These Thanksgiving Stuffing Recipes Will Make the Feast Legendary (2024)

FAQs

What is another name for stuffing Thanksgiving? ›

What is dressing? In the context of Thanksgiving, the word dressing is commonly used to mean the same exact thing as stuffing—including when it's cooked inside the bird.

By bringing so much together into one dish, stuffing offers a preview of the leftovers, the best part of the Thanksgiving meal, when you Frankenstein's-monster up a plate of whatever happens to have made it into the fridge the next day.

There's no specific date for when stuffing was first invented, but there is evidence of stuffing made from spelt, herbs, and vegetables in an ancient Roman document, according to Tasting Table. And while it's not clear whether or not stuffing was on the first Thanksgiving menu, it did become more popular in the 1800s.

The earliest documentary evidence is the Roman cookbook, Apicius De Re Coquinaria, which contains recipes for stuffed chicken, dormouse, hare, and pig. Most of the stuffings described consist of vegetables, herbs and spices, nuts, and spelt (a cereal), and frequently contain chopped liver, brains, and other organ meat.

But for the Thanksgiving side dish in the South, the term dressing was adopted in place of stuffing, which was viewed as a crude term, during the Victorian era. Although dressing and stuffing are interchangeable terms, the signature ingredient of this Thanksgiving side dish in the South is cornbread.

The word “stuffing” dates back to 14th Century English, when it was used synonymously with the more uncomfortable sounding forcemeat. Soon after, Anglos borrowed the slicker French word, farce (from the Latin verb facire or “to stuff”).

At temperatures below 165°F you risk exposure to salmonella or E. coli, two very scary and gross bacteria. The problem with stuffing your roast turkey is that when the turkey's meat is safely cooked, the stuffing inside still is not.

Nutrition Notes

Stuffing is essentially bread, salt, and butter, so it probably comes as no surprise that it isn't the healthiest food served on Thanksgiving.

For one, modern stovetops weren't widely available until the 18th century — birds were roasted on a spit over an open fire — which made it difficult to cook side dishes at the same time. The solution? Simply cook the sides in the bird. Moreover, preparing stuffing this way meant more bang for one's caloric buck.

As it cooks, the herbs in the stuffing infuse into the bird, giving it a lot more flavor. The turkey, in turn, drips all its delicious juices into the stuffing as it cooks, moistening it and making it taste great.

Do you eat stuffing at Christmas? ›

There is no particular reason why stuffing is eaten at Christmas, other than it is a traditional accompaniment to turkey, the most popular Christmas meat.

The stuffing mixture may be cooked separately and served as a side dish, in which case it may still be called 'stuffing', or in some regions, such as the Southern US, 'dressing'. This is from Wiki. Basically, everyone except a tiny percentage of Black people with family in Alabama calls it stuffing.

Dressing Is For Midwesterners

Lacey Muszynski, a food and drink writer based in Milwaukee, said she's always called the Thanksgiving side dish stuffing, as do other Midwesterners. Generally, in the Midwestern states, it's called stuffing regardless of the ingredients or whether it's cooked inside a turkey.

Starting with dried sourdough bread, celery, onion, parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme, chicken broth and eggs. A whole stick of butter goes in the pan adding onions, herbs and garlic (sausage is optional). Eggs combine everything together before going in the oven on a baking dish.

So stuffing is cooked inside the bird. Dressing is cooked outside the bird, usually in a casserole dish. Additionally, dressing, especially in the American South, is often made with cornbread instead of pieces of a baguette or plain ol' white bread.

Taxidermy is a way of preparing, stuffing and/or mounting an animal for display or study. It usually involves arranging an animal's real skin over a fake body to make the animal look alive! It is a way of preserving the body so that scientists or Museum visitors can see what the animal was like when it was alive.

However, confusion comes when we learn that some people say they "stuff" their birds with "dressing," while others bake their "stuffing" in a dish. In some homes, the words are used interchangeably. Some will argue that the difference isn't about technique, but that the distinction is dialectal.

The term dressing, per the History Channel, originated around the 1850s, when the Victorians deemed stuffing too crude for the dish to be named. This happened around the same time that the term “dark meat” began to refer to chicken legs and thighs.