I will leave the varied opinions about stuffing versus dressing and what breads to use to the experts and just share with you what I know about her wonderful, squishy “in-the-bird” stuffing that was my favorite part of Thanksgiving. I could have eaten nothing else at the meal and would have been happy as a carbed-out cow.
Rather than try to do exact measurements I’ll just tell you what was in her original stuffing and how she put it together.
Ingredients:
- Onions
- White button mushrooms
- Butter
- Turkey gizzards; offal from the “packet”
- Salt/Pepper to taste
- Bell’s Poultry Seasoning
- Chopped fresh parsely
- Cubed white bread
- *Rendered turkey fat
- *Turkey stock
*These were added when she made a batch “outside” of the bird, like a dressing.
As long as I can remember, Gma always used any kind of white sandwich bread like Wonderbread or Sunbeam. She preferred to use the unsliced loaves (pictured above) that were available at Star Market when Thanksgiving rolled around. She liked being able to make bigger cubes of bread. This was the only special treatment she did to the bread – no drying out or toasting.
Anywhere from 1 1/2 to 2 sticks of butter were melted in the large wok, then onions were sauteed until soft. All the “neck package” bit of organ, gizzard and liver were chopped up then added to the onion mixture, followed by the chopped white, button mushrooms. The magic ingredient (no, not love) was the Bell’s Seasoning. To this day, I can’t help but buy a box of it even though I don’t use it for any poultry dishes. It’s like my totem or charm for the holidays. No measuring, just a generous scattering of the magic powder. Once it smelled just right to her nose, the heat went off, and then she added the chopped parsley, letting it slightly wilt from the carry-over heat. The hot, buttery mixture was then drizzled over the bread cubes and tossed until evenly coated. Once it cooled down to room temperature, she’d cover it and store it in the dining room which was like an icebox during a normal November.
Yes, up until the gatherings started to get bigger during my high school days, Gma stuffed the bird and the result was a fluffly, pudding-like stuffing. Eventually, she started to make additional batches of stuffing or as we say in the south, dressing, that cooked outside of the bird. It was just as tasty, but the texture was never quite the same. Eventually, she went “all-dressing” as the worry about food poisoning and the stuffing “sucking up all the juices” got to be too much for her… and we all wanted more stuffing!
Now I’ve tried using all kinds of fancy poultry seasoning selections and breads from potato to ciabatta, dryig or toasting the cubes or hand-torn pieces as all the experts say you should so the stuffing can absorb more turkey juices. I even tried the southern thing by adding crackers to the mix. In the end, I keep returning to the sensory memory Gma’s original treatment.
The Bread
I recently found a local market (well, in Tampa that sells Japanese shokupan like this pictured here. Since I can’t find the simple unsliced loaf here in Florida, I thought it was worth a try since the shokupan is close to that Wonder/Sunbeam Bread texture. It’s just a lot richer! I have to say, the results were the closest to the original Gma in-the-bird stuffing I can remember. The bread becomes a light, fluffy sponge that soaks up an incredible amount of liquid without disintegrating. If you do dressing over stuffing, give the shokupan a try!
What do you guys do? Please share in the comments below.