BS: Stuffing - moist or dry?

Subject: BS: Stuffing - moist or dry?
From: GUEST,MMario
Date: 26 Apr 05 - 03:33 PM

leaving aside the question of whether you have "stuffing" or "dressing" with your turkey.

Not even questioning whether it (the stuffing/dressing) is cooked inside of, or seperately from the turkey...

Should it be moist, tender and redolant of herbs and spices?

or should it be dry and resembling grapenuts in consistancy?

(there does not seem to be a happy medium - a preliminary survey indicates it is one or the other)

Quite honestly I am prejudiced in favour of one state (Guess which?)

Subject: RE: BS: Stuffing - moist or dry?
From: Blissfully Ignorant
Date: 26 Apr 05 - 03:35 PM

Moist, methinks...

Subject: RE: BS: Stuffing - moist or dry?
From: Clinton Hammond
Date: 26 Apr 05 - 03:36 PM

All of the above!

Subject: RE: BS: Stuffing - moist or dry?
From: wysiwyg
Date: 26 Apr 05 - 03:55 PM

Wet, baby, wet.

~S~

Subject: RE: BS: Stuffing - moist or dry?
From: PoppaGator
Date: 26 Apr 05 - 04:02 PM

Juicy!

First choice: Oyster dressing

2d choice (OK, it's sometimes a bit on the dry side): sausage and cornbread.

Subject: RE: BS: Stuffing - moist or dry?
From: Once Famous
Date: 26 Apr 05 - 04:07 PM

Well lubricated.

Subject: RE: BS: Stuffing - moist or dry?
From: robomatic
Date: 26 Apr 05 - 04:08 PM

There is more than one way to make stuffing. If you've got some veggies in there, they should be al dente because they are going to soften up while cooking. If you are using a rice based stuffing, you should have the rice parboiled and moist, because they're going to be absorbing a lot. If you have bread stuffing, it should not be bone dry, but you can have it dry-ish, and bag the turkey, which allows the juices to recycle and is good for the stuffing as well.

Subject: RE: BS: Stuffing - moist or dry?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 26 Apr 05 - 05:06 PM

The stuffing is there to soak up the juices, so it makes sense to have lots of good seasoning in the stuffing mix (I make homemade bread into crutons for stuffing) but let the juices from the bird moisten it. Pre-moisten it just enough to keep the herbs and such sticking to the bread.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Stuffing - moist or dry?
From: Davetnova
Date: 26 Apr 05 - 05:41 PM

I agree with evryone so far. My mouth is watering. I have nothing to stuff but a pepper.

Subject: RE: BS: Stuffing - moist or dry?
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 26 Apr 05 - 06:53 PM

Aren't you just a weentsy bit out of season, Leo?

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: BS: Stuffing - moist or dry?
From: Bill D
Date: 26 Apr 05 - 07:19 PM

it needs to end up moist, even if the recipe is fairly dry. I love enough gravy over it to float it on the plate, so I manage.

We VERY occasionally do "Thompson's Turkey" and in that mouth-watering case, it is not a problem

Subject: RE: BS: Stuffing - moist or dry?
From: Sorcha
Date: 26 Apr 05 - 07:25 PM

Moist! And redolent! LOTS of sage!

Subject: RE: BS: Stuffing - moist or dry?
From: GUEST,Jon
Date: 26 Apr 05 - 07:28 PM

However you fancy it. Simple as that.

I suppose if you are stuffing a bird, it makes sense to have it dry to soak up the juices but that option rarely makes sense here. A "normal meal" here is a meal for 3, we all love stuffing but I'm the only meat eater - on the odd occasion I have meat and they say have a nut roast, it makes more sense to cook the stuffing separately so we can all enjoy it.

I suppose the point there is that although stuffing presumably was "designed" to be used as SRS said, there is no reason why stuffing should only be used that way.

Subject: RE: BS: Stuffing - moist or dry?
From: kendall
Date: 26 Apr 05 - 08:15 PM

Actually, I don't eat the stuffing anyway, gives me heartburn.

Subject: RE: BS: Stuffing - moist or dry?
From: frogprince
Date: 26 Apr 05 - 08:27 PM

Jon, is that a right nut roast or a left nut roast?

Subject: RE: BS: Stuffing - moist or dry?
From: GUEST,Jon
Date: 26 Apr 05 - 08:43 PM

frogprince. I'd better say it's just right!!!

Subject: RE: BS: Stuffing - moist or dry?
From: mack/misophist
Date: 26 Apr 05 - 09:59 PM

The only reason to cook stuffing outside of the bird is to be certain there's enough to go around. Left over moist stuffing can be very tasty. Left over dry stuffing is best used to replace the charcoal in industrial air filters.

