Community Chat

[Marienkaefer2]

My favorite part of the meal is the stuffing...the turkey..not so much.  My mom always made it separately and we all loved it. My dad's family were Wisconsin farmers, and they cooked it separately as well.  So, I guess it's just the tradition you were raised with!

Bring on the mashed potatoes, stuffing, and gravy! 

Happy Thanksgiving!

[sunshine45]

@Marp

that is a good idea, however, i only have one oven and it is big enough to hold one roaster with a turkey and one pan of dressing. no space for any extras and we eat all of the dressing......rarely any leftovers of that after day two.

[Sooner]

Nobody in my family likes dressing made inside the turkey.  To us it is greasy and totally something we don't like.  To each their own.  I'll go so far as to say to me, it is simply gross.  We don't like it with eggs in it either.  

[Lyttlewyng]

Thanks for all the turkey tips, ladies!

Some I already knew and do, other tips were new to me.

I also saw The Chew segment about using cheesecloth to hold the stuffing in place in the bird.  Great idea and I will try it.  I looked it up on YouTube just to make sure I didn't miss anything and found the demonstration from a Williams-Sonoma representative.

Happy Thanksgiving! 

[chrystaltree]

That's the way my mom and my nana did it and it's what I did for 20 years.  No one ever died from our stuffing....lol.  I agree wholeheartedly stuffing coked in the bird tasted so much better.  Like most, I fell into that salmonella thing and stopped doing it.  It would start a whole "thing" if I put the stuff in in the bird this year.   

[PamelaSue72]

I stuffed our turkeys for years.....I'm certainly not "afraid" to do so. However, in the last few years, I've simply moved away from stuffing the bird. We've started to brine our turkeys and now I stuff the brined (rinsed carefully, BTW) with apples, onion, and a cinnamon stick. Our stuffing is now done in the crock pot.

I started brining when I saw a neat episode of Good Eats. Alton Brown talked about brining and I tried it one year. Best turkey ever. I had also found a recipe for a stuffing done in the crock pot and thought I'd try it out. My guys loved it. 

So that's why I no longer stuff the turkey. My guys decided they really like the crock pot stuffing. When we have Thanksgiving dinner at my sister's house, she still stuffs her turkey. But what's really interesting is that I'm still always asked to bring my stuffing, too. And we eat both kinds!

For Christmas, I always serve a crown roast of pork. I do the stuffing for that the same way....in the crock pot. Then right before serving at the table, I put some of the stuffing from the crock pot into the cavity of the crown roast. 

It's not fear, it's doing what my family prefers.

And next year? I'm smoking the turkey! Just got a new-to-me smoker!! WooHoo!

[qvcaddition]

LOVETOTEACH, I don,t know, but they say, don,t eat the cookie dough because of the raw egg.  Growing up, my mother had a raw egg a day and so did I. We never got sick from doing it.

[Sooner]

They grow turkeys in mass quantities now, so that's why you are more likely to get something from them, and they probably are shipped farther and on the shelf longer.  Also, personal belief here, I truly believe that a lot of what people over the years thought was simply "discomfort" from over eating was probably a touch of salmonella, or that people simply aren't deathly ill and don't bother to "share" about it!  LOL!!!.  

[Joey Heatherton]

Have you guys seen the Stovetop Stuffing Mix tv commercial with The Pilgrim?

His number 1 tip is always remember to cut off the Turkey's head.  Don't forget to do that!

I agree!  Lol. Gobble gobble.

[JustJazzmom]

I have a Pyrex bowl that is pretty large and I usually brine the turkey breast in it. It turns out delicious. I also do my sausage and bread stuffing in a separate bowl and cook it. One child likes  the sausage and bread stuffing and another two like the cornbread stuffing minus the sausage, so I alternate yearly when I do these stuffings.