Is There a Difference Between Dressing and Stuffing?
What’s the difference between dressing and stuffing? And which is best? Leslie Land has the answers (and recipes).
By Leslie Land|Nov 09 2021|
Is there a difference between dressing and stuffing? And which is best? With all precincts reporting, it’s “stuffing” over “dressing,” bread over potatoes, apples over chestnuts, and turkey over all comers.
The perfect Thanksgiving turkey is a bird of modest size, perhaps 15 pounds. Its skin is a rich mahogany brown, shiny with numerous bastings. It is plump, so full of stuffing that it’s almost round, and it is bracketed fore and aft with large, bulbous protrusions almost big enough to be junior turkeys. They are, of course, the extra skin, packed to bursting with extra stuffing. All right-thinking people know that stuffing is the whole reason to roast a turkey in the first place- or do they think it’s the dressing? And is there a difference between dressing and stuffing? Old cookbooks often use the term dress to mean prepare, and I’ve heard it said that stuffing goes inside and dressing doesn’t. Are these regional terms? Do we stuff in the North and dress down South? Loaded questions.
I tried looking it up. In Theodora Fitzgibbon’s massive The Food of the Western World, stuffing is “The name given in England to combinations of a variety of foods which are inserted into meats, poultry, fish, eggs, or vegetables. In the United States, stuffing is also called dressing . . .” Onward. My now somewhat elderly (1961) edition of Larousse Gastronomique, the bible of classic, albeit mostly French, cooking, has no listing for either stuffing or dressing. The material in question is listed under forcemeats — only fitting, as the old-fashioned English word forcemeat comes from the French verb farcir, which means “to stuff.” There are 30 recipes, not counting the ones involving fish. The bread-based one we think of as traditional is called “sage and onion stuffing” and is attributed to “English cookery.”
Photo Credit : Elizabeth Cecil
Is this progress? The Oxford English Dictionary doesn’t offer a recipe but does give 1538 as the written debut of the word: “stuffynge, or that wherewith any foule is crammed …. “
“Dressing,” says this august source, is “the seasoning substance used in cooking; stuffing; the sauce, etc., used in preparing a dish.” First use is given as 1504.
Home to the United States, where there’s nothing in H. L. Mencken’s compendium of American lingo. How about regional cookbooks? Housekeeping in Old Virginia, a collection of Southern favorites published in 1879, gives turkey-interior recipes from four different contributors, all dressing users, while The New England Cookbook (1905), compiled from the works of several noted authors, says stuffing, as do Fannie Farmer, The New England Cookbook (1954) by Eleanor Early, and Imogene Wolcott’s 1963 Yankee Cookbook. But Mrs. Hill’s Southern Practical Cookery and Receipt Book (1872) says stuffing, too — and warns that “it should never be crammed.” I will spare you the news from out west. Suffice it to say, the problem is exemplified by The Columbian Cookbook (Philadelphia, 1895), which has a roast turkey dressed with oysters but also a whole chapter devoted to forcemeats and stuffings with which you are instructed to fill the bird.
When in doubt, conduct a poll. We put a small notice in last November’s issue and a couple of hundred of you wrote to fill us in on what you make and what you call it. Results: It was stuffing by a three to one margin, from Montana to Massachusetts. No discernible regional bias at all. There are dressing fans in Florida, Ontario, Iowa, and West Virginia, also Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, California, and Vermont. And do the two terms denote different foods? Not at all. The same ingredients appeared with stunning regularity no matter what the finished product was called or whence the writer hailed. The only noteworthy tendencies that emerged Were a fondness for adding apples in Vermont and New Hampshire and a disinclination among most New Englanders to include nutmeats. Chestnuts, pecans, walnuts, hickory, and butternuts did appear, but usually in recipes from New York State and points south and west.
