Question! And a poll.

[killing_rose]

All right! So due to Priorities, I need to beg of this comm to answer a question.

When you think of dressing and/or stuffing, what do you think of?

Poll #12184 What's stuffing/dressing to you?

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 114

View Respondents

What's the main carbohydrate?

View Answers

Cornbread
28 (25.0%)

French bread
25 (22.3%)

Sandwich bread
40 (35.7%)

Rice
4 (3.6%)

Something else I will tell you in the comments
15 (13.4%)

What's the primary protein source?

View Answers

Chicken
4 (3.6%)

Sausage
22 (19.6%)

Tofu
1 (0.9%)

Meat? Why?
64 (57.1%)

Nuts
8 (7.1%)

Tell you in the comments
13 (11.6%)

What type of liquid do you use?

View Answers

Water
10 (9.0%)

Chicken broth
65 (58.6%)

Beef broth
1 (0.9%)

Vegetable broth
15 (13.5%)

Tell you in the comments
20 (18.0%)

So, is it dressing or stuffing?

View Answers

Always stuffing
49 (43.4%)

Only stuffing if it goes in the bird
29 (25.7%)

Dressing because it's never baked in the bird
18 (15.9%)

What is this distinction you're drawing?
17 (15.0%)

More to the point, I, not being up to managing sausage this year, used hamburger in my dressing for Thanksgiving. My household keeps looking at me like I have lost my mind. They, apparently, have never heard of sausage in dressing. They are rather shocked and offended. (I mean, I know, I know, I shouldn't have used hamburger, but pork keeps making me sick this year. And I only use chicken if it's going in cornbread dressing, and I wasn't up for boiling an entire chicken anyway.)

Dear omnomnom  members: Help settle this debate? Is it a regional thing? Are we having a lost in translation moment since we're from different parts of the US? Anyone have any clue?

Comments

[princessofgeeks]

I'm not used to any meat in dressing. Only the broth. I wouldn't be offended if there was some, however.

Just mushrooms, or maybe some nuts -- walnuts?

But generally no protein other than the broth.

Also I checked sandwich bread, but cornmeal is also fine.

I'm from a Southern type of family tradition, if that's a useful data point.

[recessional]

The main carb is "whatever is in the bag full of bread-ends/etc that Mom has in the freezer this year", which includes a vast array of french breads, sourdough breads, sandwich breads (which are mostly of the "full of seeds" or whatever kind in my parents' house) etc.

I've never come across meat in dressing. Given that it's meant to be an accompaniment to a main meat source it seems odd that one would add more of a completely different animal?

I'm not sure whether Mom uses vegetable or chicken or, indeed, turkey broth.

Teeechnically the dressing/stuffing division is the out of bird/in bird division, but most of the time we can't be bothered and besides, it's hard to tell which of the three different kinds that's being made at a big family meal will, in fact, be in the bird(s). (My mother and many other people who are not me in my extended family adore stuffing/dressing. There are also often a turkey AND a goose, since we discovered goose is good: I am okay with this, since I hate turkey but enjoy goose. But as such there may well be turkey stuffing, goose stuffing AND some other random dressing recipe Mom found and wanted to try, and they will all be in nearly identical serving dishes so who cares?)

(The pedant at the table, that's who. But they don't count.)

[metawidget]

I'm a vaguely British-origin Quebecker, and our stuffing (always stuffing) doesn't contain meat, is usually moistened by the bird and copious quantities of butter, and involves pecans if it's in a dark bird (goose or duck). In a lighter bird, it's flavoured with savory, onion and celery and must jack up the sodium content of the chicken or turkey but a significant amount.

[talia_et_alia]

I think lots of tasty things can combine to make good dressing. Growing up, we had a wonderful cornbread-kielbasa stuffing for Thanksgiving and a couscous-dried fruit in Cornish hens for Christmas. (Neither is Classic American Regional anything; we're immigrants.) I live with vegetarians now, and everyone has a different recipe but it always comes out tasty. You can't go wrong with wild rice or mushrooms, in my book. For safety and expediency, I do think dressing cooked separately is the way to go.

Maybe next year you can find a recipe that everyone appreciates, whether it's traditional or not? I admit, hamburger is a bit incongruous with turkey.

[paxpinnae]

MAKE YOUR STUFFING WITH CHALLAH. IT'S THE BEST. Rip up your challah, add a whole bunch of celery and onions, toss in a fistful or so of marjoram, thyme, and black pepper, drizzle with whatever shitty white wine you have open, and stuff it in your turkey. PERFECTION.

