Stuff It, Stuff it Good

Dearest Saucyman, Any recommendations for stuffing?
-Stuffing a turkey, BTW

The first stuffing I ever loved was from Evan Jones’s American Food; The Gastronomic Story, I think it was the smoked sausage that sold me on that recipe. As I started working on my own stuffing variations and over the years I developed an understanding or belief (sometimes it is hard to sort the two) that a cook, a real cook, could be judged my his/her ability to make the most out of leftover bread and humble ingredients like an egg, an onion, a stalk of celery, hand crafted stock.

Slate’s Sara Dickerman explains the importance of stuffing for both the Thanksgiving table and the cook’s pride in beginning of an article from 2 years ago:

Turkeys are turkeys. Sure, you might shell out for a rare-breed heritage bird or a presalted kosher turkey. You might brine it or swaddle it in cheesecloth, but most everyone who celebrates our country's great nonsectarian holiday (vegetarians and manly turkey fryers excepted) roasts a turkey come Thanksgiving. But stuffing, or dressing as it's called in the South, is special. Equally essential to the holiday table, it's a far more expressive medium than turkey. Its bland base of bread or rice invites embellishment, both traditional and irreverent, and in dressing recipes, sausage, nuts, fruit, mushrooms, and shellfish combine in countless permutations. In contrast to the more predictable turkey, stuffing is the frisky, occasionally outlandish, personality of the holiday table.


The rest of the article continues here, but like All the Kings Men, the first paragraph tells the whole story so succinctly, so completely, that you don’t have to read on for any other purpose than pleasure.

As much as I enjoy the challenge of a good stuffing, for the last decade or so, Friend of Saucyman, Evan K has been marshaling the stuffing efforts for Thanksgivings, quite admirably too. There really aren’t recipes, more like proportions – At least 2/3 of the bread must be white bread, cut into inch squares. Onion and celery are necessities along with good rich stock. Parsley, sage and thyme (sorry Simon & Garfunkel – no rosemary) are all needed, and I think fresh rule over dried herbs.

After that any thing goes: Oysters, wild rice, rice-rice, bacon (cooked, please), nuts: pecans, walnuts and chestnuts are all common. Sausage is cool, corn bread is too, together they are great. Shallots, crab, wild mushrooms, figs, apricots, cranberries – dried or ‘fresh’; apples, ham, crawfish, pancetta, spinach, peppers, pine nuts and goat cheese can all be added in various combinations. And while raw eggs are usually added to bind and partially leaven the ingredients some cooks love adding chopped boiled eggs.

There isn’t a right or wrong recipe but there are tips to make your stuffing more better:

1. Good bread. No cellophaned, none of it no pre-wrapped, already cubed croutonish mixes with flavoring packets. You want good white bread – a pound loaf equals 6 cups of cubed bread. Buy it Saturday or Sunday, cube it yourself on Monday and leave on a sheet pan to dry out. Seriously, you think you don’t have time? I promise you really have 3 minutes to do it. and your stuffing will be better for it.
   
2. Good Stock, be it vegetable, chicken, turkey, mushroom - the better the stock the better the stuffing – remember that when you are opening a carton of broth.
3. Know what needs to be precooked like bacon and wild rice what doesn’t like ham or oysters. Most recipes are going to help you out. I like sautéing the onions before mixing all together but the celery looses its crunch by precooking it. Some of this is trial and error – some of it is good research. Consult cooks and cookbooks, like the stock the better the quality of these, the better the results will be.
4. Warm the stuffing up before filling the bird. You can do it in the microwave, oven or stovetop. If you warm to stuffing up to 160-170 before roasted the turkey, you wont be drying out the bird waiting for the stuffing to cook to a safe temperature.