Several of you sent us the popcorn joke: The ingredient list includes raw popcorn and the turkey is cooked when it explodes from the oven. There were stories of disaster: One neophyte cook left in three of the tea towels used for drying the bird; another produced “horrible smells” by cooking the turkey stuffed “with what God had given it to start with.” Well-meaning Sue Hannon, of Washington, D.C., watched her husband’s carefully wood-grilled roast bounce down the cellar stairs. It slid off the cookie sheet she had balanced on the stair rail and was fetched up tastefully garnished with oak leaves.
Others sent the sort of tales that give meaning to the day. Forty years ago Nancy Garland Manchetti moved from New England to Arizona, far from her father and his famous cracker stuffing. For Thanksgiving he sent her a package containing the dry ingredients and recipe: “probably the first stuffing mix,” she writes, “a shoe box full of love.” Many told of kind neighbors and friends who shared Thanks giving feasts in hard times. Beverly Fox Martin, for instance, whose family (and stuffing recipe) had southern Italian roots, remembered a childhood holiday when her family was so poor that “we might not have had a turkey at all.” They had capon instead, donated by “our neighbor, an Orthodox Jewish woman named Molly Drescher, [who] claimed that she had dropped her original kosher capon on the floor and simply had to buy a fresh one to replace it.”
Most of you base your stuffing on bread, though mixtures of bread and potatoes came in a surprisingly strong second. Crackers were a distant third, 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 cornbread contingent was darn near silent. It would take some crust to admit to Yankee that you went south at Thanksgiving.
Excerpt from “The Right Stuffing,” Yankee Magazine, November 1996
RECIPES:
Potato Bread Dressing with Apples, Sausage, and Sage
Herbed Cornbread Dressing with Sausage & Fennel
Potato Lover’s Stuffing
Down East Turkey Stuffing
Memere’s Meat Stuffing
Sausage and Prune Dressing
Chestnut, Apple & Pancetta Dressing
“Dressing” is what you make but “Stuffing” is how it’s cooked! You can cook ‘dressing” by itself but it becomes “stuffing” within your chosen meat!
Stuffing is in the bird; dressing is baked separately.
I am from Texas, my ancestors from Alabama, Georgia etc. it is without question called dressing.
Stuffing, a Yankee from Boston, Massachusetts (originally) .
AGREED Margaret! Yankee from Framingham, Massachusetts (originally). I ordered online my Bells seasoning for my stuffing and have it sent to me in Florida. ALOT of people here fry the turkey, not me!
I moved to Florida 30 years ago from Winthrop, Mass. My mother has been sending me bells seasoning every year because stuffing is not stuffing without it. People down here are great cooks for the rest of the year but do not know how to make a good old Yankee Thanksgiving dinner with stuffing. They eat dressing made with cornbread and although it’s not bad it tastes nothing like my stuffing.
Exactly! One year we had Thanksgiving diner with my wife’s youngest daughter and her husband ad they made cornbread “dressing,” just like his grandmother used to make. It was awful! Even Stovetop is better!
Both are wrong ,its always been and always will be FILLING.
It seems to me that the differences may be in the cooking methods. Stuffing cooked in the bird and dressing cooked outside the bird. Same ingredients, cooked differently.
Since my family lives all over the U.S.A….We have decided your first helping is dressing, go back for seconds and it’s filling, and when you can’t help yourself and you just need a bit more, it’s stuffing…We love it.
New England family going back to 1870’s (I know…..newcomers). Our family vote would be that if it’s cooked in the bird, it’s stuffing. If it’s baked in a casserole dish in the oven, it’s dressing. For many the contents are the same, though 1 branch of the family adds a little chicken broth to the casserole portion to prevent drying.
By any name, it’s yummy!
I remember my mother saying that STUFFING is made of bread portions, spices, broth and is cooked in the bird and on the stove to accommodate portion control for everyone at the table-both made of the same recipe…and that DRESSING is whatever you add to it, such as gravy, butter, cranberry confections, or a sauce…I myself prefer to bake stuffing in an oven, using my mother’s recipe, and to stuff the turkey or pheasant with thinly sliced citrus, such as oranges, lemons, grapefruit…a real taste treat for turkey, and it tends to balance the gaminess of pheasant.