I've never heard of adding protein to stuffing, but I could possibly get behind it in the future. To me, though, stuffing and turkey are fairly inextricable, so a protein isn't really necessary.

[amadi]

My dressing this year (not stuffing because it wasn't stuffed) was challah with sauteed onion, celery and apple, chopped pecans, sage, thyme and marjoram and moistened with vegetable/mushroom broth.

I don't add meat to stuffing/dressing because I don't eat meat, though I cook for people who do. I don't think that it necessarily needs protein added to it, anyway. It's never going to be anything other than a carb-dominant dish.

[paxpinnae]

Oooooo. I can definitely get behind the apple idea. The sauteeing also sounds like it would enhance the tastiness, though I fear I am too lazy to actually follow through on it

[twistedchick]

I generally cook up the giblets of whatever bird is being roasted, chop them and put them into the stuffing, along with celery, onion, cornbread, broth (from simmering the giblets) and a bit of butter. It's never turned out badly, either in or out of the bird. I've had sausage stuffing/dressing (cooked wherever) and it was fine, but I haven't made it that way. The only really bad stuffing I've ever had was one with oysters in it that hadn't been pre-cooked.

[technoshaman]

For us, the giblets go in the gravy that goes over the stuffing.

OH! no, any meat going in there *must* be pre-cooked, pan or bird. Just won't get done otherwise.

[goodgriefcharlie]

We actually have two kinds of stuffing at my family's Thanksgiving: one made with french bread, celery, mushrooms, chicken broth, and no meat, and one made with smoked oysters and rice (and other stuff I don't remember). I answered the poll based off of the french bread kind because that's what I think of first when somebody mentions stuffing. (And it's always "stuffing" here, never "dressing"; dressing is for the salad!) Neither kind is made in the bird.

My family lives in the Midwest, but my aunt who makes the oyster stuffing is originally from the South, if that helps.

[azurelunatic]

Yes! Dressing is for salad. Stuffing is for dinner-birds.

[shiba]

Yes, thirding this! It's always called stuffing, even though it is not actually prepared in the bird. (Northeast US, for the record.)

[asciident]

I'm aware that plenty of people put protein sources in their dressing/stuffing, but I didn't grow up eating it that way so I don't expect it. Bread, celery, onions, herbs, chicken or turkey broth.

If someone brought a dressing/stuffing I wasn't familiar with (e.g. had meat) I might try a bite, but I doubt I'd eat much of it.

[acelightning]

My World-Famous Three-Rice Stuffing With Sherry And Walnuts is made with rice (of course), contains no meat or meat by-products, and is moistened with water, butter, and sherry.

I made this up myself, so it's not any particular ethnicity - it was a case of "everybody wants different kinds of stuffing, and nobody can agree on what kind, so I'll make something I like." I never understood putting sausage, or giblets, or any kind of meat or meat broth in stuffing; why stuff meat with meat? Fruit with meat is a very old combination (look at any medieval-style cookbook), but I don't like fruit very much. The walnuts add texture, and sherry is just delicious.

Modern food experts say you shouldn't cook the stuffing in the bird anyway - it's safer to cook it in a casserole, and baste it whenever you baste the bird (and the bird cooks faster and more evenly without the stuffing inside). My mixture is effectively done when you've finished cooking it in the frying pan, so you don't even have to cook it in a casserole. This, of course, leads to serving it as a side dish with things other than roasted whole poultry. And if you have vegan guests, you can make it with olive oil, and maybe add some chopped mushrooms, and there'll be something the omnivores and the vegans can share.

I'm thinking of stuffing Cornish hens with it for a New Year's supper.

[sathari]

To sausage or not to sausage the turkey dressing/stuffing is a subject of general discussion in my family, usually resolved by having some with and some without. (Obviously, only one kind ends up being actual stuffing, i.e. inside the bird as it cooks.) (For the record, I am team sausage stuffing all the way! And preferably as stuffing, since the mix of flavors in the two meats is amazing!)

Also, I cannot speak well enough of panko bread crumbs as the carb source for stuffing.

Lastly, for those perplexed by the idea of multiple sources of meat in a meal, I present for your further surprise: the turducken.

[st_aurafina]

Aussie! Always called it stuffing. Dressing is what you put on a salad.

My mum makes hers out of day old bread and hunks of butter. You rub the bread and butter together, add salt and pepper and a chopped onion, and stuff it into the chicken. (Or turkey, or whatever.) Then it turns into delicious.

[amie]

Same! NZer though. And I think my Mum used packet breadcrumbs though not bread. Same ingredients/method ish though.

