So which is it, stuffing or dressing?

[hedgehog]

Tell us where you live, too, so we can see if this is a regional thing.

We could have a dozen polls on this; giblets or no giblets, corn bread or wheat, sausage or not...

:D

[redqueen]

1. Doesn't it depend on

whether it's cooked in the bird or in a pan?

[hedgehog]

2. I think that question deserves its own seperate poll! There are people out there convinced that if

the stuffing grazes the turkey, everyone in 50 miles dies of salmonella!

[LaydeeBug]

3. It's stuffing if it's in the bird, dressing if it's not. So it's both. nt

[1Hippiechick]

4. We cook the bread/sage concoction in a separate pan. Was always warned about stuffing the cavity -

if overstuffed and not cooked thoroughly b/c of the drippings from the bird, one could get food poisoning.

[Jamastiene]

5. Around my house, we never actually stuffed a turkey at all.

My mother has always made dressing to the side with canned chicken as the main ingredient.

According to both my mother and my aunt, stuffing a turkey is a recipe for salmonella unless you cook the bird a long time. Then again, if you get tired of basting or forget to baste, you get a dry turkey and done stuffing. Or you get a moist turkey and salmonella from the stuffing.

So, I call it stuffing, because my lazy butt uses Stove Top. I still prepare it separate from the turkey using water heated in the microwave.

My mother sends over some dressing for later, because that's what her recipe card calls what she makes; dressing.

My aunt smiles and eats both and tells us both that she doesn't care what we call either one of them. She likes both. As a matter of fact, she suggested we have both my mother's dressing and a my Stove Top stuffing this year.

I swear she's becoming more and more like that plant in Little Shop of Horrors every day. Feeeed Meeeeee! I cooked hash browns for her last night and less than 30 minutes later, she wanted toast with sugar and butter on it.