…depends on who is doing it.
Stuffing strong NewEngland roots!
Very well written article with a touch of humor and refreshing not to have to edit anything. Gold star from me to you. If you ever get a chance to read John Gould’s work do so, now there is a touch of New England for you to reprint once in a while. As for me, I am from Cape Cod and lineage goes back to the Mayflower. We do both to that turkey you dress it first and the you stuff it; he comes out good that way.
Growing up in southern Indiana, we had “dressing.” My dad makes cornbread dressing, and my grandparents used to make oyster dressing. When I got married to my northern Indiana husband, I noticed that his family called it “stuffing.” None of us cooked it inside the turkey, though.
Grew up in the suburbs of Philadelphia. Always called it “Stuffing”!
Come to my house! I saute till translucent chopped onion and celery. Add hot milk. Pour over seasoned
(poultry seasoning, salt and pepper) cubed bread until thoroughly wet. May need more milk. Bake at 350° 1 hr or more till crispy. Use in turkey and as side dish. Both sons know how to make it and everyone loves it! Dont know anyone else who makes it except the woman whose mom (NE Phila PA) gave me her recipe 60 years ago! Phila suburbs, Huntingdon Valley
My great-grandmother’s recipe for chestnut dressing has a base of ground shredded wheat with ground onions, celery, green peppers and is cooked inside the bird. It has a spreadable consistency and is great on turkey sandwiches!
Stuffing and made with cornbread from this Midwest (Kansas City)/Southern (Virginia)/Floridian/Southern again (Tennessee)/New Englander (New Hampshire). My mother came from Texas and all I’ve ever had was cornbread stuffing and sometimes with pecans thrown in for a crunch. My kids will NOT let me change it up. If we try something different, it cannot be at the holidays.
I too grew up in the Philadelphia suburbs and we always called it “filling.” I’ve seen explanations that “Filling” is Pennsylvania Dutch stuffing with mashed potatoes. Well, we’re not PA Dutch and our “filling” was the usual bread/celery/onions/seasoning and always cooked in the bird. I also read use of the word “dressing” for stuffing originated in the South in the mid 1800s. “stuffing” was considered vulgar and “dressing” so much more polite.
I was surprised to see no mention of a stuffing similar to that which has been in my family for at least four generations. Originally from Massachusetts, but of French Canadian origin, my family has always stuffed our Thanksgiving and Christmas turkeys with a mixture of ground pork, hamburger, potatoes and sage, the same ingredients used in our meat pies (tourtier). More recently we have given a nod to the more common stuffing ingredients by adding 1/2 a cup of seasoned breadcrumbs but we would never consider giving up our meat stuffing. Can we possibly be the only family out there who does this?
No Gayle you are not the only one that makes a meat stuffing. Before I married my husband my mother always made a bread stuffing. Then he showed me a meat stuffing his mother always made. I thought it strange but I have been making it ever since and now my daughter is making it. I used what you use but I use italian sausage with hamburg, bell’s stuffing mix, saute onions, poultry seasoning. I have also used venison when I had some. I have had this stuffing ever since. It flavors the bird also. I was wondering if anyone made meat stuffing until I read you comment. Enjoy your stuffing!
I’m from Pennsylvania Dutch heritage,and we always have potato filling for Thanksgiving. We start with a boatload of mashed potatoes,on the side we sauté onions,parsley,finely chopped celery (with some flavorful chopped celery leaves) ,salt and pepper in lots of butter. This we add ,along with some cubed bread, to the potatoes. You can serve it like this or brown the top under the broiler. The heavenly aroma of this dish takes me back to being a boy on this wonderful holiday. I treasure our differences , and think it’s so cool that even though we come from various corners of America, we all make the filling, stuffing or dressing of our choice. God bless our bountiful country on this wonderful holiday.
