How do you do stuffing?
 

In the spirit of Thanksgiving, let's skip past the turkey and talk about what everyone loves most - stuffing/dressing.

How do you do it?

I'll admit, until I started dating my wife, my entire experience with stuffing/dressing was Stove Top. I didn't mind, but now I know better. And for the last decade plus, I make mine homemade. Sometimes I use the pre-cubed (un-seasoned) bread, but mostly I'll make my own.

Mine is pretty basic. It's what Mrs. FMB's dad made, and what we like. I've made a few modifications, and I think mine's better, but it's still very basic.

I prefer to start by drying out the bread in the oven. Add some diced onion, celery, mushrooms, and minced garlic sauteed in butter, and toss with the bread. I'll season pretty aggressively with rosemary, thyme, sage, salt, and pepper. Then it all gets moistened with stock - I really try for homemade turkey stock, but sometimes I just use from the store. Bake it all up under foil, and then take the foil off and let the top get crispy.

first, i consult with Xvideos.

LMAO LMAO

Not exactly what I was going for...

Mine is similar except we trade apples for the mushrooms.

My stuffing in the turkey is reserved for sandwiches, no one is allowed to touch that.

damnit wrong thread...

I usually start by deciding not to do it.

I have a pretty decent dressing; my dad's recipe. he calls it 'sage dressing'; really just a box of bread crumbs, melted butter, sage, rosemary etc. really simple. usually turns out really good.

When it comes to the holidays, I go with a modified Portuguese style, and use a few variations, depending on my mood and the guest list:

bread (or a Pepperidge farms bag mix, if time is an issue)
chourico
peppers
onions
celery
parsley
salt
pepper
garlic
stock

Options as additives or replacements
mushrooms (if the mood strikes)
olives (if the mood strikes)
ground beef (if it's dressing) or not (if it's stuffing)
eggs (sometimes, depending on how things set up without them)
Milk (replacement or augmentation of stock)


Some add paprika along with the chourico, but I don't do that

bread cubes

rice is not real stuffing.

I sautee a mince of onions, celery and mushrooms....well seasoned and mix into bread cubes.

Of course stale bread works probably the best but there are certain brands of bread cubes and certain kinds of bread cubes or croutons that work fine.

I find the best cubes are the smallest, hardest cubes.

I dont want mush, I want cubes when its done. SO you can tell the good stuffing cubes by squeezing the bag a litle to see which has the smallest , hardest, densest cubes that do not crumble and theres no powdery bullshit in the bag

Or make your own cubes with stale bread like some rye and sourdough.

I mix the sautee into the cubes with some melted butter and chicken stock.

I always make enough to stuff the bird and also do a 9x13 pan full.

The bird stuffing often gets too moist, and you can get it perfect in the 9x13.

I find a mixture of bird stuffing with the 9x13 is the perfect mix....as i like to get the 9x13 pan crispy on top and it works perfectly over the moist bird stuffing.

One key is that I like meat in my stuffing/ dressing. I will usually buy a smoked turkey leg or some andouille sausage and make sure that little bits of meat are mixed in thouroughly with the sauteed mushrooms and onions.

SOmetimes I will mix gravy in before baking the 9x13 also...


I'm pretty much the king of stuffing

Ask your wife. j/k.

I love cornbread stuffing with little chunks of spicy sausage and dried cranberries. Celery, onions and garlic are added in there too. My mom makes it so I am sure there is other stuff in it too.

I go to someone else's house for Thanksgiving. Would love an invite from Pawnmower.

you dont happen to live in the middle of bum **** egypt on the north sonoma coast perchance?

anyone is invited!!!

would love to have a chiefs planet fest for left coasters

Years ago, my mother used to make the stuffing after the turkey in the same roasting pan with all those drippings.

She added celery and onions and whatever seasoning.

Fantastic!

I don't know all the details, but we use Mendolia Italian sausage and provolone cheese. I smoked a couple whole chickens yesterday and used the carcasses to make the stock.

That's my gravy, but now I want to do that.

Pawnmower makes the best stuffing.

Or is it stuffing makes the best Pawnmower?

I can never remember.

