Stuffings and Dressings

As you might expect, there are two camps in the Gunroom: cornbread and traditional (white) bread. In the cornbread camp, there's them what adds sugar and them what don't. Then there are two more camps: dressing and stuffing. And the wet vs. dry dressing camps. Some lissuns are in all the camps.

Cornbread and Cornbread Stuffing - Doug Essinger-Hileman
Stuffing Balls - Doug Essinger-Hileman
Sourdough Stuffing - Theo Gazulis
Pine Nuts - David (aloft and alow) Goldblatt
Stuffing - Alice Gomez
Stuffing for Cornish Game Hens - Alice Gomez
Stuffing - Ginger Johnson
Wet and Dry - Ray McPherson
The One True Bread Stuffing - Sue Reynolds
White Bread and Corn Bread - Linda DeMars
Stuffing Wars - Susan Wenger
Cornbread Cajun Dressing - Jennifer Scates
"Peacemaker Herb and Fruit Stuffing" - Jennifer Scates
Sausage and Apple Dressing - Mary S.
Midwestern Stuffing - Gerry Strey
Some Words on Bread and Herbs for Stuffing - Marian Van Til
Brian Davis and His Canadian Kind of Stuffing / Dressing
Hugh Yemen's Family Dressing
Julie Hoffman's Version
Edmund Burton's List of Stuffing Ingredients
Family Customs from Linda Demars
Linda LaFlamme's Mother-in-Law's Stuffing
Lee Ann Roberts
Yankee Sausage, Apple, and Cranberry Stuffing - Margie Potts

Cornbread and Cornbread Stuffing - Doug Essinger-Hileman
First, one needs to make the cornbread. The family's favorite comes from Laurel's Kitchen:
In a bowl, mix 2 cups cornmeal, 1/2 tsp baking soda, 1 tsp salt, 1 tsp brown sugar. In a second bowl, mix 1 egg, 1 tbsp oil and 2 cups buttermilk. Add the liquid to the dry, combine just until mixed and turn into an 8x8 (inch) baking pan. Bake at 425F for 20-25 minutes.
This recipe can easily be adapted to personal taste. The original recipe also has 1/2 cup wheat germ in it, which enhances the nutritional value. A bit more buttermilk makes the cornbread more moist, which is wonderful for cornbread served at table, but not so wonderful for cornbread to be used in stuffing. A second egg will enrich the flavor and make the texture more tender. A bit more oil will allow the bread to keep longer (like that's a problem at our house!).
Now for the stuffing recipe.
Take your favorite quantity of any member(s) of the onion family, chopped, and some chopped celery and saute them in butter until golden yellow. We oftentimes use a whole leek or a goodly bunch of shallots, though plain ol' onions work too. Transfer to a mixing bowl. Add a couple of cups of crumbled, day-old cornbread (which can be left out to dry for a couple of hours, if desired). seasoning of choice (we use a very generous portion of fresh sage, a goodly portion of fresh parsley, and several sprigs of fresh thyme, all from our garden; the best method I have found of "measuring" quantities" when making stuffing of any kind is to add herbs liberally and smell -- when the stuffing smells just right, add a handful more herbs, mixed in the appropriate proportion. Add salt (quite sparingly) and pepper (added liberally if the family's womenfolk are not here, sparingly if they are). Moisten with chicken broth, preferably made from the giblets of the chicken being stuffed and left-over vegetable ends and pieces.

Stuffing Balls - Doug Essinger-Hileman
My mother always prepared both wet and dry stuffing. The most popular wet stuffing was that cooked in the turkey (we almost never had stuffing in chicken); my mother cooked the stuffing that didn't fit in the turkey in a covered casserole dish. She also made stuffing balls, which were cooked on a cookie sheet in the oven, becoming dry and nicely browned. These were very popular to use as a receptacle for copious amounts of gravy.

Sourdough Stuffing - Theo Gazulis
OK, I wasn't going to respond, but if you grind walnuts and baked chestnuts, and saute them with the celery and onions, you're almost there. Substitute chewy, crusty San Francisco sourdough bread for Wonder bread and you have done a beautiful thing.

Pine Nuts - David (aloft and alow) Goldblatt
This year I am going to stuff the Turkey with another bird of some kind. Not sure what species yet. But it sounds like using the [Brown'n'] bag would help with that. Anyone have any bird stuffer ideas? And might I add that pine nuts work very well with most kinds of stuffing.

Stuffing - Alice Gomez
I make my own bread, and get fresh herbs from my herb garden, but the poultry is still store-bought. And to make the turkey cook a little faster, I've quit stuffing the turkey with the dressing and instead stick a bunch of sage, rosemary, marjoram, and thyme in the cavity, and bake the dressing in a separate dish. Smells heavenly, tastes even better.