Subject: RE: BS: Stuffing - moist or dry?
From: open mike
Date: 27 Apr 05 - 12:19 AM

being a non-bird-eating human
i make stuffing (or dressing)
outside (*far away) from the
bird. in casserole pans or
bread pans. Since it is Nov.
when usually i cook it i put
in lots of green tomatoes and
zucchini to give it moisture.
and lots of nuts, and even
water chestnuts, to give it
some crunch. I usually dry
the bread out for a day or
so before cubing it up and
tossing with lots of onions
garlic, olives, (drool, drool)
green peppers, celery, sage,
mushrooms, soy sauce/tamari.
also some seitan, or gluten
"meat" that gives the texture
of chewy bits of bird meat.

yum yum i can't wait til thanksgiving!
it is 6 months away..are you planning
a 1/2 year thanksgiving feast, mario?

Subject: RE: BS: Stuffing - moist or dry?
From: Noreen
Date: 27 Apr 05 - 04:43 AM

The menu at work calls it seasoning, apparently to avoid the 'embarrassment' of staff having to ask customers "Do you want stuffing?".

Seems silly to me, as seasoning means salt and pepper (and dressing is what you pour over salads).

To answer your question MMario, I prefer the former.

Subject: RE: BS: Stuffing - moist or dry?
From: GUEST
Date: 27 Apr 05 - 05:03 AM

How about calling it 'forcemeat'?

Won't do for the veggies though.

Subject: RE: BS: Stuffing - moist or dry?
From: gnu
Date: 27 Apr 05 - 06:27 AM

I "pull apart" my bread (no knife) and let it dry for a day. Then I mix onions, summer savory and the secret ingrediants in a bowl, cover with a cloth and let sit overnight. The goal is to be between dry and moist.

Subject: RE: BS: Stuffing - moist or dry?
From: Paco Rabanne
Date: 27 Apr 05 - 06:38 AM

Seasoning Noreen??? Shouldn't it be called 'semi dry rectum filler?'

Subject: RE: BS: Stuffing - moist or dry?
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 27 Apr 05 - 06:55 AM

Genuine story from my days working for Kemira before I discovered what a pillock the IT manager was...

In the canteen one day and, like Noreen I was asked if I wanted 'seasoning' - again to avoid the embarasment of asking 'Do you want stuffing?'. Back to the counter for a hot pud after.

"Do you want spotted dick?"

You couldn't make it up could you:-)

Cheers

DtG

Subject: RE: BS: Stuffing - moist or dry?
From: GUEST,MMario
Date: 27 Apr 05 - 10:09 AM

well jon - I can see cooking it seperate if you are having a nut roast - because trying to stuff all those nuts would be very time consuming - and there wouldn't be enough in each one to bother with anyway!

re: Thanksgiving in May - or whatever - I do a turkey whenever I feel like it - I've done three since November - and it's about time for another one. Turkeys are one of the "multi- sensory" meals - and sometimes it's more about smelling the turkey in the oven then it is about eating the meal.

My dad, for a couple years after the nest emptied out would cook up turkeys for people specifically so he could smell it cooking. (Momn said she wasn't cooking a turkey for only two people) then He'd cart the roasting pan over to them when it was done.

Subject: RE: BS: Stuffing - moist or dry?
From: GUEST,maire-aine
Date: 27 Apr 05 - 11:23 AM

Like gnu, I make my stuffing with summer savory-- never met anybody else who does that. I usually use rye bread with caraway seeds for the bread, and lately I've started adding pecans and shredded carrots to the usual onions & celery.

I like to make it all year 'round, even without roasting a turkey, so I usually add some chicken broth and bake it in a casserole dish. Sounds like a good idea for this weekend.

Maryanne

Subject: RE: BS: Stuffing - moist or dry?
From: GUEST,MMario
Date: 27 Apr 05 - 11:33 AM

yummy! pecans, savoury, carrots.

Subject: RE: BS: Stuffing - moist or dry?
From: Bill D
Date: 27 Apr 05 - 12:10 PM

THOMPSON'S TURKEY RECIPE (scholars differ on details..everyone tinkers with it a bit- I use minimal waterchestnuts and reduced amounts of onion...etc.))
....oh...and that paste of mustard for painting the turkey- double it!

The turkey must be a big one, not less than sixteen pounds and not more than twenty-two. The bigger it is, the more economical it will be. If it is eighteen pounds or more, it ought to be a hen; a hen has a bigger, meatier breast. Go to the market yourself to buy the turkey so as to give the butcher proper instructions. Have him cut off the bird's head to leave as much neck as possible. Then ask him to peel back the skin and cut off the neck, with a cleaver, as close as possible to the shoulders. This leaves a tube of neck skin that can be stuffed with any stuffing left over from the body cavity. Some butchers clean away most of a turkey's fat before handling the bird over. If your man does that, protest. You need the fat.

Rub the bird inside and out with salt and pepper and let it stand while you go ahead with other preliminaries.

