3 minute read
Stuff It
(On Second Thought, Don’t!)
BY JIM MATHIS
Everyone has their own Thanksgiving favorites. Some look forward to a day filled with televised parades and football, or a big family feast with the adults at one table and the kids at another. Other people are just waiting for a slice of pumpkin pie, a centerpiece to the whole season of pumpkin spice. Some like cranberries or sweet potatoes or green beans with fried onions. Turkey has plenty of fans; an estimated 46 million of the big birds will be eaten this Thanksgiving. That’s a lot of legs and thighs. No matter what your favorite is, everyone has something to be thankful for.
What do I look forward to most on the Thanksgiving table? Stuffing. Well, technically it’s dressing since I won’t be stuffing it anywhere except my face. More on that in a minute. I love stuffing in just about every form I’ve tried. My mom used to make really good wild rice stuffing that was nutty and rich. Cornbread makes wonderful stuffing as does French bread, white bread and sourdough. No matter what your base is, there are any number of things you can add like apples, collard greens, pecans,
or winter squash. I like to start with the bread and add a whole lot of other goodies to kick it up.
I start with a bunch of toasted, cubed bread. You can use leftover French or Italian bread and cut it into cubes, or I often buy a couple of bags of the stuffing mix at Breadsmith. Then I start to add the goodies. I like to sweat a diced yellow onion and a couple of cloves of garlic. To that I’ll add a bunch of chopped mushrooms. I usually use at least two different kinds like Cremini and oyster or trumpet and shitake.
As those cook down, I’ll transfer them to a big bowl with the bread. Then I brown a pound of Italian sausage, and when it’s done, it goes in the bowl as well. I’ll toss in a bunch of fresh sage, thyme, salt and pepper and mix it all together and add enough chicken stock to get all the bread moist, but not too wet.
This wonderful concoction goes into a 9” x 12” casserole dish. It will cook in the oven beside the turkey for about a half-hour to fortyfive minutes covered, then another fifteen minutes uncovered to get the top crispy.
This is a savory casserole from heaven to me. I’ll take a little bit of turkey, a small scoop of mashed potatoes and some green bean casserole, then I fill up the empty spots on my plate with stuffing. A little drizzle of gravy and I’m good. Honestly, if I thought I could get away with it, I’d skip cooking the turkey and just do the side dishes.
Since I don’t stuff it, I really should call what I’m making “dressing” instead of “stuffing.” But we’ve always called it stuffing, so I’ll stick to that. Why not stuff the stuffing in the bird? First there’s the whole food safety issue. If you put the stuffing in the cavity of the bird, it’s there soaking up all of the juices. That means all of that stuff inside needs to be cooked to 165 degrees, so you don’t poison your Aunt Gertrude with salmonella. By the time the stuffing is heated up, you’ve probably over-cooked the bird. The other big reason is volume. As I said, I really like the stuff and the space inside that cavity just won’t hold the volume of stuffing that I need to fill my belly. The final reason for a pan full of dressing instead of a bird full of stuffing is the aforementioned crispy top (and crispy edges). When you cook it in the bird, it doesn’t get crispy. Some like their stuffing soft and moist, others like the crunchy parts. With the pan you can get both; win, win.
Whether you’re thankful for a day of watching football or a traditional family feast, or gearing up for a Black Friday shopping spree, I hope your holiday is everything you want. I just want some leftover stuffing and maybe a little gravy.
Do yourself a favor, eat something good today.
When he’s not cooking a Thanksgiving feast, Jim runs ADwërks, an ad agency in Sioux Falls.
