Stove top all the way, bayyyybeeee!
Rich Mann got it right, as Alton Brown is wont to say, “stuffing is EVIL!” In his Thanksgiving episode of Good Eats, Romancing The Bird, he said of stuffing “it adds mass which increases the cooking time and that leads to dry meat. It’s also a haven for bacteria like salmonella and it’s good buddy campylobacter. Neither of which make very good side dishes.” Undercooked meat isn’t so much the worry as, cross-contamination. You’re careful with meat, you may not so careful with things that touched the meat.
His initial solution is A) stuff the bird with aromatics to add flavor (and don’t eat them) and B) if you want stuffing, bake it outside the bird. His fans never forgave him of this, demanding their stuffing and insisting that it doesn’t taste as good without all that turkey juicey goodness. And they’re right.
Seven seasons later, he revisited stuffing in Stuff It. The problem: How to make stuffing that is done at the same time as the bird, and easy to extract? The solution…
- Tie the stuffing into a clean, porous bag like cotton or cheesecloth.
- Pre-heat the stuffing-bag in the microwave.
- Cook both the bird and the stuffing to 170F. (If you don’t have a couple of good probe thermometers, get some! And ignore that plastic pop up timer thing.)
He has all sorts of clever tricks to make this process less likely to involve steaming hot turkey stuffing all over the kitchen and yourself. Go watch the show.
Oh, if you use low-sodium broth in your stuffing (which you should be in general as it gives you more control over the seasoning of your food) there should be no worries about the stuffing over-salting a brined bird. Besides, brining isn’t about making a bird salty as much as it’s about using osmosis to move flavored water into the meat.
My plan for stuffing this year? I’m going to have to bake it outside the bird as I plan on trying deep-frying the turkey the Alton Brown way.
If you’re not familiar with Alton Brown and his science-based cooking show Good Eats, and you eat food, I suggest you RUN, don’t walk, to your nearest video store, TV showing The Food Network or YouTube and start watching and DO NOT STOP until you are convinced that Alton Brown is the Cecil Adams of food.
I’m not a huge stuffing fan normally, but I was absolutely won over by Mark Bittman’s recipe for Bacon Nut Stuffing. Holy crap is it good! I’m not at home so don’t have the recipe on me but I’ll post it later.
Of course, if you don’t like bacon, you may not love it (but you’d be crazy :D)
I loves me some oyster dressing, just substitute a pint of fresh oysters, chopped, in place of sausage. Unfortunately, my in-laws find it too scary, despite all of them living in one of the country’s foremost seafood towns (New Bedford, MA). Go figure.
I’ll be your friend…
If you found that to be convincing enough, please let me know, and I will post the recipe.
I make a sausage stuffing, using a mild Italian type of sausage. I like the fennel seed flavor. Fresh herbs, always. I have made it a couple times with diced apples (for my MIL), but we like it best without the tarty hint.
I cook the stuffing outside the bird. To make up flavor, I usually buy a turkey leg to make stock and reduction. I use some on the stuffing and the rest goes to make extra gravy. There is never enough gravy. gets all daydreamy
I do!
I usually do a traditional cornbread stuffing with homemade buttermilk cornbread cooked in a cast iron skillet in bacon grease just like my grandmother did it (and without any sugar. My grandmother thought that sugar in cornbread was a Philistine Yankee abomination).
This year I’m going to try something different, though. We’ve been making a lot of homemade bread so I’m going to do a regular bread cube stuffing, but first I’m going to toast the cubes in the oven with butter and…wait for it…bacon salt. That’s right. I’m going to make bacon salt croutons. Other than that, I’ll probably be fairly conventional. Onions, celery, sage. I haven’t decided if I’ll put any sausage in yet, but I’m pondering experimenting with some crumbled bacon. If it ends up getting too bacony, I’ll cut it with some apples. I’ll post the results.
Alton Brown can kiss my butt. If one is an idiot, then one deserves the poisoning. In 40 years of roasting stuffed turkeys, nobody has EVER become ill after eating my stuffing. Ever. As in never. Americans have become afraid of their own lives and the enjoyment of same.
If you’re worried about those eeeeviiillll bacteria, remove the stuffing from the bird and nuke it for a few minutes. Problem solved.
Sorry for the minirant.
As for recipes, mine is pretty much like the OP’s. I use Jimmy Dean’s sage sausage, celery, onion, garlic, several types of bread (including whole grain, French, and whatever else happens to be in the house, roughly processed, not in cubes), lots of sage, some poultry seasoning, chicken stock and pecans. Salt and pepper. Did I mention sage? My sister makes a wild rice stuffing that’s pretty good, but I like mine better.
I’ve made this every year since the recipe originally came out, and I can’t imagine cooking a holiday meal without it! Even my dad, who doesn’t care for stuffing, likes it. I use shallots instead of onions and add mushrooms, and sometimes make it on its own during the winter.
Okay, friend, here goes:
Turkey Stuffing
8 breakfast sausage links
1 medium onion, chopped
1 stalk celery, chopped (including the leaves, if you buy celery with the leaves on)
1 small pippin or Granny Smith apple, cored and chopped (don’t peel it, though)
2 sticks of butter
½ cup raisins
½ cup chopped nuts (pecans would be best, then cashews, then walnuts. Don’t use peanuts. That would be just wrong)
9 cups of bread cubes
Turkey neck and giblets
Half of another medium onion
Sage
Tarragon
Salt
Pepper
Put the turkey neck and giblets and half onion in about six cups of heavily salted water, throw in some sage, tarragon, and pepper, and bring it to a boil. Reduce the heat and simmer it all together for about an hour. Set the neck and giblets aside for the gravy. You can put some of the neck meat into the stuffing if you want, but I’ll leave that up to you. The point is that now you have some quick turkey stock.
Cook the sausage links, chop them up, and set them aside.
Melt the butter in a saucepan, and sauté the onions and celery until they soften a bit.
In a large mixing bowl, place the bread cubes, the sausage, apples, nuts, raisins, sage, tarragon, salt and pepper. Pour the melted butter and sautéed vegetables over that, and toss it all together until the bread cubes are all coated.
Stuff it all into the turkey. I am mindful of the fact that cooked-in-the-bird stuffing can be dangerous, so try to get one of those cheesecloth bags for easy removal. I also realize that it won’t all fit. That’s where the turkey stock comes in. What won’t fit will have to be baked separately in a casserole, But since it won’t be cooking in roasting turkey juice, you’ll be wanting some moisture. Add however much of the giblet-and-neck stock to the dressing will give it a nice pudding-like consistency. That can bake for about an hour at 350F.
You’ll still have enough of the stock to make giblet gravy later.
ETA: I’m assuming you’ll be able to figure out how much sage and tarragon to use.
Now THERE would be a thread: “Convince me that oysters are food” Probably take a quick visit through IMHO and GD before ending in the Pit, though. 
Oysters are a member of the phlegm family and don’t belong on a table. :dubious:
I’ll use a line from the teaser for this week’s episode of Top Chef to describe my feelings about oysters: “That looks like spit on a plate.”