The Question of Turkey Dressing

That stuffing/dressing distinction worked fine until Stovetop Stuffing came out. No one would put that stuff inside a turkey.

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I love cornbread, but I like my stuffing to be from bread. My mother-in-law makes a great stuffing from bread, sautéed onions and celery, chicken or turkey stock, and I'm not sure what else.

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My grandmother and mother always made a dressing using store-bought bread cubes, and then adding celery, onions, stuffing seasoning (a sage-based seasoning by Schilling), salt, pepper, butter, chicken broth (yes, very similar to DrWhat's recipe), but the most important ingredient was eggs. The eggs make the stuffing into a savory bread pudding. We always cooked it in the bird, and the flavor would be absorbed into the turkey from the inside, and the stuffing came out moist and delicious.

We're also aluminum foil turkey cooks. After slathering the turkey with salted butter inside and out, stuffing and trussing it shut, we put foil over the whole thing and fasten it tightly to the pan. We don't go near the turkey until the last hour or so, when we check the temperature, then loosen the foil and start basting it with butter. The last half hour or so the foil comes off completely, the turkey is basted again, and by the time it's done it has a wonderfully crispy brown skin and stays moist on the inside.

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My father-in-law is a master of barbecue, so I'll eat whatever he's cooking at Thanksgiving. It probably won't be turkey.

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We keep it simple with using only dried bread cubes, mixed with onions and celery that have been sauteed in lots of butter, then moistened with chicken stock and seasoned with salt and pepper. My in laws make the half-scratch version from above, using Stove Top and adding stuff to it. Also, I generally have always considered stuffing to be cooked in the bird while dressing is cooked separately.

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