Thanksgiving Countdown - To Stuff or not to Stuff
I know that many cooks cannot conceive of roasting a turkey and not stuff it, but my personal preference is to cook the stuffing as a side dish of dressing and not inside the turkey. Instead of filling the cavities with stuffing, I prefer to fill them with bunches of aromatic fresh herbs and sliced onions.
Whether you stuff it or cook it as a side dish, care needs to be taken to follow proper food safety with the raw ingredients, both during preparation and in the cooking. If you prefer to stuff the turkey, please follow the simple safety guidelines below.
Our Thanksgiving Board: Butternut Squash stuffed with homemade whole berry cranberry sauce and macadamia, the turkey, dressing shaped in a ring mold, homemade cranberry-orange relish in the pedestal glass container, gibblet gravy in the Japanese lacquer box, salads of fresh mixed greens, ohelo berries (similar to New England gooseberry), crumbled feta (individual salads on the ettagere stand) - Thanksgiving 2003
* Make sure the turkey is completely thawed and take out all packages of giblets and neck from neck and body cavities. Rinse well and pat dry.
* The stuffing should be prepared and fully cooked just before you fill the bird.
* Do not stuff the turkey the night before. Always stuff it just before placing the bird in the oven.
* Do not use raw ingredients to stuff the turkey. Be sure to saute your vegetables such as onions, carrots and celery before hand. Saute or boil the meats used such as livers or sausage ahead of time. Due to the danger of bacteria developing in stuffing that does not cook completely while the turkey is roasting, use pasteurized egg products
instead of raw eggs.
* Stuff the turkey from both the neck and body cavities. Allow 1/2 to 3/4 cup of stuffing per pound of turkey.
* Do not pack stuffing too tightly into the turkey cavities. To guarantee even cooking, stuffing should be packed in loosely.
* Return legs to original tucked position, if you untucked them for rinsing or stuffing.
* Use a cooking method that allows the stuffing to cook at the same time as the turkey.
* Do not stuff turkeys when cooking on an outdoor grill or water smoker or when deep-frying the turkey.
* Do not leave roasted turkey sitting around for more than one hour with stuffing in it.
* Remember to always take out the stuffing to store any leftover turkey. Store separately.
Our Thanksgiving 2003 al fresco dinner on the back lanai
Ideas for your turkey:
The following is reprinted from my cookbook "Tropical Taste":
"After you rinse and dry your turkey, start loosening the skin from the breast meat (even from the fatter part of the drumstick) by sticking your very clean fingers in between and just pushing little by little. You want to be careful as you don't want to prick the skin - short fingernails are a must! Rub a little bit of salt or poultry
seasoning or garlic powder and then slip in sage or basil leaves (purple basil looks really beautiful) and form a pattern with the leaves."
I also like to take carambola (starfruit) slices and slide them in also. When you roast your turkey the leaves and fruit slices look very pretty through the translucent skin.
To give the turkey a delicious taste, rub with salt inside the cavity and stuff it with bundles of fresh rosemary or other fresh herbs.
The following are hints and tips I've collected from some of my foodie friends
From Evie W:
I make a mixture of about 2 tablespoons chicken fat, 4 or 5 pressed cloves of garlic, salt, and enough paprika to make a fairly thick paste. I rub this all over the turkey, put the stuffing inside the bird, put the bird in the pan and put the whole thing in a large brown paper bag (made from UNrecycled paper). Also, I close the bag with staples for a small turkey and use two bags, one from each end for a large bird. You want the turkey completely enclosed.
That goes into a 350oF oven for 15 min per pound. No basting or turning needed. I get lots of gravy and the turkey comes out beautifully browned with crisp skin. In 40 years of making it this way, I've never had a dry turkey.
The only thing to be careful of is the bag touching the coils in an electric oven. That's the only way it would catch fire. Oh, and with an electric oven, I used to put a couple of custard cups filled with water anywhere in the oven with the turkey. I seemed to get more gravy that way. It's not necessary with a gas oven.
From Leigh M:
Usually when I buy free range no hormone turkeys I end up roasting them breast up (which is my preference based on nothing else but tradition). They have instructions on their wrappers that have worked well for me. They recommend initially mixing 4 tablespoons olive oil, 4 teaspoons salt, and 2 teaspoons paprika and brush that mixture over the entire turkey. It gives it a beautiful color and, while I
normally don't salt things much, it gives the skin a wonderful flavor.
They recommend you start with two cups of water (in the roasting pan), and then pour 1 cup warmed white wine over the turkey halfway through the roasting to give the gravy more flavor. It makes superb tasting gravy, and the turkey always turns out well.
Sonia's Traditional Dressing
(see picture of dressing cooking)
Even though I like to experiment with other recipes, this is the one that my kids loved and my son Anthony still requests. We not only use this as a side dish during our Thanksgiving dinner, but also cook it to serve with a regular meal at any time during the year. We don't use salt, but if you feel you need it, salt and pepper to taste.
1 large onion, chopped
1 celery bunch, chopped, leaves included
2 bay (laurel) leaves
Olive or vegetable oil for sautéing
2 cups chicken livers, rinsed and chopped
5 to 6 cups chicken broth, separated
A few sprigs of fresh sage – leaves only
1 large package herb blend stuffing
4 large eggs
Freshly ground pepper to taste
Preheat oven to 350oF
Slowly saute onions, celery and bay leaves in small amount of olive or vegetable oil until onions are translucent. Add the chicken liver pieces and cook thoroughly. Add 2 cups of broth and the sage leaves and cook, simmering, for about half an hour.