[rainbow]

My grandfather's dressing was dry, cubed bread softened in milk, sage, celery, onion, s&p

After my celiac dx I tried g/f breads, which I loathed. Later I made dressing of wild rice (cooked in broth with celery and onion) and mixed iwth sage, celery, onion, s&p.

I'm reactive to rice now, so this year I tried masa cornbread. It TASTED wonderful, but was kind of gummy.

I've put in sausage before and love it (I do a beef breakfast sausage: hamburger (fattier the better), sage, thyme, s&p, touch of garlic sometimes). I fry it up into crumbles until bits start to brown.

I always cook it in the bird; it doesn't taste right otherwise. And I make it fresh just before stuffing, so it's very hot when it goes in the room temp bird. The turkey cooks more evenly and faster. I like to give the turkey a quick soak in warm salt water when it comes out of the icebox; my grandfather left it in the kitchen, but our kitchen isn't heated and tends to be in the 40s or 50s, so it doesn't warm up very well that way.

I think dressing vs stuffing is very regional. Meat in it seems to be more of a "you like what you like" thing. I love it, but I love stuffing without it, too.

[monksandbones]

I'm (western) Canadian, and dressing (inside and outside the bird) consists of dry half-and-half bread, broth, onions, celery, butter, and copious amounts of ground herbs. I didn't realize people put proteins in their dressing!

[tibicina]

Usually we use french bread and/or sourdough for the bread. (This year we got Vietnamese french roll ends from a bahn mi shop. I recommend that, they ended up being a perfect texture for it. The Vietnamese french bread has some rice flour in the dough which changes the texture slightly.)

For protein we generally add sausage and pecans. (Sausage adds some seasoning and some fat, the nuts add texture and, well, nuttiness.)

For liquid, a mixture of chicken broth/stock and white wine.

I tend to call it stuffing, but will frequently correct myself to dressing if it's not actually stuffed into something.

[tibicina]

Other things which go in - onions, celery, sage, thyme, garlic, salt and pepper.

Things which may go in, there will usually be at least one of these, sometimes more - diced apples, dried cranberries, dried apricots, fresh cranberries, pomegranate seeds, dried currants.

(We never do walnuts because my mother and I react badly to them. Almonds or pepitas may be substituted for pecans if there are no pecans in the house for some insane reason and no one noticed this until Thanksgiving morning.)

[jmtorres]

dressing because I described the Southern recipe, Northerners eat stuffing

[chaobell]

We don't usually put meat in the dressing (though sometimes giblets find their way in there); if there's a protein at all, it's boiled eggs.

As for the carb source: cornbread and sourdough, mostly. This year Mom tried adding some broken-up saltines as well, and it turned out great with very little seasoning necessary.

[brigid]

I grew up in the midwest USA (outside of Chicago) and we always called it stuffing, never dressing.

I also grew up using cut up stale sandwich bread but french bread or challah is way better.

My dad's a vegetarian, so stuffing never had any meat in it and was made with vegetable broth, and was baked separately from the bird. It is super rare for my mom to stuff a bird. I remember when I was in high school there was a big food safety fuss about stuffing and salmonella (the stuffing and the bird cool at different rates) and my mom was all NOT A PROBLEM FOR US HIGH FIVES ALL AROUND.

[swordage]

I've never even HEARD of putting meat in the stuffing! I can't say it sounds appealing to me. I'm from the NE USA, that might be relevant.

[gamera]

Stuffing was usually done without any protein when I was growing up (Chicago area, one parent native to the area and the other from southern California), though on the rare occasions it did it was generally sausage. I've had stuffing with oysters where I live now (southern Indiana) but it's not something I had growing up. The bread was generally sandwich bread, I think.

For some reason I can't figure out, my mother has always referred to it as dressing. Nobody else in the family does.

[annotated_em]

Midwesterner here. It's dressing because we don't bake it inside the bird--some years we don't even have a bird, since turkey isn't super popular in my family--and we use cornbread with a significant pile of onions and celery sauteed in at least two sticks of butter. The whole thing gets doused in chicken stock and baked in a pan, and it's delicious (and basically a sort of savory bread pudding). I bet it would be even better with the addition of sausage. I should suggest that for Christmas.

[libitina]

Growing up in NE USA, it was always stuffing. The bread was usually whatever came in the bag of stuffing mix (I know).

The first time I heard about dressing was when I spent time with my Southern (USA ) relatives. Their dressing is made with day old cornbread and leftover biscuits.

Neither had protein, but nuts are a thing I've heard of in stuffing frequently. A friend of mine makes a stuffing with chestnuts.

In my mind, dressing sounds delicious with meat, but I'd be confused having it next to a large hunk of some other roasted meat.

