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Stuffing vs. Dressing
When I was growing up, one of the big staples of every Christmas and Thanksgiving feast involving turkey was a couple of giant pans filled with slightly-mushy baked cornbread dressing full of chicken or duck. I hated the stuff when I was younger, but it has grown on me considerably in recent years. I had known there was such a thing as stuffing, but that was always referred to as “what Northerners call dressing.”
In some cases, I suppose that would be true. Most of the “stuffing” recipes I find have you make the stuffing much like dressing, but use that to stuff the turkey, while dressing is only meant to be a side dish that you eat alongside the bird. For my in-laws, stuffing isn’t used for stuffing so much, but it is a stove-top concoction of chunks of bread with sage and eggs. It’s still very tasty, but very different from the dressing made by my family. On the other hand, I can find plenty of “dressing” recipes that look much like what my in-laws consider stuffing.
The term “dressing” first originated in the 1850s, when the Victorians decided to switch from the term “stuffing” as it was considered more crass. Southerners kept the term while the Northerners couldn’t be swayed.
Ultimately, the difference between stuffing and dressing depends upon the region you live in as stuffing and dressing can both be referred to as what you stuff the bird with and the casserole dish served alongside the bird.
This year, I introduced my in-laws to my family’s version of dressing, to go along with our introduction of deep-fried turkey. It was my first time making the dressing, so it was not perfect, but it was still pretty delicious!
It’s dressing, and cornbread dressing is the best food on this earth, and Yankees don’t know how to do it. At all. The substances I’ve seen those people insert into a turkey and expect me to eat would curl your hair. Sometimes it even has oysters if you can believe. My dad always made the cornbread dressing. He made pans and pans of it for us to take home, and he handed the recipe down to all of us. The best thing I’ve ever eaten. And probably only about 5,000 calories.
Gotta do something with them.
My Dad is originally from Canada, then California and finally in Texas when he married my Mom. He never would eat that white bread stuffing stuff my grandmother made. Until he arrived here in Texas and had cornbread dressing, and now he requires my wife make her sausage and cornbread dressing at Thanksgiving.
When you say ‘Northerners,’ you are clearly referring to those hicks east of the Hudson. It is “stuffing” to those who are schooled in the finer points, such as what to wear to a tractor pull, how a gentleman takes a “tug from a jug” and the like.
Oh, yes, and vive la difference! Cornbread dressing all the way for me.
This fine, Yankee-bashing conversation is part of our Group Writing Series on Holiday Traditions and Treats. (Traditions, indeed!) Now, we’re about finished up with this month and this month’s theme, but a new month and new year is about to dawn. In January, our theme will be “An Open Letter…” We shall be having fun by parodying the whole concept of the open letter by…, well, by writing open letters, of course. If you’d like to be in on the fun, operators are standing by.
I made two big pans of the cornbread dressing and I brought back a small container of it. It seemed to go over well. :)
You talking about Michigan dirt farmers (aka the original definition of hillbillies)?
Oh, heck no. Dressing goes on salads. Whatsamattawitcha?
?
We always called it stuffing – even though we normally dont cook it inside the bird.
When I was a kid, my mom would stuff the bird, cook it, and remove the stuffing before dad would carve the bird. Somewhere along the way, she gave up on this process. (maybe she was grossed out by stuffing her arm into a raw bird – or maybe she decided it was just 1 job she could cut) At any rate, about 25 years ago, we started cooking the stuffing in muffin tins. It cooks much quicker in small balls, and it gives everyone a convenient serving size. So now after the bird is removed from the oven, and its resting on the counter, the muffins go in at 400 (on the second rack – so its not low in the oven) they’re usually done in less than 20 minutes. While on the stove top the gravy can be started.
We have a purely vegetarian stuffing – bread, onions, celery, basil, rosemary and chicken or turkey stock (with low or no salt if it can be found) as well as salt and pepper…
My mom always made what she called stuffing with unsalted Matzah. (Whatever my husband had with his family was dressing.) Since I make it, it’s called stuffing! Break the matzah into roughly two inch pieces, soften it briefly with boiling water and then toss out the water. We mix the matzah with sautéed carrots, celery and onion with a touch of ketchup usually cooked the day before. The final part is mixing all of that with cream of chicken soup. Yum!