Stuffing for Cornish Game Hens - Alice Gomez
For Cornish game hens, I use boxed bread stuffing cubes with a chopped apple, raisins, sliced celery, walnuts, fresh herbs, and held together with butter.

Stuffing - Ginger Johnson
As for the stuffing, what about wild rice and apple stuffing nicely seasoned with herbs? I never cared for the bread kind.

Wet and Dry - Ray McPherson
We always diced the bread the night before stuffing the turkey to let the cubes dry out, and we always made enough to stuff the bird for wet and a baking dish full for dry. Then when the turkey is done, you make gravy and throw the turkey away. . .

The One True Bread Stuffing - Sue Reynolds
The way to avoid the fights over sugar in the cornbread is to serve the One True Bread Stuffing.
You take about four 24 oz loaves of Wonder Bread--the soft white squishy stuff that small children like but is essentially tasteless. Tear it apart into little pieces and let it sit out all night, uncovered, to get stale.
In the morning, chop fine at least one big onion or two small onions, and saute them in butter. Not margarine, butter. Add in four or five stalks of chopped celery, and cook until the onion is translucent and the celery is tender. Dump it on top of the big bowl of bread.
Consult your family as to what will be rejected with loathing, and if acceptable, slice fine circles from a half pound of Polish kielbasa and add it to the bread. If your family is still friendly, add a drained small can of sliced water chestnuts. Liberally salt and pepper the bread mixture.
Take six cups of good chicken broth, and pour it over the bread. It should be thoroughly wet, not just damp in spots. If not, add more chicken broth.
It is acceptable to use chicken soup base, which has chicken as the main ingredient, to make the broth, but real broth is better. Bouillon cubes are NOT ALLOWED. You do not want salt, fat, and caramel coloring to be your equivalent of chicken broth.
Add about two tablespoons of sage to the stuffing, and maybe a dash of chopped garlic (not garlic salt, real garlic). Mix it all together with your hands. The volume will be much less than the bread was by itself, but still too much to fit into the turkey. What doesn't fit in the turkey goes into a nice little ovenproof dish that you have greased in advance, and you pop it into the refrigerator to sit there, nicely chilled, until about an hour before you are going to serve the turkey. Then you bake it, so you have enough stuffing to serve with leftovers at Friday lunch.
As for the turkey--defrost it in a pan in the refrigerator, so any blood doesn't drip out onto the pumpkin pie on the shelf just below the bird. Rinse it thoroughly and remove the little plastic bag with the giblets, and wrestle the neck out of the body cavity, and then rinse it again, including both body cavities, until you don't see any turkey blood. Stuff the cavities loosely with the stuffing--don't pack it tight or the turkey can explode. It happened to my mother once! Rub the critter with some sort of fat--butter or (gasp) solid vegetable shortening, and put it in a nice big roaster pan to cook at 300 degrees or so, with an aluminum foil tent until the last thirty minutes. Baste it with more chicken broth while it's cooking, or use the pan drippings. Timing of the roasting time depends on whether the bird is stuffed or not and how much it weighs--consult a standard cookbook. Let the turkey sit for twenty minutes after you remove it from the oven before you carve it, and after Thanksgiving dinner is over, get the meat off the bones to chill quickly, and boil the carcass for turkey broth and soup. (Add appropriate vegetables to the broth after you strain out all the bones, and cook them until tender--good grief, you do know how to cook, don't you?)
The best part is cold sliced turkey with Durkee's sauce and cold stuffing with hot gravy on it for dinner the night after Thanksgiving.
I would skip the traditional meal and go blissfully on to the leftovers....as long as there is enough stuffing, and it isn't that gritty cornbread stuff!

White Bread and Corn Bread - Linda DeMars
I follow the same lines as Sue Reynolds, except I leave out the water chestnuts and sausage, but do add several raw eggs and lots of melted butter. Paradoxically, I make white bread dressing, as we call it, but love cornbread dressing, of which my father's sisters made and make the best in the world. Actually, I stuff the turkey and also make an extra pan to cook in the oven, since leftover dressing, hot or cold, is a very popular thing at my house.

Stuffing Wars - Susan Wenger
I can see the stuffing wars in the offing, hull up. I like the cut of Sue's recipe, but she left out. . .
. . .nuts. I love nuts in my stuffing. Chestnuts (roasted or boiled), pine nuts, walnuts, pecans, almonds: not necessarily mixed, but a goodly amount of whatever nuts you have around, added to Sue's recipe would give it that je ne sais quoi.

Cornbread Cajun Dressing - Jennifer Scates
I will now admit her stuffing preference - cut up onions and apples. My dressing is baked in a pan and involves cornbread, celery onion and bell pepper (the holy trinity of cajun cooking), giblets, cut up poached chicken, evaporated milk chicken broth and butter, raw eggs and chopped hardboiled eggs, sage pepper (white black and red) and salt, and oysters.

