The anti-stuffing spoilsports
Somehow we managed to survive all these years, eating stuffing that was cooked within the cavity of the bird. But now every site warns not to. For example:
…[M]any experts recommend baking the stuffing outside the bird, where it can easily be cooked to 165°F and is less likely to harbor bacteria. However, many people who grew up eating stuffing from inside the bird find it lacking moisture and flavor when it’s baked in a casserole dish, without the benefit of the turkey’s juices.
“Many people find”? Nearly everybody finds, because it’s just a fact that it’s hard to make it nearly as tasty as stuffing cooked within the bird. Moisture and flavor are the point of stuffing, aren’t they?
And this is simply untrue, or only somewhat true:
Luckily, whichever method you prefer, there are ways to get around the problems. If you choose to bake your stuffing alongside the bird, drizzle 1/4 to 1/2 a cup of extra stock over it before it goes in the oven. This will replace the extra moisture and flavor the turkey would have provided. Using a rich, flavorful homemade stock will also go a long way toward providing that indescribable roast-turkey-ness.
It goes a very short way, not a long way, and strands the stuffing short of the goal.
The site does add that if you must stuff, do it this way:
… [D]o not stuff your turkey until right before it goes in the oven. Yes, when faced with a long list of Thanksgiving Day tasks, it’s tempting to stuff the bird the night before, stow it in the fridge, and then just pop it in the oven the next morning. But this will create an optimal environment for bacteria to flourish …
I have never, never ever, heard of stuffing the bird the night before. I suppose somebody somewhere does that, but not me or anyone I’ve ever been around.
Then there’s this:
Instead of this risky procedure, cook any veggies for the stuffing the night before, but do not mix them with the bread, stock, and eggs. (Even if you don’t stuff the bird, just mixing the wet ingredients and the bread can be too inviting to bacteria.) The next morning, heat the stock and combine it with the other stuffing ingredients, then immediately fill and roast the bird. Using warm stuffing and putting the turkey in the oven immediately will help the stuffing spend as little time in the “danger zone” as possible.
Eggs? Who puts egg in stuffing? As I look it up just now online, apparently many people do. I certainly never have done so, and I’m not about to start now:
Finally, when the bird is done, take the temperature of the stuffing as well as the meat. Bacteria cannot survive above 165°F …
This seems to be a decent tip:
If the bird is done but the stuffing isn’t, use this tip that Rodgers shared in his turkey recipe: spoon the stuffing out into a bowl and microwave it until it registers 165°F. This will allow you to have moist, not overcooked meat and safe stuffing at the same time.
A few days ago I searched for my seldom-used and somewhat ancient meat thermometer, and all I could locate was a candy thermometer (the epitome of “seldom-used” and “ancient”). So it was time to buy a new meat thermometer, and I discovered that they’re now digital. Oh brave new world.
The OXO Good Grips Analog Instant-Read Meat Thermometer is a good choice for those of us who prefer things without batteries.
Is deep fried stuffing a thing? What did they do in the pre-microwave olden days?
They’re not only digital, they’re also mostly instant-read. Many people like the instant-read, but many people doubt they’re as accurate as the traditional kind.
I have something called a Meater. It’s a meat thermometer you put in what you’re roasting and you can read it on your iPhone from miles away. Many people like to be miles away from where the roasting is taking place. But many people like to be in the house smelling that wonderful smell.
I am preparing turkey and stuffing for the family meal today. Like many people, I prepare the stuffing outside the bird. My mother always prepared it in the bird, with a second dish in the oven because many people did not think the amount in the turkey was sufficient for dinner and leftovers. My mother was a superb cook and homemaker.
Like many people, I find the qualifiers “some people” and “many people” very poor writing, as the reader can probably surmise. Many people even think the writer is too lazy to actually find someone who believes what is being purported, so just throw that in to make it sound like they actually know what they’re talking about. And this actually predates AI, which makes stuff up and calls it evidence without even citing many people.
We survived a lot of things!
OK, I use StoveTop Cornbread stuffing mix. Have done for years. When we cooked a Turkey, I would put drippings into the mix, and sometimes chopped Pecans. Today, I am using low salt Chicken Broth and maybe a little Better than Bouillon Chicken paste. And, to be different this year, I am adding Craisins. No Pecans though.
My Best Friend, My Other Brother, makes his own dressing using lots of things, including Italian Sausage, with which he stuffs the Turkey. He abhors my dressing, but I can’t see doing all that effort.
But I do Yams better than he does.
If we humans do anything, we should defend, protect, and conserve our close cousins–the Great Apes, the Orangutans, and Chimpanzees.*
* See https://www.youtube.com/shorts/DYEjIty0etw
Digital meat thermometers…. Alas, the “digital” has also hit the caliper world. There are still dial calipers, but a decent Vernier caliper is the stuff of flea market and garage sale searches. The digital stuff is taking the sport out of a lot of things….