For the past five years I went to making mine from scratch after I enrolled my daughter in this cooking school online for her culinary arts elective when I homeschooled her in her last two years of high school. I see they still have the recipe on their site to view.

It was such a hit, I now make it every year but I use this wheat-free bread from Sami's Bakery sold at my local Natural Food store.

http://samisbakery.com/our-products/...et-flax-bread/

It is millet-flax and has no yeast either. No one, without a wheat allergy has noticed or complained but still rave about this stuffing.

This stuffing calls for fresh sage leaves, fresh thyme and starts with a classic Mirepoix (celery, carrot and onion).


http://rouxbe.com/recipes/110-traditional-stuffing

Mother****er. Beat me to it.

I no longer put my stuffing in the bird. I bake it separate.

Other times I've made wild-rice stuffing with mushrooms, cornbread and Pepperidge Farm herb stuffing bread cubes. ( before I knew I had a wheat allergy )

sicko.

Who said rice is not real stuffing? It can be anything. The Pilgrims stuffed theirs with onion chunks and herbs. They even boiled their turkey and spit roasted smaller birds like passenger pigeons which were numerous at the time. Visit Plymouth Plantation.

Meh, stuffing is bread.

If I showed up to any of my family Thanksgivings and they had rice stuffing, I would not be satisfied or inclined to eat it. **** that noise.

Heathen

You can't make sandwiches with dry stuffing.

YOU CAN'T.

It's way better this way.

That's a bread stuffing. Is what most use is all.

I put rice in the neck so it bakes pretty (not collapsed) and then I have turkey rice.

My mother never did it.

I've had stuffing in the brid, once. It sucked.

I've never done it and I never will. I'd rather have Stove Top LOL

Same.

I like rice, but when I'm eating stuffing it must be bread.

And corn bread stuffing sucks, too.

That sounds yummy. Can I come to your house for Thanksgiving Dinner? My family is in Europe, and I'm stuck at school. :(

Dressing is the stuff that is made outside the bird. It's what you give to the people you don't like as much. Stuffing is what is made inside the bird. It's what you give to your favorite guests, because it's much better.

If you had shitty stuffing, it would have been shitty dressing, too.

Yup!

According to RouxBe Cooking School stuffing "acts as insulation and makes cooking the turkey that much longer, creating dry breast meat. Hot air cannot get inside the turkey and can’t cook the meat closest to the bone, which is the area that takes the longest to cook."


http://rouxbe.com/recipes/106-roaste...-gravy/preview

I would love to have you, but I just did my Thanksgiving. I work on the real holiday. :( I don't like the idea of you just sitting at college.

Unless you're surrounded by chicks and drugs I suppose.

LMAO

Apparently, the RouxBe Cooking School doesn't know how to cook turkey.

You don't know what you just started.

Cornbread is bread tho.' I didn't care for the cornbread when I tried it one year. One year a friend made it with oysters and it was pretty good but mine didn't come out right for some reason.

I think bread stuffing is most popular. I like to experiment on occasion but have mostly had bread stuffing with turkey or roast chicken. I stuffed Cornish Game Hens with a ricotta and spinach stuffing once and that was delicious.

I usually use stockings hung with care.

I've changed how I do it ever since using that school. I even brine my turkey now too. Made a big difference.

They know how to cook turkey. There's just more than one way to skin-a-cat.

Splitting hairs.

It's stuffing to me.

There are a lot of drugs. Most of the chicks will be at home with their families, I'd imagine. I'll probably make do. :)

Mine sounds about like yours, but I like to add a very finely diced green apple

It's really not.

Stuffing isn't dressing.

Grilling isn't barbecuing.

Lecterns aren't podiums.

Definitions are real.

I like the idea of apples in a stuffing or even pruuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuunes!

:spock:

While I agree that there's more than one way to cook a turkey, you were the one tossing out the dry breast meat excuse from that school as the justification for not putting stuffing in the bird.

I haven't had stuffing/dressing in years and don't miss it.

No, I said that's what RouxBe said because your "heathen" comment implied they were doing it incorrectly. I simply changed the way I do it because I trust what they said. I also heard, but may be an old wives tale, that there's bacteria if you put inside. I would think the heat would kill all that though.