Thank you Jim for you perfect comment! I couldn’t agree more. I find it to be inspiring and wonderful that we all have unique traditions, yet we’re all celebrating our special American holiday! Personally, my Nana was from Brookville PA and made “dressing”, my Grandma was originally from Canada transplanted to MA and she always made stuffing. Funny enough, it was a very similar recipe with cubed stale bread, butter, poultry seasoning, sage, celery & onions. Not sure if there weren’t other additions at times… either way, we loved Thanksgiving, football, stuffing/dressing, etc. and the family get-togethers that went with this magical time!
I heard stuffing inside and dressing outside. I like to make sausage stuffing and put some in the bird and bake some in a casserole dish, then when the turkey is done I mix the stuffing with the dressing. my friend makes the best mashed potato stuffing in the world. it has hamburger and some seasonings he won’t divulge but it’s awesome. we’re both from western Mass.
Here in the South, it is dressing whether you cook it inside the turkey or not. I find cooking it inside the bird to be gross so I always making the dressing/stuffing separately on the top of the stove.
It’s all edible, right? So, who cares??? I call it good food!
Our Thanksgiving turkey always had two stuffings…a bread stuffing on the American model with appropriate seasonings, celery, sage, etc…and in a bow to my maternal Grandmother’s provincial Neapolitan roots…a ricotta stuffing sometimes baked separately in a casserole dish and at other times separate inside the turkey also-
I am a mixture of western PA grandparents on both sides and grew up in East TN. So we had dressing/stuffing made of half cornbread and half regular bread with onion, celery, apple, and seasonings. I now live in FL and continue the tradition. Happy Thanksgiving to all !
Yes, lots of apple…and chestnuts, my dear dad’s favorite,m
I’m from NJ, but on the PA border, so we were heavily influenced by PA. We always called it “filling”. We did not make the PA Dutch potato filling, but still call it filling.
Down South, it is dressing, inside or outside the bird. We always cooked it outside the bird and it included bread AND cornbread mixed together. So no matter what y’all call it up North, down here it is dressing.
Same in Mississippi. I admit, I’m South for Thanksgiving. Looking at the weather report last night, I concluded that was none too soon.
Here’s a curveball……..When it’s in the bird,it’s stuffing of course; but when it is removed and put on your plate,it goes through a metamorphosis and becomes dressing.
This entire thing is all messed up from the very beginning. First, a comparative question is asked, then they ask for a superlative response. Well, either depends on the ingredients used. If given the same ingredients, I think stuffing is better. It’s moister and more flavorful , as it has been cooked inside a turkey, for example. A dish of dressing can certainly be almost as good if the cook has given it proper attention.
I call mine dressing. It’s not dry because I pour the turkey juice over it and mix it well and finish baking it along side the turkey . Made with POTATOES AND TOASTED BREAD .
Stuffing gets stuffed in the bird, dressing is cooked separate to “dress” the turkey.
In Grandma’s home we had stuffing (bread with celery, onions, butter, poultry seasoning) and dressing (gravy with minced hamburger).
I grew up on French Canadian stuffing made of ground pork, mashed potatoes, onion, garlic, cinnamon and cloves. This mixture was also used in our traditional meat pies (tourtieres) eaten on New Year’s Day.
Same in my house. I grew up with meat stuffing.
NH girl here…my mom made ‘stuffing’ with the usual: toasted bread, eggs, seasonings, celery.. i have since added onions and small bits of green pepper…my southern friends and southern husband call it Dressing but make it with cornbread and jalapenos..haaha
Sorry, but you are a New England based publication so your poll results were skewed. If Southern Living had done the poll, you would have found that it is dressing and it is cornbread based, with lots of fresh sage, celery, and onion. That’s just the way it is.
Having lived in Texas a total of 12-1/2 years, I have found that once you go beyond BBQ (which they do very well) southerners have pretty bad taste in food.
The way I see it New Englanders have bland taste. You don’t do grits, an biscuits an gravy an sweet tea. So your taste buds are a little off.