All that said, I am firmly of the belief that if someone is making you food, then you don't get to tell them they did it wrong. You get to enjoy their generosity and tasty food.

[waywren]

AS my family always carves and puts the turkey into buffet-style containers long before anyone sees it, the protein in the stuffing is in fact MOST OF THE TURKEY. XD

[wordweaverlynn]

I'm from Pennsylvania and grew up eating stuffing/dressing made with stale bread, butter, hot water, onion. No celery, since my mother was allergic to it, and now so am I.

Over the years my older sister and I have made Changes to the family recipe. So now I make it with a mixture of pumpernickel, sourdough, and maybe some whole wheat bread. I use apple cider for the liquid, saute the onions, use plenty of butter, and season liberally with rosemary. No nuts or proteins needed.

My ex-husband's mother was from Poland. Her stuffing was a damp, greenish, dense loaf made with bread, eggs (!), turkey giblets, a lot of chicken livers (!!), celery, onion, and mounds of parsley. Even in the days when I could eat celery and parsley, I found it nauseating.

[nitoda]

I'm in the UK. It's stuffing, and it's usually breadcrumbs, herbs, onions, maybe some egg ... but most often comes in a packet you just rehydrate with boiling water. I have also done rice stuffings and sausagemeat stuffing is very popular with the Christmas turkey. Basically that's sausagemeat with added extra breadcrumb, chopped up cooked liver of the bird if you like goes in too. It's stuffed between the breast and the skin for moisture for the bird while cooking. And it's good eating when it's cold too.

[kyrielle]

Bread - french, sandwich, or sourdough in that order - with onions, celery, sometimes mushrooms, and chicken broth. It's "stuffing" whether cooked in or out of the bird, but usually is better cooked out of the bird. It can get a bit overwhelming when cooked in.

(Oregon, but my family and my husband's family both hail from the Midwest - Ohio and Wisconsin respectively - so I have no idea which region's tradition, if any, I'm reflecting.)

Although in my experience, any dish that is Always Served at Thanksgiving by one person Just That Way becomes an OH MY GOD YOU DID WHAT if they change it, to anyone who liked it, because they were expecting *exactly that thing and taste* and it didn't deliver. It's the Vegemite effect more or less, only with a lot more emotional attachment because this is "part of the ritual".

[theora]

I am aware of sausage stuffings as a thing that people do (largely from reading cooking magazines), but they're not what I consider standard stuffing (and yes, stuffing, never dressing). Broth-wise, it's either chicken or vegetable depending on what's on hand and whether I'm feeding vegetarians. Honestly I don't think the broth makes much difference to the final taste. FWIW, I'm in New England, with Midwestern and Mid-Atlantic parents.

[snacky]

I don't think it's a regional difference, I think stuffing is highly personal for each family.

I'm from New England, and in my family we make two kinds of stuffing, that we vary from year to year. One is by way of my immigrant grandparents from Armenia, and that's made with mashed potatoes, onion, celery, sage, butter, salt and pepper and ground beef. The other comes from my other grandmother's family (immigrants to Vermont from Canada), and it's made with common crackers, ground beef, ground pork, onion, butter, salt, pepper and Bell's Seasoning. We actually make the second one more often, because when we make the first, there are no plain mashed potatoes, and people like those, heh.

My entire family would be shocked if someone served them a bread-based stuffing at Thanksgiving. :D

[xap]

No time to read comments at the moment, but my data points here:

Stuffing in the bird, dressing out. Grew up (Michigan, US) eating & prefer stuffing. Family's stuffing includes plain bread (usually sandwich, because Cheap & Depression-era origins), butter, water (I usually use chicken broth), onion, sage+seasonings. Only "protein" would be what leeched from bird during cooking.

Am plenty familiar with sausage-in-stuffing, but personally don't care for it. Especially my ex's recipe, which had TONS, plus celery, nuts, and all sorts of other things. You could barely tell there was any bread, and to me that's rather the point of stuffing - it's a bread-based dish. (I also have discovered over the years that even when it remains bread-based, I just don't like crunchy things in my stuffing. Nuts? None for me thanks....)

[gwaihiril]

I think there are lots of different stuffing/dressing recipes (my mom will draw the distinction of it being dressing because it's not in the bird, but the rest of us at Thanksgiving this year didn't care). I know there are good cornbread stuffing recipes, and ones that use sandwich bread, but the one I make (which is the one my dad always made) uses pork sausage and an herb stuffing mix (which I think is breadcrumb-ish?) and, uh, instead of broth, the main liquid is Grand Marnier. IT'S DELICIOUS.