Empty dressing mix in a large bowl. Add the cooked vegetables and liver and mix well. Add the eggs and mix well. Add the rest of the broth, little by little to make sure the dressing is thoroughly wet but not soupy, test for seasonings and add if needed. Take out the bay leaves. Transfer to a baking dish and bake for about 20 to 30
minutes or until top is golden brown, but still moist. I have also baked them in muffin pans for individual servings.
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(c) By Sonia Martinez
(November 23, 2004 - The Hawaii Tribune-Herald of Hilo)
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Comments: 27
In my home, the suffing must be cooked in the turkey, and we must have turnip, mashed potatoes, and Ocean Spray cranberry sauce. That's just the way it is.
Oh, and I use Bell's seasoning in the stuffing.
I like your ideas, but rules are rules. (-;
Hi Nancy! I know what you mean about rules are rules.......for years in our household, if I wanted to try something new I had to still prepare all the same traditional dishes the family jhad grown accustomed to........!!!! It made for huge buffets, I can tell you!
Now that its two of us, and both my son and I are adventurous in our cooking and eating, it is much more fun to come up with new ideas!
I love to make a fruit salad, my version of a tropical ambrosia, but I make it at Christmas.
I have always been worried about making someone sick from the stuffing, so I stopped stuffing the birds a long time ago. Frankly, I find it easier now without stuffing and just do the dressing separate.
I prefer the dressing cooked outside the bird, in balls and a bit hard on the outside.
I may for any other day of the year use herbs or fruit in a roasting chicken instead of stuffing--and have done so many times--but Thanksgiving is sacrosanct.
Sandy, Crispy on the outside is nice....that is how my muffins turned out and we love them
Dorine, a tradition became a tradition because someone else started it long time ago....it had to have started at one point.....so what is wrong with starting a new tradition? I guess the Gemini in me finds doing the exact same thing year after year boring. I like to shake up the status quo......at least in my food world....LOL
I don't use custrad cups, I use the silicone myuffin molds. They do a great job! Even when I made the muffins a few weeks before and re-heated them inthe microwave, they were not dry at all
I too do the raw orange-cranberry relish. Love it!
For years I made a scalloped oyster casserole and we still love that, but finding oysters here is not as easily done as in your neck of the woods!
Sorry, but I love our "new traditions" even though sometimes we still follow some of the older ones!!!
I make enough stuffing to both stuff the turkey, and bake extra in a casserole dish. In recent years I have added some chopped apples to the traditional stuffing I make. Of course pies, mashed potatoes, my special recipe yams/sweet potatoes, cranberry sauce, rolls, etc. have to be included too. Keeps me busy all day.
While the turkey is cooking by the way, I have the neck, and other parts simmering in water with the left over celery tops to use in the gravy later. When the meat is about falling off the neck, I let it all cool, pull out the meat parts, and pour the broth through a strainer. I then pull the meat off the neck, and add it back to the broth for making my gravy with the drippings from the turkey. It tastes fantastic, .....to me and the family anyway.....;-) Have to have gravy from scratch to really top the whole thing off!
My Mom taught me everything I know, and not much has changed in all these years. Including making the turkey dance and talk in the sink for my kids. They are all older now and think I'm nuts, but I still do it. Hee hee
Thanks for the article and the other tips folks. Take care.
John..........can I go home with you this Thanksgiving.........? I promise I'll clean the kitchen behind you ;-)
Sonia. I had no intention of insulting your new traditions! Was only stating that in my family, they wouldn't fly. That's okay with me, too. Yes, I think the importance of oysters in the Thanksgiving menu is a Middle Atlantic and maybe New England thing. I may make ouster stew, oyster casserole or oyster stuffing, but much as I love oysters, probably not all at the same Thanksgiving. And oddly, much as I adore raw oysters above all, they have never been a Thanksgiving tradition.
The ancestors of 3 of my 4 grandparents arrived in the North American colonies between 1620 and 1735, so everybody tends to think that the traditions are just as old and essential. :-)
I'd really enjoy Thanksgiving at your house! Just can't mess with the one at mine! :-)
Dorine, I didn't take it as an insult! Back when my family nucleus was larger, older traditions were followed almost rigidly and if I wanted to add something new to the menu, the old traditional dishes could not be displaced, so our menu kept getting bigger and bigger! Now that it's two of us, and both of us are adventuresome in our cooking and eating, I feel free to do our own thing.
Funny enough, to not have been born in the States, my own roots are just as deep in this country as yours.........on my mom's side we also go back to the mid 1600's to three Fisher brothers who landed in MA from England. On the Spanish side, we were in St. Augustine (the very first actual settlement of any kind on what is now US soil - besides the original inhabitants) just a couple of years or so after it was founded.
One of these days I will share the story of one of our ancestors, Jonathan Fisher of Bluehill, Maine. A most fascinating man.
I hope you and your family enjoy them!
If you don't serve stuffing or dressing, what do you traditionally serve with your Thanksgiving turkey?