Pass the Thanksgiving dressing/stuffing, please!

Volumes have been written about the essential foods of Thanksgiving feasting – turkey and dressing. Or is it turkey and stuffing? 

Freelance journalist Michelle Darrisaw, a native of south Georgia, said the word “dressing” is southern in nature, while “stuffing” is the term that is used mainly in the northeastern states. 

A scientific study, commissioned by Butterball in 2015, validated Darrisaw’s observations, so yes, we can declare that “Dressing is a Southern Food.” 

In the Midwest, you’ll find a blend, as the terms dressing and stuffing are used interchangeably” Darrisaw wrote.

 

But if you want to get into “the nitty-gritty debate of factual accuracy with your second cousins” at the grown-ups table, she said “the important thing to remember is that stuffing is stuffed inside of an animal before cooking, and dressing is simply stuffed into your mouth from a separate dish.”

Turkey’s “trusty sidekick” is also sometimes called “filling,” especially in Pennsylvania, where Mennonite families “added their own twist, using leftover mashed potatoes to create ‘filling,’” said Charlotte Walsh, a contributor to The Pioneer Woman website.

 

The really important issue here, is not what you call the dressing/stuffing/filling, but that the dish be there on the table. 

Chris Fuhrmeister of the Atlanta Business Chronicle asked award-winning chef John Currence of Oxford, Miss.: “Is dressing essential for a proper Thanksgiving meal? 

“‘Well, I don’t know,’ Currence said with a not-so-subtle tone of sarcasm. ‘Do you have to have peanut butter on a peanut butter and jelly sandwich?’”

 

Chef John Currence

“Yes, it’s essential. Go to 10 different houses serving classic Thanksgiving meals, and you might find 10 different menus of side dishes to go with the main attraction. But every table will include some sort of dressing,” Fuhrmeister reported. 

Currence said he believes that turkey and dressing are “the one-two of the Thanksgiving meal. He said: “You can’t have Thanksgiving without it (dressing).” 

There are a plethora of dressing recipes floating about, but Ni’Kesia Pannell, a food writer based in Atlanta, is partial to cornbread as the primary ingredient, “instead of baguettes or plain ol’ white bread.”

She prefers dressing as a “casserole dish” used to “dress up” your meal up. “Though stuffing has gone a little out of style due to the increased risk of food-borne illnesses, the added turkey juices do make the dish more delicious. If you're set on stuffing your turkey, everything inside the bird should be cooked to at least 165 degrees.” 

Dietitian Maxine Smith of Cleveland Clinic in Ohio said: “If you put stuffing in the turkey, do so just before cooking. Avoid pre-stuffing. Insert a food thermometer into the center of the stuffing to make sure it reaches 165 degrees. Bacteria can survive in stuffing that has not reached 165 degrees that could then cause food poisoning.”

“After removing the bird from the oven, wait for 20 minutes before taking the stuffing out of the turkey’s cavity; it will cook a little more this way,” Smith added. 

Chef Currence advises: “Don’t even think about using store-bought bread crumbs. To make a real good cornbread dressing, you’ve got to make your cornbread from scratch.” 

“It needs lots of celery, lots of onion and lots and lots of sage to make a plain, traditional turkey dressing,” he said. “Without sage it falls flat. That’s the headliner for me.”

 

On the other hand, some dressing perfectionists (like my mother) prefer to avoid using sage, because sage can overpower the dish, especially when Uncle Herb was doing the cooking.