"Peacemaker Herb and Fruit Stuffing" - Jennifer Scates
Jane and Michael Stern, in their lovely cookbook Square Meals, wrote that for years they battled over stuffing, one liking corn bread, fruit, and a drop o' brandy, the other liking New England melange of white bread, herbs and nuts. Faced with a choice between Stove Top and marriage counseling, they devised a blend they call "Peacemaker Herb and Fruit Stuffing", containing giblets, onion, celery, garlic, toast, cornbread, sage, rosemary, apple, dried apricot, kumquat or grapefruit, pecans, Worcestershire, brandy, and vermouth.
I kinda liked it, but it didn't make a great leftover sliced cold stuffing and mayo sandwich.

Sausage and Apple Dressing - Mary S.
I used too much sausage in my dressing (a dish of which formed my breakfast today). Would recommend roughly these quantities:
1/2 pound mild sausage, browned and crumbled.
To this add 1/2 onion, minced or grated, 1/2 - 1 cup chopped celery, and cook over medium heat in the sausage fat. Meanwhile peel and cut in small pieces 1 or 2 apples.
Mix all of this with 1 or 2 cups torn-up pieces of good white bread (I used Pepperidge Farm's).
Moisten with sufficient chicken broth and pack into pan - or pack it into your turkey - and bake.

Midwestern Stuffing - Gerry Strey
In my midwestern extended family, the stuffing ingredients were white bread, chopped onion and celery, butter, broth, and poultry seasoning, which for the uninitiated, is a finely powdered blend of thyme, sage, marjoram and maybe one or two other herbs. A small jar lived in the cupboard, taken out only for the monthly roast chicken, the bird being culled from our flock, beheaded by my father, scalded, defeathered, eviscerated and cooked by my mother. The only controversy was over wet vs. dry stuffing. My family liked it moist and compact; the heretic branch of the family served it loose and crumbly, for all love!

Some Words on Bread and Herbs for Stuffing - Marian Van Til
All this sounds good, and is essentially how I learned to prepare stuffing and turkey from my mother. I treat a whole roasting chicken in the same way, which I find is an excellent substitute for just two people. I did that on Monday in honor of our Northern Neighbors for an otherwise traditional Thanksgiving meal -- minus the water chestnuts and kielbasa; and definitely NO Wonder Bread. (Oh, Sue, how could you?!) I wouldn't buy Wonder Bread for ANY purpose. The Italian bread from our local bakery works very well; or French bread; or sourdough; or Italian hard rolls, for that matter (which I used on Monday), pulled into pieces. And I throw them or the bread in a not-so-hot oven to dry it out. If it gets slightly toasted, that's ok.
And I figure it's acceptable to use chicken bouillon from Penzey's (essentially natural and about a third the salt as grocery store bouillon). And I always use fresh sage, as I have an ample supply year-round. The fresh sage gives stuffing an amazingly piquant flavor which dried sage can't match. I'd recommend to anybody to plant sage even if you use it for culinary purposes only once or twice a year. They're pretty and hardy plants, in any case.

Brian Davis and His Canadian Kind of Stuffing / Dressing
I'm a sage and onion or thyme and parsley aficionado, with the appropriate freshly crumbled breadcrumbs.

Hugh Yemen's Family Dressing
I've taken on the mantle of Piemaker from my mother and my sister has taken on that of Turkey and Dressingmaker. One of these days we need to teach each other our respective trades. The family dressing recipe is not what you'd call elaborate, but I know it's time-consuming because my sister starts it a few days prior to Thanksgiving. It involves bread crumbs dried for a day or so, sausage, apples, celery, and I don't know offhand what else. I do know, though, that I've never tasted anything that's even on the same playing field as my family's stuffing. That, and it pairs exquisitely with a bottle of Allagash Grand Cru.

Julie Hoffman's Version
I add butter and celery to the sage, onion and or thyme for chicken and sage flavored pork sausage crumbles for the Turkey. And contrary to all conventional wisdom I stuff the bird with it. Sometimes a little 'tightly', too. I've never met anyone who got sick from eating either the stuffing from a properly cooked bird or from the bird itself. I'm sure it could happen, just don't have any first hand experience of it. There is nothing like stuffing dished out from the cavity of a roasted bird, soft and moist with some truly crunchy bits where it oozed out of the openings. And it seems to help keep the meat moist, too.

Edmund Burton's List of Stuffing Ingredients - from The Joy of Cooking
Cornbread (1/2 Corn Meal, 1/2 White Wheat Flour)
Giblets
Butter
Onions
Parsley
Celery
Basil
Paprika
Nutmeg
Stock

Joy Of Cooking says you can add one of the following:
Browned Pork Sausage (the kind with lots of sage)
Sliced Mushrooms Sauteed with Onion
Oysters
Clams
Shrimp

I really like it with the sausage. I'm looking at that shrimp. I'll bet that's good. I may have to try some.

