when I moved out to the Southwest (NM). Everything here has to have chile in it, so I made the following dressing (think the recipe is from Bon Appetit), and it has gotten rave reviews. It’s fabulous as dressing, but even better as breakfast the next morning, sliced and sauteed as you would cold polenta, with a poached or fried egg on top — heavenly! Another plus is that my family insists of having corn pudding at every holiday, and this dressing is so corny – it does double duty as dressing and corn pudding! My husband is even happy to eat it as dressing!
Plus it works for the vegetarians in the family, as no sausage & proscuitto.
Note: this makes a *huge* amount, so unless you’re having 12+ people, it can be halved very successfully.
10 tablespoons unsalted butter
2+1/2 cups (16 oz) roasted, skinned & seeded green chile , chopped – I use Hatch green chile, but it’s fine to use a mixture, such as Anaheim and Poblano. I haven’t used canned. If available, I would go for frozen, before canned, but even canned would work, but drain them.
3 large jalapeño chilies, seeded, chopped
2 1-pound packages frozen petite yellow corn kernels, thawed
1+1/4 cups chopped green onions
2/3 cup chopped fresh cilantro
1 batch of day-old cornbread (made with 2 C corn meal, I C flour, and scale-up other wet & dry ingredients if you are using a 1 C corn meal, 1 C flour recipe), crumbled and left out uncovered to stale
4 large eggs
1/4 cup sugar
2+1/4 teaspoons salt
1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
Melt butter in heavy large skillet over medium-high heat. Add the chilie; sauté until beginning to soften, about 4-5 minutes. Stir in 1 package corn and green onions. Transfer to very large bowl. Mix in cilantro. Coarsely crumble corn bread into vegetable mixture; toss to blend.
Blend second package of corn, eggs, sugar, salt, and pepper in processor to coarse puree. Stir corn puree mixture into the chile/corn/cornbread mixture. Mix lightly until puree is evenly blended into the cornbread mixture.
Preheat oven to 350°F. Generously butter 13x9x2-inch glass baking dish. Transfer to prepared dish. Cover with buttered foil, buttered side down. Bake until heated through, about 40 minutes. Uncover and bake until top is slightly crisp and golden, about 20 minutes longer.
Welcome to the blog, Kim, and thank you for sharing such great recipes! I knew that we’d see chiles coming in from the west.
I think it’s fabulous that you’ve developed a gluten-free stuffing. I don’t have any gluten-intolerant family members now but know other members will appreciate your solutions. I myself am strict now about using whole grains to help me cope with Lyme disease medication.
From a cooking forum where I posted this request, Rdhdwil said this:
I make mine pretty much like Belle except I use all bread. No cornbread in our dressing. I’m from NW Ohio. I cut up onion, celery and usually add some pork sausage such as Jimmy Dean. Saute together, in butter. I put all the dried bread in a large bowl, then add the sauted vegies, sausage and butter. I add poullty seasoning, sage and thyme to it. I pour on hot chicken or turkey stock and stir. We don’t like it real wet, more on the drier side. To all this stir in beaten eggs. It then goes in the fridge until the next day. It can be bake in or out of the bird.
Interesting thread.
From a cooking forum where I posted this request, a Texan who goes by the username Dingbat57 said she too uses boiled eggs:
hello ozark, and happy thanksgiving,i am posting from texas,and yes we put boiled eggs in our dressing!!
cornbread
onions
bell pepper
celery
boiled eggs
broth
sage
recipe handed from my mom, we have been cooking this 50 years
hope you and yours have a blessed thanksgiving, beverly
[...] found a really great recipe for Thanksgiving dressing that I think even I can fix. I emailed it over to my mom and she said that that sounded good and I [...]
Thanks for the referral, and enjoy the time with your future sister-in-law!
From Food52 FoodPickle, where I posted this question:
casa-giardino says:
From my Italian kitchen:
1 lb. sausage meat
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 yellow onion (chopped)
1 cup celery (chopped)
2 tablespoons of parsley
2 eggs
1/2 cup Parmiggiano Reggiano
1/2 cup slivered almonds with skin removed or pignoli
In a pan add olive oil and saute’ onion until golden. Add sausage meat and simmer in low heat turning for 10 minutes. Add chopped celery and parsley and continue to simmer an additional 15 minutes. Remove from heat, add slightly beaten eggs, Parmiggiano Reggiano and almonds.