Regarding the stuffing/dressing thing again - as I said, my mom cares about the distinction. Like someone else said in comments, "dressing" always makes me think of salad dressing, but it is true that we never stuff it in the turkey. Apparently it's a health risk, according to articles at at least half the people at dinner last week had read.

we no longer make stuffing, only dressing

[celtic_maenad]

we usually use both bacon and the leftover meat from making the gravy... which is made from boiling the neck of the turkey, adding seasonings and a little cornstarch for thickening, then pulling most of the meat out and tossing it in the bowl where the rest of the dressing ingredients are being mixed. =]

[kenllama]

I checked off "chicken broth" but in reality I usually use turkey drippings. I almost never make stuffing except with turkey. In a pinch I'll used canned turkey broth instead.

It's always stuffing even though I almost never stuff it.

[elynross]

From Oklahoma, US, here, but with a Yankee background. We always made enough to have stuffing AND dressing, and I mostly use broth of some type in the dressing, baked separately in the oven, because otherwise it gets a bit dry. The stuffing that goes in the turkey doesn't need much beyond the butter that the onions&celery are sauteed in, although it may get a bit of water; I haven't actually made any in long enough that I can't remember clearly.

However, there's never any meat in it, as the turkey was always enough....

[thirdblindmouse]

Stuffing as I know it is made with wonderbread (or the like -- squishy packaged supermarket bread), which might be what you meant by sandwich bread, but since sandwich bread might mean just about anything (crusty sourdough, if I get the choice, or thick seven-grain) I decided to play it safe. There's no meat or anything of that sort -- just bread and onions and celery and seasoning and maybe a few other things I forget. The liquid comes from the turkey, or if you cook it separately, milk.

I've never heard of "dressing" being used to mean stuffing, so I'm not entirely sure we're talking about the same thing. I'm from New England, though my Thanksgiving recipes come from halfway down the east coast.

[harpers_child]

i'm on the gulf coast. in my family we have oyster dressing or shrimp and merliton dressing. both use bread crumbs bought in the can to cut down prep time. i don't know about the oyster, but the shrimp/merliton uses the water you cook the merliton in as the moisture (sometimes you add a splash of what you boil the shrimp in).

dressing and stuffing have different texture profiles. stuffing is denser.

[teapot_rabbit]

My Granny, who is from Oregon, used to make some sort of oyster stuffing for the Thanksgiving turkey. This sounds awful to me. o_O Later, she started making a cornbread stuffing, with celery, onions, sage, and chestnuts, moistened with a little water or broth. That's now traditional in our house.

My Grandma, a Californian, on the other hand, made the bread stuffing from her Fannie Farmer (I think, can't quite remember) cookbook.

I've always been confused by the idea of meat in stuffing, but then, I don't like meat flavored with other meat on general principle.
ETA: We mostly say 'stuffing', but I think my granny calls it dressing sometimes - They've always meant the same thing to me.

[leanne]

Sourdough bread, mushrooms, onions, carrots, white wine and chicken broth, herbs, butter. Why put meat in it? You've got a meat dish already, presumably in the form of a large poultry.

[serene]

Bread is whatever bread I have handy. Liquid is usually turkey stock, because I usually only make stuffing when I'm making turkey. I know intellectually that it's only "stuffing" if it's in the bird, but I think of it as stuffing no matter what.

I have very very infrequently put meat into stuffing, and then it was sausage, but I'll try oysters one day.

[holyschist]

I think I grew up with meatless stuffing (Oregon, mother raised in California), but the stuffing I LIKE is sausage stuffing, light on the celery. I call it stuffing even when it's cooked outside the bird, which it usually is for safety reasons. I checked french bread, but it may be variable depending on what the person had on hand.

I also normally go to potluck style Thanksgivings, where there may be meat in other side dishes as well, and the stuffing is treated as a side dish (and personally, I hate turkey and will take sausage stuffing over it any day). I don't think serving turkey AND sausage stuffing is any weirder than serving turkey AND a ham, which a lot of people do. As someone who enjoys meat, I like having an alternative to turkey, and the lower-stress tradeoff of going to potluck Thanksgivings hosted by other people is that they ALWAYS make turkey (if I hosted my own, I'd be making duck, and stuffing would not be involved in any capacity).

I am not a Thanksgiving traditionalist: the only mandatory parts for me are 1) apple crisp and 2) pumpkin pie. Everything else I am flexible about. One year I made chicken makhani and rice for the actual meal, and still served American desserts.

Dressing to me is something that goes on salad.

(What about chicken sausage?)