Happy thanksgiving everyone.
A Happy and meaningful Thanksgiving Holiday to our hostess and all my fellow visitors.
I’ve always stuffed the bird, and no one has ever died or gotten sick. I also always put beaten eggs in the stuffing to help it hold together. But putting the stuffing in warm makes sense, especially if it makes it easier to avoid overcooking the turkey out of caution.
Digital applications are commonly quite unnecessary.
==
As for the stuffing spoilsports, nearly everywhere there’s a critical mass of Karens scolding people that they don’t know what they’re doing and you must do it my way. They’re properly ignored.
Digital thermometers / calipers:
Yes, and always make sure to have extra batteries (in the correct sizes) because for sure just when you most need to use it the battery will have decided to quit.
Somehow with the old analog tools this was never a problem…
We sold our house, closing on this past Tuesday. Hurrah! My new ovens don’t have meat thermometers and attachments like the old one. So I bought a digital. This morning it occurred to me that I should unpack it and charge it. Did that. Then downloaded the app to my phone. Can’t initiate the app because apparently lots of other buyers did the same and the website won’t work. Fortunately, the thing works manually. Turkey now at 140º internal temp., and the dressing is in the second oven, and all will be well.
And the Packers are leading. If that holds, this will be a very happy meal!
Let us all give thanks for all our blessings, including this digital community.
This is my goodbye to all of you here at Neo’s. We just finished our dinner and I ate a lot of stuffing which my wife always puts inside the turkey. I guess the bladder cancer didn’t get me, but the stuffing will….sigh…
Steel analog dial thermometer here and the backup is an ancient glass one. Bird is stuffed and in the oven. Do like the digital calipers though.
It is raining here, the tide is up and there are about 2 dozen ducks sleeping on the tiny amount of dry shore. Some are sleeping on the stone steps. My dog goes out every 15 or 20 minutes in plain view of the quackers just 100 feet away but they ignore her and she ignores them.
Physicsguy, I hope that’s just goodbye for today.
I’ve valued your comments and hope to enjoy more.
O/T https://x.com/AustralianJA/status/1993980909532369011?t=PSwvOmig1u1wp75YN_7DnQ&s=19
We brine the turkey. Last year we left it in too long, so this year we took it out at 152 degrees and let it coast to about 155. Even the white meat was tender and wonderful. We stuff it only with garlic, onions, and celery. The stuffing is a separate dish with crawdads.
Cranberry relish this year is raw: raw cranberries, a whole orange with its peel, a jalapeno, some pecans, and a small amount of sugar. It’s killer.
Bread pudding (Paul Prudhomme, the best), a pumpkin pie, and a key lime pie that a friend brought over.
The 20 year old NG woman has died. Sympathies to her family. And to hell with her murderer
Glad to see you have so far survived being stuffed with stuffing, physicsguy.
May the Guardswoman rest in peace. Her killer shouted “Allahu akbar.”
Oh boy, just got home from a nice Thanksgiving dinner only to discover that our refrigerator died. Looks like I will be doing Black Friday shopping after all. Ugh!
Re: Black Friday
I decided to do some home upgrades with a new dryer and an up-tier gas stove to replace my glass-top induction oven, which I loathe, on the Black Friday sale. They will be delivered tomorrow.
I do appreciate the round-trip service Home Depot provides from delivery to installation to haul-away. You pay extra but finding reliable tradespeople in Abq has been a maddening hit-or-mostly-miss proposition for me.
We started cooking the bird at 500 degrees years ago and key to that is keeping the cavity open so the meat cooks both directions. The meat is so moist you’ll wonder if it was cooked long enough.
It also cuts the cooking time by hours.
But sadly no dressing. Stovetop isn’t the same, but I’ve gotten used to it.
Happy Thanksgiving
What absolute rot!
These creatures telling us to cook the stuffing outside the bird are demons intent on the destruction of the United State of America.
Any raw poultry is a wonderful breeding ground for salmonella.
My father was a bacteriologist – he was adamant the stuffing go in the bird immediately prior to roasting.
Anything that came in contact with raw poultry would be washed in scalding water.
Mayonnaise (made with eggs) is an almost perfect medium for growing all sorts of bacteria – during WWII when labs were short on the traditional media, they used Hellmans/Best Foods mayonnaise as a substitute!
As a result, in our house, mayonnaise left open for more than about 5 minutes was discarded…if it was left out of the refrigerator for more than 1/2 hour, it was discarded.
Cato Renasci:
Modern store-bought mayonnaise has a lot of acid in it, and actually retards the growth of bacteria. Please see this.
