Dressing or Stuffing?

Since holiday time is arriving, the one thing we see the most of, no matter what else is on the menu is dressing. At least that’s what we call it in the South. On television, they call it stuffing. I guess that’s because they stuff the turkey with it. I can’t imagine anything worse than soggy bread crumbs flavored with sage stuffed up a turkey’s behind. That is what stuffing looks like to me. In rural Southwest Alabama, we make dressing instead. I don’t know why we call it dressing. It must be an ancestral thing. We’ve just always called it that. My Uncle Daddy, who came originally from Ohio called it pudding the first time he saw it. He was used to the soggy bread crumb stuff, so when he saw the nicely browned pan of cornbread dressing, he thought it was some kind of savory bread pudding. I guess by definition, that is what it is. We first cook a pan of cornbread, and then we crumble it up. We add lots of celery, onions, (and a little bell pepper, if we are so inclined), cover it with rich well seasoned broth We may then add some bread or biscuit to give it more body and bind it with eggs. We chop the aforementioned vegetables fine. We may put them in raw or we may sauté them in butter. I prefer to sauté them in butter, the way my friend Patsy taught me. I remember reading in one of Paul Prudhomme’s cookbooks that sautéing the vegetables gives more definition to the flavor for most dishes. I know that is true of dressing.

One thing that I find totally amazing is how legions of people can take the same recipe and it will taste entirely different from one cook to the next. Dressing is the most outstanding example of this. The dressing that my two grandmothers made was made identically in process, but tasted like two different recipes. Both were good, but nothing alike.

I guess that dressing is my favorite food of all time. I used to work with senior citizens and each of the 17 groups would have a Thanksgiving dinner every year. I had dressing 17 times, plus the family gatherings. I never got tired of it. We had it again at our holiday banquet. Nobody complained about too much dressing.

Stuffing just can’t hold a candle to dressing. The only really delicious stuffing I ever had was some made by my neighbor from Wisconsin when she roasted a chicken. It had toasted bread cubes, onions, celery and walnuts. I wasn’t expecting much, but it was good. It was not stuffed up the chicken’s behind. It was fixed on the stove in a pan. It was not the least bit soggy and not overly sagey, but it still wasn’t southern dressing.

I think the thing that makes dressing so good is the cornbread base. When the vegetables are added, they just seem to disappear into the dressing. The cornbread binds them together. The dish just seems to undergo some kind of alchemy that make the whole greater than the sum of its parts. Dressing does one thing. The turkey may not be stuffed, but the diners are. Maybe a better way to put it is that we are happily replete. Dressing is one of those comfort foods that we can never get enough of. We don’t have to wait for a turkey to stuff. We can get dressing any time. We eat it all year around, but we love it most during the holidays. We’re about to begin the feasting time of the year. Gentlemen, start your ovens! We’re off the a race through the holidays with a pan of dressing on every table.