Read more: http://www.food52.com/foodpickle/995-please-share-your-thanksgi#ixzz15k8lOnJX
MargeSLP on another forum where I posted this request said she first made stuffing from a recipe. Here is her version, including the great idea of using a muslin bag for easy removal of stuffing:
I am from Brooklyn and never learned to cook until I was away from home. I don’t even remember what our stuffing was like except white bread, bland with veggies.
I normally (and this year am making a cornbread stuffing based on a southern recipe in the Time Life Foods of the Workd series on America. I have modified it over the years and this is how it stands:
Cornbread stuffing
1 ½ cups finely chopped onion
2 carrots, diced
2 celery stalks, diced
6 cups crumbled cornbread
½ t. salt
freshly ground pepper
4 t thyme
¼ cup finely chopped parsley
¼ cup sherry
Microwave veggies in HI for 5 min Add cornbread, salt, pepper, thyme and parsley. Moisten with sherry.
I normally stuff the turkey because I love the flavors from the bird.
Here is a recipe that sounds Northeastern that is totally different.
Brown Bread stuffing with bacon and tarragon
A different flavorful stuffing
8 servings
1 1-pound can Boston brown bread, cut into 1/2″ cubes
1/2 lb soft Italian bread, crusts trimmed, cut into 1/2″ cubes (4 cups)
4 oz. bacon, cut crosswise into 1/2″ strips
1/2 stick butter
3/4 cup chopped onions
1/4 cup chopped fresh chives
3 T chopped fresh tarragon
1/2 t salt
1/4 t ground black pepper
1 1/2 cups low salt chicken broth
Preheat oven to 250. Divide all bread cubes between 2 rimmed baking sheets. Bake until bread is dry, about 1 1/2 hrs. Transfer to large bowl.
Saute bacon in large skillet until crisp. Using slotted spoon, transfer to paper towels. Discard all but 1 T drippings from skillet. Add butter to drippings and melt over med. heat. Add onion, saute until soft, about 7 min. Add onion, chives, tarragon, salt, pepper and reserved bacon to bowl with bread. Toss to combine. Butter 9x9x2 baking dish. Add chicken broth to bread and toss to moisten. Transfer stuffing to prepared dish. Cover stuffing with foil and bake 40 min. Uncover and bake until lightly browned on top (about 20 min)
How about a different method. My dear friend, Julie, an old BHG friend, sent me bags to put in the cavity and stuff and then remove when ready to carve. I have saved one, Julie, and will use it this Thursday.
Hi Ozark,
Came here via HuffPo. Great idea!
I grew up in Toronto, Canada and my maternal grandmother (from whom our dressing/stuffing – we use those words interchangably – recipe comes) was born & raised in south-east Britain, specifically Kent.
Her recipe, that we have only slightly modified, is very simple but still the best I’ve ever had. This is stuffed in the turkey. Honestly, we’d never heard of baking it in a pan until we started seeing recipes for Stovetop Stuffing on tv and couldn’t understand why. Gazillion generations of British, Canadian, Australian & other Brit descendant people have put their stuffing in the bird without dying so I was shocked to hear that Americans think they’ll die from it! Of course, now I understand that people don’t always know how to tell if their bird is cooked but I think if it’s under-done, the meat would kill you before the dressing
Anyways… here’s the recipe. Grind up a whole loaf of white (stale) bread in a blender (minus the crust) until it’s the texture of crumbs. Pour it into a bowl and add finely diced onion, ground sage and salt & pepper. To stuff the bird, alternative spoonfuls of the dressing with chunks of butter, pressing down with the back of the spoon to pack it. The juices from the bird seep in, the butter melts and by the time the turkey is done you have delicious dressing with a spoonable but fluffy texture. (I think it’s the eggs that makes the jelly like consistency in the other recipes.)
The only mod my mom made since she took over holiday cooking duty is to add chopped dried apricots. (Dried enough to be shriveled but still soft.) Honestly, if you haven’t tried it, then do so once. The apricot taste really compliments the dressing & meat.