She's right. Alton Brown agrees.

http://www.seriouseats.com/2009/11/a...nksgiving.html

From his Good Eats: Early Years book:

And frankly, since I started making mine with homemade stock, I'd put mine up against any I've done in the bird previously, and I'd bet dollars to donuts you wouldn't be able to tell the difference.

My past bread stuffings, but not my rice stuffings, did come out mushy and wet when I had it inside the bird cooking.

You quoted it. Are you really going to continue with this?

I've been making turkeys about every 1-2 months for the past 10 years, give or take. I have no problems stuffing a turkey and still having moist turkey breast meat.

Slightly off topic, but have you tried French Laundry's recipe for roasted chicken? It is literally the best chicken skin I've ever had. Period.

I've seen him talk about it multiple times, and it's just salt, pepper, and then a little thyme.

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/EWLt6G85zC4" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Perfect!!

She's not right. 10 years agree. And, while I love getting Alton's takes, his fear of anything remotely 'unclean' takes him down some foolish and/or needless paths.

Does anyone put turkey meat in their stuffing? My M-I-L puts the dark meat from the wings/drums in the stuffing and I've always thought it was weird and gross.

Whenever I did mine in the bird, I always kept the mix a little dry. That's the key to doing them in the bird.

I forgot to mention the chimney...:harumph:

Maybe you have some magical way of cooking stuffing inside a bird that heats the stuffing sufficiently to make it safe while not overcooking the breast, but most of use don't have that oven.

:p

That seems like a terrible waste of the best meat.

'Eh what? I can defend my post if I want.

So

The Pilgrims cooked turkey before us too and they boiled them. So there. Na. Na.

Yes you do. Start your turkey upside down.

I do that for part of the cooking. Never did it before RouxBe tho'. Got that from them too. And they say not to stuff the thing. My mother never taught me anything about cooking it turns out.

I have the ability to cook my turkey breast side down for a while. I'm reasonably certain you can do that in your oven.

Beat me to it.

By the time the stuffing registers 165, the breast meat will usually be significantly higher (and thus, dry).

Once it goes in the bag, how will I know which side is up?

I did too.


I do that. Got that from those Heathens at RouxBe too. :evil:

Until I came along, no one ever ate the dark meat (insert stupid sex joke here), so M-I-L put it in the stuffing so it wouldn't go to waste. :shake:

It's not about defending your post. You claim that there's more than one way to skin a cat, but the you go about saying you don't stuff the bird because of the problem with dry breast meat. Well, as you note....


There's more than one way to skin a cat.

:eek:

Nah, all the wonderful juices that pour into the breast meat from the dark meat for the first 3 hours fixes that.

Try it sometime. I'm a smart lady. So is BEP and JPB. Well, he's not a lady, but he's seen one up close.

Cat gets dry when you cook stuffing in it, too.

No, I am only saying that's how I do it and why. Frankly, I don't mind or care how anyone else prefers it.

I responded to your "heathen" comment. Tho' I didn't take that term literally, and it seemed in jest partly, I thought I defend why and that is why. But they said it, not me. I just quoted them because well...they are the pros. It was never my idea to start with, I just got it from them but is why I do it that way now.

If you're eating pussy that's at 165 degrees, you're doing it wrong.

Well, whether you have one way that does it successfully doesn't change the fact that an ACF-certified cooking school, as well as a highly respected chef and general food nerd, recommends you DON'T stuff the bird.

So why don't you lay off her? Her opinion is substantiated. Just because you and some others disagree doesn't negate those facts.

ROFL LMAO

I think the point is not whether the stuffing is good. Clearly, the stuffing should be great. I think the point is that the turkey isn't as good.

Then again, turkey is a horrible ****ing protein, and I have no idea why people eat that shit. If you have to soak something in salt water for two days just to have it not like eating a pair of levi's jeans, then it's not worth it.

Why Americans struggle every year through dry, flavorless poultry when literally any other preparation of pork is vastly superior is confounding to me.

I have no problem cooking a bird that both has stuffing and moist breast meat, thus proving that the Alton claim is OPINION, not fact.

How don't you see the credibility issue with you pulling OPINION out of your ass to justify telling me not to give my OPINION in response to another's OPINION?

Last year, I made a totally from scratch fresh pasta lasagna for Thanksgiving.