I have reconstructed the feature article on the subject of
Turkey Stuffing from the Nov 1996 issue of Yankee Magazine. Some
pages were missing from my copy of the issue and some pages were
damaged. The following is what survived. It appears that, in a
previous issue, Yankee asked readers for recipes, stories and
information about turkey stuffing. They received mail from Florida,
Ontario, Iowa, West Virginia, Connecticut, Rhode Island,
Massachusetts, California, and Vermont.
Summary of discussion re: "dressing" versus "stuffing":
The terms are both used equally in all regions; they do not denote
different foods. The only regional variations in either dressing or
stuffing are:
* A fondness for adding apples in VT and NH.
* A disinclination among most New Englanders to include numeats,
i.e., chestnuts, pecans, walnuts, hickory, and butternuts, but
nutmeats do appear in recipes from NY state and points south and
west.
Most stuffings are based on bread, though potatoes mixed with bread
came in a surprisingly strong 2nd. Crackers were a distant 3rd and
there are actually people out there who are fond and *proud* of
stuffing their Thanksgiving bird with oatmeal. There was rice, but
not much and perhaps not surprisingly, the corn bread contingent was
darn near silent. It would take some crust to admit to Yankee that
you went south at Thanksgiving.
The Gentle Art Of Stuffing
==========================
Numerous experiments have established that an unstuffed turkey has
juicier meat and is easier and quicker to roast than the traditional
holiday bird. So what? Turkey parts work better than whole turkeys,
if it comes to that, and in any case we're not in this for the
turkey. Extreme stuffing recipes call for discarding it after the
stuffing is done.
Be sure to choose a turkey with ample skin at the back for closure
and a large, intact flap of skin at the neck. This area, known as the
crop, can hold as much stuffing as the inside of the bird.
Measurements are always approximate--a little more or less of
anything won't hurt the finished product. If Aunt Maude hates the
chestnuts that Cousin Frank loves, add them to only part of the
stuffing and put it in the neck cavity.
Old-fashioned stuffing and forcemeat recipes tend to be very rich, at
least partly because old-fashioned turkeys were very lean; fat in the
stuffing provided continual basting from within. Turkey still needs
all the help it can get, so the less fat you use in your stuffing the
more important it is to include things like apples and celery which
will add moisture with minimum risk of sog.
Don't stuff the bird until you're ready to cook it, and remove the
stuffing promptly after the roast has been served. Bacteria multiply
rapidly in that slow-cooling, airless interior. Several readers made
a point of reporting that they'd always stuffed the turkey the night
before and they weren't dead yet. But the people who *did* die may
have been too busy to write, so I'm not sure that proves anything.
Mrs. Hill was right. Don't cram. Bread stuffing needs to expand as it
cooks and will end up gummy if it's rammed in there too tight. It may
also explode outward, ruining the look of the turkey and making a
royal mess of the oven.
Bake extra stuffing in a well-buttered shallow casserole dish for
about 1 hour at 350°F. Cover for the first 40 minutes or so then
uncover and dot with butter so the top can take a nice crust.