Into a stewpan put the chopped gizzard, the neck, and the heart. Cover with 4 or 5 cups water, and add a large bay leaf, a teaspoon of paprika, half a teaspoon of coriander, a clove of garlic, and salt to taste. Put it over a low fire and let it simmer while you work on the dressing. When I say work, I mean work. Get a large bowl, and into it put an apple and an orange, both diced, a large can of crushed pineapple, the grated rind of half a lemon, and 3 tablespoons chopped preserved ginger. You can get the latter at a Chinese store or at candy stores or specialty shops. Then add, Thompson advised, a can of Chinese water chestnuts, drained. I prefer to add two cans, and I chop the chestnuts in half before throwing them in. Nearly every grocery store that sells chow mein dinners, or bamboo shoots, carries or will order water chestnuts.

Now get another bowl — and hold your breath. Merely assembling all the ingredients is a time- consuming process. In this bowl you put:

2 teaspoons hot dry mustard
2 teaspoons caraway seed
3 teaspoons celery seed
2 teaspoons poppy seed
2 1/2 teaspoons oregano
a well-crushed bay leaf
1 teaspoon black pepper
half a teaspoon of mace
4 tablespoons finely-chopped parsley (preferably fresh, although dried parsley flakes will do)
4 or 5 crushed cloves of garlic
4 large chopped onions
4 cloves (take off the heads and crush them)
half a teaspoon of tumeric
6 chopped stalks of celery
half a teaspoon of marjoram
half a teaspoon of summer savory
and 1 tablespoon poultry seasoning.

Then sprinkle in some salt — about a teaspoon, or more if you wish. Those are Thompson's ingredients. To them I have added a sprinkle of monosodium glutamate which probably isn't necessary, but which in my view brings out all the flavors more fully.

The end is not yet in sight. Take a third bowl. Put in 3 packages of bread crumbs, preferably the kind you get at the bakery. To the crumbs add 3/4 pound ground veal, 1/4 pound ground fresh pork, and 1/4 pound butter and all the fat (render it first) you have been able to take off the turkey.

Now begin mixing. "Mix in each bowl the contents of each bowl," Thompson wrote. "When each bowl is well mixed, mix the three of them together. And mix it well. Mix it with your hands. Mix it until your forearms and wrists ache. Then mix it some more. Now toss it so that it isn't any longer a doughy mass." Thus spoke Thompson.

Stuff the turkey and skewer it, tying the strings that go over and around the skewers. Pack the remainder of the stuffing into the neck tube and tie it shut securely. Turn the oven on full blast and let it get red hot. Put the bird on the drip pan in your roaster or, better than that, breast down on a rack. Then put it into the red-hot oven.

Right here you must work fast. In a cup make a paste consisting of the yolks of 2 eggs, 1 teaspoon hot dry mustard, a clove of crushed garlic, 1 tablespoon onion juice, 2 pinches of cayenne pepper, 1 teaspoon lemon juice, and enough sifted flour to make it good and stiff.

When the bird in the oven is beginning to turn brown all over, take it out and turn the heat down to moderately slow (325° F). The skin may possibly have begun to bubble or split and crack. Ignore it. Take a pastry brush and paint the bird all over with the paste. Put it back in the oven. A few minutes later, when the paste has dried and set, take the turkey out again. Paint it again, every part of it you can touch. Keep doing this, putting it in and taking it out and painting it, until the paste is all used up.

Now add a cup of cider to the simmering giblet stock. At this point I put the liver in and keep the stewpan simmering, adding half cider and half water from time to time to replenish it. This is your basting fluid. The bird must be basted every fifteen minutes. After it has cooked about an hour and a half, turn it on its stomach and let it cook in that position until the last fifteen minutes; then put it on its back again. That is, unless you are using a rack; if you are, don't turn it on its back until the last half hour.
The bird should cook for five and a half hours. As it cooks, it will alarm you. The paste will begin to turn black very early in the process, but don't worry about it until the end. Thompson wrote: "You will think, 'My God! I have ruined it.' Be calm. Take a tweezer and pry loose the paste coating. It will come off readily. Beneath this burnt, harmless, now worthless shell the bird will be golden and dark brown, succulent, giddymaking with wild aromas, crisp and crunchable and crackling. The meat beneath this crazing panorama of skin will be wet, juice will spurt from it in tiny fountains as high as the handle of the fork plunged into it; the meat will be white, crammed with mocking flavor, delirious with things that rush over your palate and are drowned and gone as fast as you can swallow; cut a little of it with a spoon, it will spread on bread as eagerly and readily as soft Wurst. You do not have to be a carver to eat this turkey; speak harshly to it and it will fall apart."