Different strokes for different folks; live and let live! There’s no better or superior choice, cuisine is regional, handed down, traditional, ethnic and innovative! Experiment, try new recipes or not; it’s all about celebrating our shared humanity, family, friends and being grateful what we have together.
While we do have stuffing, even if it is not cooked inside the bird, I do miss my mom’s and sister’s cornbread dressing. It was a work of art. Mom or maybe my dad would make about 4 cakes of cornbread a few days before the big day. We kids would be tasked with crumbling up the slightly stale cornbread, then broth, eggs, onion and celery, the sage that my dad grew in the garden were mixed in with lots of tasting to make sure it was just right. Then it was poured into mom’s casserole dishes and baked at 350. It was so good, both straight out of the oven and as leftovers. I think I’ll attempt some this Thanksgiving. It’s different, but delectable.
I read the very entertaining article and all of the comments. I was a kid in Brooklyn, and remember helping my Italian mother and Austrian-Ukrainian-Polish-etc father get our Thanksgiving turkey ready. We had a sausage stuffing (albeit, it started with a lot of 2-day-old Italian bread, moistened in some milk) with plenty of spices, some salt and pepper, and the usual celery, sage, etc. It was forced into every available nook, cranny, and crevice of that turkey. What didn’t fit was put in a covered casserole and basted with juices from the cooking turkey. They both wound up tasting the same, with the same consistency, due, I’m sure, to the basting process. That one I refer to was about 65 years ago, but the recipe, and the stuffing (not dressing) are the same today.
Growing up in the Merrimack Valley, all I knew was stuffing made with bread, celery, onion and Bell’s seasoning – cooked inside the bird. I had never heard of dressing until I married someone from the south whose family served a cornbread dressing – not cooked inside the bird. My impression is that cooking it in the bird gives a more flavorful moist stuffing; some of the outside-the-bird dressing has been too dry for my liking (although southerners seem to counter that by drenching it in gravy). I eventually evolved my own tradition of cornbread stuffing – inside the bird – using a recipe from James Beard’s American Cookery. Although I am no longer married to a southerner, I have kept my liking for cornbread stuffing and my cornbread stuffing is a favorite with my grown children.
Why debate over something as simple as stuffing. I cook it outside of the bird for safety reasons. As my daughter cannot eat wheat, I am already baking my cornbread, (using half gluten free flour with xanthan gun to leaven it). It gets salt pork (cooked first), sausage (only Jones), chestnuts, onions, apple, carrot, S & P and Bell’s (I add Bell’s to my cornbread before I bake it too). Besides these things, I may throw in anything that crosses my mind that might be good. If you don’t like the savory in Bells, use sage, rosemary and thyme (forget the parseley).
My daughter is cooking the turkey this year and she lives in St. Louis, MO. Here in Massachusetts, we’ve always used “stuffing bread” for our stuffing (that’s the word we use), dense unsliced loaves readily available for purchase. Not so in STL. She can’t find it anywhere, and has garnered looks ranging from confusion to disgust from the many grocers she’s asked about it!! She remembers that it was not for sale in Washington, D.C. either, nor is it available in the San Francisco area, she hears. Do we check a bag full of stuffing bread?!?!
We grew up in MA but have been moving around the country & over seas for the past 25 years. We had a lot of MA or New England favorites that had to be brought with our guests in order to make the holidays, or every day life, more like home! TSA would get a big kick out of what my Mother-in-law would pack in her carry-on (she didn’t trust them to check the food) Fluff, Neccos, Jif, good pastry to name a few.
An American living in Australia that stills celebrates Thanksgiving
My Grandmother always called it dressing, and it was made with oysters….which I never ate, she always called the mealtimes, breakfast, dinner, supper and she was a cook at the school in the fifties, and invited friends to “dinner” and they didnt come, but later that evening there was a knock at the door and they had arrived! they told her around there (oregon) it was breakfast lunch and dinner. ha.