Family Customs from Linda Demars
I fix stuffing/dressing with lots of white sandwich bread cubed, chopped onions, a little chopped celery, chicken broth, a few eggs, melted butter and sage or poultry seasoning, salt and pepper. I just put it together by sight, feel and taste, so I don't know how much of anything. People who like that sort of thing say it is very good. I put some inside the turkey and have a big pan to go in the oven after the turkey comes out.
My daughter makes what she calls oyster dressing (the recipe says "Scalloped Oysters) and we have that too. It has oysters, ritz or oyster crackers, some of them browned in butter, heavy cream, salt, pepper and nutmeg and more butter on top. It is also very good.
My daddy's sisters always made cornbread dressing and it was very, very good, but I don't know how. My mother made bread dressing - my sister says mine is better. (Amazing - I thought I made it like her. I do tend to be more freehanded with the butter, seasonings, eggs, broth and/or heavy cream than either my mother or my daughter.)Linda

Linda LaFlamme's Mother-in-Law's Stuffing
My mother-in-law does a meat stuffing that is never stuffed inside the bird, but called stuffing nonetheless. I call it better than the turkey and have been known to hoard the leftovers.
Packed inside the turkey, my stuffing has cornbread, apricots, sausage, and a liberal amount of Grand Marnier.

Lee Ann Roberts
We like cornbread/sausage/pecan dressing, nicely seasoned, moistened with chicken broth, drizzled with turkey drippings, and baked after the bird is done and resting on its platter.

Yankee Sausage, Apple, and Cranberry Stuffing - Margie Potts
6 Cups Dried Bread Cubes
1/2 Cup Dried Cranberries (or more to taste)
1/2 Cup Grand Marnier (optional)
1/2 Cup Butter
1/2 lb. Sage Seasoned Pork Sausage or fresh sausage of choice
1 Cup Onion, chopped
3/4 Cup Celery, chopped, including leaves
1/2 Cup Golden Delicious Apple, peeled, cored, chopped
2 Tab. Fresh Sage leaves, chopped (2 teas. dried)
1 Tab. Fresh Thyme, chopped (1 teas. dried)
1/4 Cup Fresh Parsley, chopped - fresh is best here
Salt and Pepper to Taste
1/2 Cup White Wine, Stock or Apple Cider
1/2 - 1 1/2 Cups Additional Stock or Low Sodium Broth
Simply double this recipe to feed 12-16. This recipe feeds 6-8.
I always use at least 2 different kinds of bread for texture and flavor. I used a wonderful European baked Peasant and Batard for the television segment. Have fun with this, but remember to use GOOD Bread --- taste and texture - it's the base for your stuffing: try sourdough, pane, batard, peasant, French, Italian, wheat and seedless rye. Cut or tear the bread into 1/4 - 1/2 pieces and dry. ! Tear or cut into 1/4 - 1/2 cubes and dry the bread to avoid soggy, mushy stuffing. You can dry bread cubes by spreading them out on a baking sheet and leaving them out uncovered overnight or a day or dry them in a low temperature oven at 225 degrees for 30-60 minutes. Put in large bowl.
Pour Grand Marnier over dried cranberries in small saucepan and bring to a boil. Then, remove from heat and set aside.
In large skillet over medium-high heat, brown sausage, stirring to break up clumps. Using a slotted spoon, remove cooked sausage to bowl with bread. Remove all but 2 tablespoons of fat from skillet and add butter. Over medium heat, once butter has melted, add the onion, celery, and dried herbs, if using. Cook, covered, until onion is tender, about 3-5 minutes, stirring occasionally. Remove from heat. (By covering the vegetables, you are sweating them to release their flavor without browning and evaporating tasty juices.) Add the sautéed vegetables to the bread pieces and sausage in a large bowl. Add the apples, cranberries and fresh herbs if using and fresh parsley. Deglaze (i.e., quickly heating liquid in skillet, stirring to lift particles of food from skillet.) skillet with 1/2 cup wine, stock or cider, and pour over bread and vegetables. Toss to coat. Season with salt and pepper. Add additional broth to achieve the correct moisture level.
To stuff bird, this stuffing should just hold together when mound on a spoon. Stuff the bird loosely, leaving at least 1/2 space to allow expansion of stuffing during cooking. To the remaining stuffing or if you are not stuffing the bird just cooking as dressing, add 3/4 Cup to 2 cups of stock or broth 1/4 cup at a time until the dressing looks as moist as you'd like it. Place dressing in a buttered casserole dish and bake COVERED 30-45 minutes in a 350 degree oven. UNCOVER and cook an additional 10-15 minutes until golden brown. (I had an aunt once who buttered the inside of the foil covering the dressing for added flavor and crunchiness.)