It Isn't Thanksgiving Without Ree's Favorite Dressing (2024)

FAQs

What does dressing mean Thanksgiving? ›

Stuffing and dressing are commonly used as different names for the same thing—a dish consisting of bits of bread (or other starchy things) and various seasonings. The dish can be made by stuffing it (hence the name) inside a turkey or other bird that will be roasted, or by baking or cooking it separately.

If you're throughout much of Dixie, the Deep South, you're going to have lots of marshmallows melting on top of your sweet potatoes. Jane Stern: You can divide the U.S. in half by stuffing versus dressing. In the South, it's called dressing. In the Northeast, it's called stuffing.

"Stuffing is cooked in the cavity of the turkey, so the juices soak into the ingredients, making it more flavorful. Dressing gets cooked on its own and needs extra liquid to make it flavorful." So stuffing is cooked inside the bird. Dressing is cooked outside the bird, usually in a casserole dish.

The earliest documentary evidence is the Roman cookbook, Apicius De Re Coquinaria, which contains recipes for stuffed chicken, dormouse, hare, and pig. Most of the stuffings described consist of vegetables, herbs and spices, nuts, and spelt (a cereal), and frequently contain chopped liver, brains, and other organ meat.

1. a sauce for food, esp for salad. 2. US and Canadian. a mixture of chopped and seasoned ingredients with which poultry, meat, etc, is stuffed before cooking.

Another good option is a comfortable dress. Just keep it all casual, nothing over the top since it's only a casual family gathering.

While most New Englanders and the majority of West Coasters referred to the dish as “stuffing,” about half of Texans and the majority of Southerners call it “dressing.” Likewise, while most other parts of the country use a base of dried bread, many Texans instead opt for cornbread or dried biscuits.

One funny thing about “stuffing” is that, in Texas, some people say “stuffing” and some people say “dressing.” Traditionally, it was called stuffing, because you stuffed the turkey with it. Other families don't like to stuff the turkey at all – and prepare it in a pan, calling it dressing.

As with many food traditions in the U.S., regional loyalties to stuffing vs dressing abound. Many Southerners are die-hard dressing fans, while Northerners tend to prefer stuffings, but these are not hard and fast rules. Nor is the language used to describe either dish.

What Wasn't Served at the First Thanksgiving. It is also worth noting what was not present at the first Thanksgiving feast. There were no cloudlike heaps of mashed potatoes, since white potatoes had not yet crossed over from South America.

What is the most popular Thanksgiving side dish? ›

The most popular Thanksgiving side in the U.S. is mashed potatoes, which reigns supreme in 9 states. The second most popular side is rolls, being favored by Utah, Florida, North Carolina, and West Virginia. 74% of Americans expect to be eating at least 4 side dishes on Thanksgiving.

His dedication runs so deep that he dresses up in period clothes and cooks food of the African diaspora at restored plantations. He traces cornbread dressing back to kush, a kind of cornbread scramble created by enslaved Africans who had to make do with antebellum rations.

But for the Thanksgiving side dish in the South, the term dressing was adopted in place of stuffing, which was viewed as a crude term, during the Victorian era. Although dressing and stuffing are interchangeable terms, the signature ingredient of this Thanksgiving side dish in the South is cornbread.

But according to the two only remaining historical records of the first Thanksgiving menu, that meal consisted of freshly killed deer, assorted wildfowl, cod, bass, and flint, and a native variety of corn harvested by the Native Americans, which was eaten as corn bread and porridge.

It's commonly called stuffing if it's cooked inside the bird. It's usually referred to as dressing if baked separately in a meal. Nonetheless, the language employed can vary depending on personal and regional preferences. Regardless of the cooking technique, some individuals use the terms interchangeably.

Dressing percentage is calculated by dividing the warm carcass weight by the shrunk live weight of the animal and expressing the result as a percentage. For example, suppose that an animal delivered to the packing plant weighs 1300 pounds. After being killed, the hide, head, feet and gut are removed.

: a sauce for adding to a dish (such as a salad)

The stuffing that most of us associate with Thanksgiving, with sage and onions and celery, comes from New England, where Thanksgiving was celebrated long before it became a national holiday, and where those flavors were in season in November.

There's no specific date for when stuffing was first invented, but there is evidence of stuffing made from spelt, herbs, and vegetables in an ancient Roman document, according to Tasting Table. And while it's not clear whether or not stuffing was on the first Thanksgiving menu, it did become more popular in the 1800s.