I make the standard stuffing with bread, celery, onions, sage etc. I once added oysters for a change and liked in okay, but prefer the old time plain recipe.
“To dress a turkey or fowl to perfection.
BONE them, and make a force-meat thus: take the flesh of a fowl, cut it small, then take a pound of veal, beat it in a mortar, with half a pound of beef-suet, as much crumbs of bread, some mushrooms, truffles and morels cut small, a few sweet-herbs and parsley, with some nutmeg, pepper, and salt, a little mace beaten, some lemon-peel cut fine; mix all these together, with the yolks of two eggs, then fill your turkey, and roast it. This will do for a large turkey, and so in proportion for a fowl. Let your sauce be good gravy, with mushrooms, truffles and morels in it: then garnish with lemon, and for variety sake you may lard your fowl or turkey.”
~ Hannah Glasse, “The Art of Cookery” (London, 1747).
I grew up with bread and sausage stuffing/dressing. I was told that stuffing is what is placed inside of the bird cavity and cooked. If you need more stuffing then you cook separately and it is called dressing as it goes along side of the bird at the table..So stuffing is what is put inside and cooked in the Bird. Cooked outside of the bird is called dressing and it does not matter what the stuffing is made of.
I’m surprised that no one mentioned stuffing made with New England common crackers, my favorite. But then, it’s probably because common crackers are so hard to find, these days. I am almost 89, so it has been a while since I was young, but I loved helping my mother to make it.
We put the crackers through a hand food chopper to grind them. Melted butter and finely chopped onion was mixed in along with salt, pepper, and poultry seasoning. Hot milk was added. I loved it. Some of it ended up stuffing me before my mother rescued it to stuff the turkey. I don’t remember having it again after leaving home for college, but I’d love to taste it again!
Come to my house! I salute till translucent chopped onion and celery. Add hot milk. Pour over seasoned
(Poultry seasoning, salt and pepper) cubed bread until thoroughly wet. May need more milk. Bake at 350° 1 he or more till crispy. Use in Turkey and as side dish. Both son’s know how to make it and everyone loves it
! Dont know anyone else who makes it except the woman whose mom gave me her recipe 60 years ago!
Yes, this is the recipe I learned growing up, from watching my mother prepare holiday meals. The one difference is we cook the giblets to add to the gravy later, using part of the broth for the stuffing instead of milk.
I remember that my mother’s stuffing was made with common crackers and that it was my job to turn the handle on the grinder.
Stuffing was always that in England. I do remember a humorous story though – at a Carvery (very prominent in England) – I was in line with my ex-mother-in-law – the server asked her if she wanted “dressing” – HUH? came the rely – I said he’s asking you if you want stuffing? -Red faced the server said – we’ve been told not to ask that sir….
That is a very funny story. I will have to remember that one.
My wife mother and grandmother made the same stuffing with ground and boiled giblets, sausage meat, bells seasoning, stuffing bread, celery, onions, chopped apples,
Most interesting!
Expat Rhode Islander here…spent 20+ years in Alabama. They definitely refer to dressing as something totally different from stuffing.
It’s stuffing for me, the old-fashioned Yankee bread stuffing. I even got my wife, a lifelong Alabamian, to make it for me. Nothing’s better. She only makes the dressing if her parents come over.
However, like others stated above, my parents still stuff their turkey with a spinach stuffing in homage to the stuffing my grandmother, a Genoese beauty, used to make. My sisters and brothers use it as well. I’m the lone rebel. 😉
The recipe is the same…BUT if u stuff the Turkey w/it its called STUFFING, and if u do NOT its called Dressing different names but same GREAT TASTE
Great up in NJ with a bread stuffing in the bird. Then moved to Mass. and discovered sausage in stuffing. That’s how I make now.
In our home it was meat stuffing although we are Irish. And my mom made wonderful stuffing…cooked all day in the pantry in a large electric skillet with a kitchen spoon resting beside for tasting ! Then cooled and stuffed in the bird…made the best turkey, stuffing and cranberry sandwiches ever!!!