Thompson did not describe the taste of the stuffing for the simple reason that it is indescribable. It is full of a vast collection of elusive and exotic flavors, of fruit and of greens, bits of crispness (the water chestnuts) and of delicate meats — well, no wonder he made no attempt to write about it. It has to be eaten to be understood.

There is no gravy required for this bird because it is in itself so moist — but if the family insists on gravy it may be made in the usual way, using the drippings from the pan. The giblets from the basting mixture may be chopped up and added. The beauty of Thompson's turkey, by the way, is that in the unlikely event that any of it is left over, the meat somehow remains as moist for days as it is when it first comes from the oven.

Subject: RE: BS: Stuffing - moist or dry?
From: Mrs.Duck
Date: 27 Apr 05 - 12:37 PM

I prefer my stuffing cooked otside the joint or bird and deinitely moist. I usually use packet mix for quickness and Tescos do a good variety of special ones to go with lamb, pork and poultry. Why out of season - we always have stuffing if I roast.

Subject: RE: BS: Stuffing - moist or dry?
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 27 Apr 05 - 12:49 PM

At the risk of being accused of thread creep, I'll take up the wonderful subject of what to do with the carcass.

Around our house, the Thanksgiving, Xmas, etc. turkeys are seen as more or less the minor leagues, the necessary preliminaries to Dad's (that's me) turkey noodle soup.

When my Beautiful Wife and I share a holiday meal with my grown daughter (at our house or hers), it's understood that there need to be two turkeys roasted, and I am required to make two batches (at least) of my famous dinner rolls.

After the festive dinner, the leftovers (of which there are carefully plenty) are equitably divided--except!--that I get both carcasses. That same night the stock pot gets going with the carcasses, being fanatically skimmed. After X number of hours(according to taste and fancy) of simmering, the bones are removed and onions, carrots, celery, and various vegetable oddments are added for their cooking cycle.

Sometime in here (they need to dry some before cooking), I make homemade egg noodles, for last-minute cooking in the glorious soup. Don't talk to me about commercial noodles, either. What was good enough for my maternal grandmother (one of the world's great plain cooks) is barely good enough for me!

My daughter makes a claim on a share of the resulting ambrosia.

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: BS: Stuffing - moist or dry?
From: GUEST,MMario
Date: 27 Apr 05 - 12:57 PM

Why do you think I cook turkeys? yup - that broth and the soup are the real reason for doing the turkey.

Subject: RE: BS: Stuffing - moist or dry?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 27 Apr 05 - 01:46 PM

I did Thanksgiving in July last year for a friend who was moving away. She has been visiting here this week, but I didn't do another turkey. Sometimes it's nice just to visit and not make it a big production. But that turkey sounds nice. I passed by some nice-sized frozen breasts the other day in the market--maybe I'll pick one up next time I'm there.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Stuffing - moist or dry?
From: gnu
Date: 27 Apr 05 - 02:03 PM

My uncle uses a lifting rack to keep the turkey off the bottom of the pan and cooks his turkey, after browning, in a paper bag. Yes, a brown paper bag. Darn good, too.

Subject: RE: BS: Stuffing - moist or dry?
From: DougR
Date: 27 Apr 05 - 03:02 PM

Moist. (And Cornbread dressing of course)

DougR

Subject: RE: BS: Stuffing - moist or dry?
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 27 Apr 05 - 03:26 PM

Does anyone else recall the Stan Freburg "First Thanksgiving" sketch in which the turkey had been chosen to be the national bird, and the crowd was having eagle for dinner?

The eagle was dropped on the floor, and someone suggested cooking the turkey.

"but it's too small"
"well, stuff it with bread. These folks are hungry"


and tht's how...

Subject: RE: BS: Stuffing - moist or dry?
From: jacqui.c
Date: 27 Apr 05 - 07:00 PM

Kendall sent me a tape of that, Dick, last year. I made the mistake of listening to it in the car on the M25 motorway. Laughed so much I nearly had an accident. (Sorry about the thread creep folks).

Subject: RE: BS: Stuffing - moist or dry?
From: kendall
Date: 27 Apr 05 - 07:21 PM

Stan Frieburg's HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES is one of the funniest things I ever heard.

Subject: RE: BS: Stuffing - moist or dry?
From: Shanghaiceltic
Date: 28 Apr 05 - 12:53 AM

Moist, wet, damp, whatever.

Subject: RE: BS: Stuffing - moist or dry?
From: Gurney
Date: 28 Apr 05 - 04:54 AM

Moist in a turkey, dry in a chicken, very dry a duck. Cooked in the bird, then dried a little out of it.
Never tasted stuffed mushrooms. My cook says that life is too short.

Subject: RE: BS: Stuffing - moist or dry?
From: GUEST
Date: 28 Apr 05 - 11:23 AM

Depends how big the mushroom is. A giant puffball would be worth it - and I've seen horse mushrooms as big as dinner plates (but I'm not telling you where)/.