Black Friday: I had reached the conclusion that my Solid State Drive was fried, so was all ready to go shopping for a SSD today. (Fortunately, data was backed up.) But some improvised fiddling w the computer, got the old SSD back to snuff. For which I am thankful.
My sister-in-law, who could make a delicious meal out of sawdust, made a delicious stuffing with prunes, raisins, and dried apricots one year. My favorite stuffing.
I don’t have stuffing cooked inside the turkey, because cutting the turkey up reduces cooking time from three hours to an hour.
My mother’s raw cranberry relish, without nuts or jalapenos and probably more sugar than Wendy used, was also a killer. One year I invited an Argentine friend studying in the US for Thanksgiving at my parents’ house. He declined trying the cranberry relish—which my sister remembered decades later.
My mother’s mother used eggs in her stuffing to hold everything together.
Hers was made from scratch, including the cornbread and sometimes the bread (Wonderbread was a great time saver when it came out). The eggs were gathered from their own hens.
IMO, It was cooked IN the bird because, in addition to just tasting better, nobody in that era had an oven big enough for the turkey AND a casserole dish. T
See the joke about cutting the ends off the ham, which I’ve shared here before.
My version is more dramatic than most of the ones on-line, but they get the point across.
Anyway, yesterday (11/27) my DiL who hosted the dinner this year (it’s always called dinner even when eaten at 1pm) made stuffing by starting with the boxed stuff, then adding all the usual ingredients for cornbread. Then she put it in a 3D cake mold of a turkey. It was solid enough to hold its shape for admiration, moist enough to not even need gravy, and flavored just right by the mix.
I make the green bean casserole every year because (a) she does everything else; and (b) I have a Secret Recipe which I share only with my best friends — that’s you guys and gals here. This is for 12 servings, so 4 cans of drained green beans of your choice. We actually used their home grown ones this year.
Soften an 8-oz block of cream cheese until it can be beaten to a pulp in your mixer; add 1 can of Campbell’s condensed Golden Mushroom Soup and mix well; add a second can, ditto; add 1/2 cup milk, preferably whole — this is not the time or place to skimp on calories. Add the crispy fried onions, 1/2 half of the can, which is about 1.5 cups. Mix this with the green beans and put in your dish (I put my beans in the pan first). Bake at 350 degrees F for 30 minutes, as usual; pull out of oven, stir everything a couple of times, top with the rest of the onions and cook another 5-10 minutes.
IF you want, and the rest of the diners don’t object, you can add diced fresh or cooked mushrooms and / or onions to the beans.
I finished my share of the left-overs for supper (6pm), and they were great.
Family joke that happens to be true:
My mother-in-law and I were making the stuffing together one year, probably at my house, and she was doing the gourmet thing with the cornbread & bread crumbs, dried cranberries, chopped pecans, diced onions and celery, herbs, turkey stock, and I don’t remember what else. Then she asked me if we had forgotten anything.
I said that my grandmother always added eggs to bind the ingredients, so that’s what I usually did.
She frowned a little bit, thinking it over, and replied, “I don’t think we should. I like a light dressing, don’t you?”
If you are a Turducken fan, you might want to try the PieCaken for dessert.
Via one of Sarah Hoyt’s commenters on her Thanksgiving post.
https://www.goldbelly.com/restaurants/the-piecaken-shop?
Well, if we must die, then let us die after eating stuffing cooked inside the turkey…that way we will die happy. 😉
AesopFan:
One egg to rule them all and in the darkness bind them.
@ huxley – LOL, that line from LOTR is infinitely adaptable.
Isaac Asimov even used it as the plot-center for one of his mysteries.
In re shopping: we discovered, the hard way, that REI is probably the only commercial establishment in America that is NOT open on Black Friday.
It seems that most of their customers, and all their employees, are out hiking or camping instead of indoors cooking and eating!
https://www.rei.com/dam/24251224_opt-outside-black-friday-2025-full-bleed-banner-sm-2_web_lg.jpeg
Should have checked before we went to the store!
….that line from LOTR is infinitely adaptable.
AesopFan:
Quite so.
I have a questionable cookbook titled “One Pan to Rule Them All” about cast-iron cooking. I do love my cast-iron (accept no substitutes).
But the first recipe I tried was a meat lasagna in which one cooks onions and garlic, then adds and browns the hamburger, then a layer of lasagna broken into small pieces, then the crushed tomatoes and water, and finally the cheeses.
Cook for 20 minutes more. Voila! Lasagna soup with the pasta like cardboard.
Maybe I did it wrong.
I cracked up when I read your comment noting that adding stock to baked stuffing “goes a very short way” to recreating the creamy moist stuffing we love that’s been roasted inside the turkey.
Did we truly have rampant food poisoning from undercooked stuffing for all these years?
Plus, EGGS??