I loved the comment from Susan Crowle who wrote (inadvertantly, I’m sure) “I salute till transparent chopped onion and celery.” I can’t even type that without smiling at the image of her saluting at her stove. May all out typos give us such good laughs!
My husband calls that spellWRECK and we consider it a whole new funny language!
I like Bob’s comment, “Dressing is what you make but stuffing is how it’s cooked!” It becomes stuffing when cooked inside the bird/meat but it stays dressing when cooked outside. I was born and raised in Louisiana, my whole family from Maine. My mother always made what we called “Yankee” Dressing; white bread, butter, onions, celery, poultry seasoning, salt and pepper. Part was cooked inside the bird and the rest cooked in a pan. I have never heard of Cracker Dressing but it sounds interesting.
In Aroostook County , Maine it’s dressing . Depending on the size of the crowd , the main ingredient is potatoes . Boil, mash , add Bell’s poultry seasoning to taste , salt and pepper . Toast several slices of bread and crumble it into the potatoes , mash together , add Bell’s seasoning as needed . Saute onions and a few celery stalks and mix in . This sits overnight . Thanksgiving day , when the turkey is about an hour from done , pour a good amount of the juice/ drippings into the dressing . Dot with butter ( in a casserole dish ) and bake for 45 minutes to an hour . And this is the correct answer ????
Grammy lived in Maine…we got oyster stuffing
Mmm…..
In my part of Maine, stuffing goes in the bird and dressing comes out of the bird and gets put on the garden!
I always have to make two different types of stuffing (not dressing)…the classic bread, sage, and apple inside the bird, while cornbread and sausage stuffing is made in the oven. Don’t knock cornbread and sausage stuffing until you’ve tried it – for a sweet/salty/spicy combination, there’s nothing like it!
Our family recipe uses the same basic recipe as most folks use, with the exception of a generous quantity of raisins instead of the celery. It’s a crowd-pleaser … and hard to have any left-over for later.
For me, stuffing what what goes into, whether fowl, fish, pork or whatever. But dressing has always been made on the side whether baked or done on the stove top or in a crock-pot. If it don’t get. “Crammed” into then its dressing not stuffing. Lol.
While the ingredients are the same, I have always understood that the difference is in how the mixture is COOKED. Stuffing is exactly what it says – it has been stuffed into the cavity of the bird whichever kind of bird you’re roasting. This allows the mixture to absorb the natural juices released by the bird during roasting thereby adding one additional ingredient to the mixture. Dressing, on the other hand, is baked in the oven in a separate casserole dish where it receives no additional flavors from the roasting process. I grew up in Rhode Island and my father – who was in charge of the turkey roasting in our house – always “stuffed” the turkey with the homemade stuffing that my mother made, using, of course, Bell’s Seasoning.
My mother made a salt pork stuffing, but I don’t remember all the ingredients. I know it was cracker, ground salt pork,onions and spices and we baked it. Does anyone have a recipe for that type of stuffing? We are from Maine. My mom was from York, my dad from Patten.
Stuffing or dressing ,whatever it’s called to my mind as long as it tastes delicious what does it really matter? Wonder if anyone can help me out ,since the start of my marriage my husband has extolled his mother’s stuffing made with small chunks of veal ,eggs and ?? He can’t remember any more ingredients but that is was sweet tasting . To be honest it sounds revolting to me ???? but if anyone has a recipe that sounds like this and willing to share I would love to have it . Could get me major points too!
So, my fathers family is from Germania, upper Midwest Pennsylvania. I’ll throw another name in the turkey…. Filling. They called it filling, dressing was my mothers English family and stuffing was our New England relatives term for this delicious side dish!!!
I was taught dressing is when it’s cooked outside the bird and stuffing is when it’s STUFFED INTO and cooked in the bird. Simple enough.
In Pennsylvania, it’s “filling”, so kind of like stuffing. Dressing was cooked out of the bird…