Since being diagnosed with celiac disease about 7 years ago, I’ve tried many different gluten-free breads to mimic the taste & texture and finally found a brand that works. It’s called O’Doughs and I use their flax seed bread. (FYI, I don’t work for them!!) http://www.odoughs.com/
Given the reviews I’ve see of the gluten-free Udi brand in the U.S. I imagine that might work as well but can’t say for sure.
Btw, I must confess to a fascination with the “stuffing in a pan” recipes I’ve seen on the web – I’d love to try one with sausage, eggs, chicken stock, other dried fruit and nuts. I will try one with g-free cornbread I think at some point but not for the holidays. Stuffing/dressing is sacrosanct in our family as I’m sure it is for many others!
Thanks so much for compiling this thread!
Jodi, welcome to the blog, and thank you for your contribution! I’m interested that you’ve always called it dressing, despite its being used as what I’d call stuffing. I really like dried fruit with poultry, so I’m going to sneak some in for Christmas.
I’ve also been pondering whether dressing developed in the South because of the cornbread or because of the higher likelihood of stuffing making you sick the next day, what with warmer temperatures. Either one could be a reason the pan tradition developed, but I could be wrong entirely too.
Hi Ozark, we’ve always used the words interchangeably. My british grandmother probably used the word “dressing” more. “Dressing” is used in this context as meaning “to prepare”. Aka “I’m going to dress the turkey” or “I’m going to prepare it”. And part of that was putting the bread mixture into the cavity. I’m wondering if Americans started separating the meanings to distinguish between the 2 ways of preparing?
Btw, I didn’t think of the heat in the south as an influence on how to cook pre refrigeraters. I think you may have that correct.
Hello, all. Always wondered why my late mother put chopped boiled eggs in her “dressing.” She, and her folks, were from Hope, Arkansas! That explains it all, I’m guessing – from the information on this site. Always stale bread, never cornbread. Probably a personal preference. Always used water from the neck & giblets pan, as well as from white potatoes cooking water in her gravy. As an aside,she lived to be 103 and was up and about, dressing herself including lipstick and jewelry and perfume until the last week of her life, eating fried eggs and bacon most mornings and was never afraid of fat or sugar. Never drank liquor or smoked. Ate small portions of anything she wanted. Loved her friends and her church. Good strong stock, I’m thinking. Thanks for all the recipes and thoughts and Happy Turkey Day to you all!
Welcome to the blog, Carolyn! Your mother sounds like she was a wonderful lady, much like my grandparents and great-grandmother, who lived similar lives. Thank you too for confirming the boiled egg locale. I’m still wondering how and when the tradition started, but so far I’m finding it no further east than the outskirts of Memphis.
Sorry to be so late to post this, but I had to check the “recipe” as I made it this year, since it’s not really a recipe at all, but passed down from my East Texas grandmother. My mother and my grandmother made this dressing every Thanksgiving and Christmas. Both of them were excellent cooks. I remember that they were always busy Christmas Eve chopping tons of onion and celery, and baking cornbread in a cast iron skillet. My mother adapted the dressing by using pakaged mixes, but they always added home made corn bread. Mom always got up early the next morning to make the dressing and stuff the turkey. She spent hours basting the turkey with butter while it baked. Now I have become the official turkey baker, but my daughters are learning how so that they can take over one of these days. Everyone in my family loves the dressing that has baked in the turkey- which you definitely spoon, not slice. The dressing baked in the pan is drier, and never as tasty!
Cornbread Dressing
chopped onions- about 2 cups
chopped celery- about 1 cups
1 (16 oz) cornbread mix or use your favorite recipe
about 1 /2 bag of Pepperidge Farm Herb Stuffing mix
1/2 bag Pepperidge Farm Cornbread stuffing mix
1/4 t dried sage
1/2 t thyme
2 C chicken broth
5 T butter
Thank you, Loblolly, and welcome to posting at the blog! I’m the same way with my recipe in terms of putting it together by look and feel, but since my in-laws made the meal this year, I couldn’t check mine.
Yours looks very similar, except I think I use more celery and herbs and less butter. I’ve also returned to the old way of using stale bread crumbs.
Thanks for the meal planning encouragement. I printed out your tasty recipes and am actually excited about running to Publix today.
You’re most welcome, and I hope everything works out for you!