Edit: Almost forgot the mushrooms and seasoned salt. My mom used canned mushrooms (ick) but I use fresh ones.
Sigh. The best way to improve on cornbread dressing is to add freshly shucked oysters. Some celery root and the usual (eggs, butter, etc.), and you’re good to go. BTW, aspersions on Yankees notwithstanding, oysters in dressing is a Louisiana thing as well.
What’s it like being wrong all the time? :P
I figure oysters in dressing/stuffing must be a thing wherever fresh seafood is in abundance as it’s generally a low-country kind of dish. We never had oysters growing up, though we did eat a lot of freshwater fish.
Here in PA Dutch country we call it stuffing, even if we don’t cram it into a bird. We also add potatoes, so it’s more like amped-up mashed potatoes. If I can get a hold of my grandma’s recipe, I’ll post it for anyone who is interested.
I’ve heard it called “filling” up your way as well. Even if it isn’t filling anything but the plate.
haha! EW
Actually, I think stuffing is the “stuff” you can actually put in the bird. When I was growing up, we had “dressing,” baked in a casserole dish. For the past several years, we’ve only had stuffing, but you can’t really feed a dinner party on what you can fit in the bird. I’ve just convinced my wife to do both. Sage is important.
Gonna need a bigger bird:
I think the drumsticks on that alone would feed a family of 4.
Humbug! This is the food that my sister and I fought over growing up – if I faced a firing squad and had a last meal request, it would be my aunt’s stuffing:
Night before, cut up a loaf of white bread in cubes and let sit out in a pot. Next morning, melt a stick of butter in a fry pan, add chopped celery (onions for onion fans), handful of chopped parsley, liberal doses of poultry seasoning, salt and pepper and saute until translucent. Add a glass of water and stir. pour this broth over the bread cubes slowly as you toss.
Then start packing it in the rinsed turkey hole (pull out the bag of gizzards and neck first and salt the hole). Sew the opening with one stitch of white thread, pulling the legs tight. Put any leftover stuffing in the rear and sew shut. Rub turkey with butter and sage and slow roast all day til done – then let the fight begin.
The smell is amazing. I remember sneaking a taste or two pretending to check the bird…that cornbready stuff my in-laws make in a pan doesn’t get the juices of the roasting bird – and is a mere side dressing, not “stuffing” – the best food on earth!
In Boston, I had my buddies over for a lunch right before Thanksgiving and on our back deck two huge turkeys showed up, just like that, staring through the sliding glass doors – my friend Sharon said they were trying to get a peak at the oven, hoping they were too big to fit – my cat was wide-eyed and literally shaking, thinking they were birds on steroids.
I’ve never had any oysters, that I know of. I always think of that scene from Life, The Universe, and Everything in which Agrajag was complaining about being eaten.
My best friend had to go back and forth to Boston for a client over the course of about a year. She said turkeys run rampant up there. Is that the case?
I’ve had oysters. They’re delicious if prepared well.
There’s some kind of wild turkey association devoted to repopulating the turkey flocks.. They’ve had a lot of success. I’ve seen flocks around a lot.
I guess I’m thinking about oysters on the half-shell, where they aren’t really prepared at all.
Would you consider your inlaws as either Northerners or Yankees? Just out of curiosity about what Southerners call people from different regions.
Not TRUE @Front Seat Cat. My mother’s dressing could not be made till the turkey was cooked and the juice retrieved which was the sole liquid (besides a beaten egg) in the pan of dressing. Also, while cornbread was the majority bread in her (and now my) dressing–1 skillet full, it is added to with 4-6 buttermilk biscuits and 2 pieces of white sandwich bread. The need for the turkey juice is why my mother did not worry about the turkey being beautifully browned and a looker for presentation at the table. Instead it came to the table already rendered onto a large platter with the glorious dressing right behind.