Posted by Jenn Smith, November 19, 2007 at 6:45 PM
I've always been a stuffing purist; until this weekend I'd never eaten stuffing made from a mix. But when I noticed Canterbury Organics' stuffing mixes on the shelves of Whole Foods last week, branded in muted oranges and browns like a feature in a lifestyle magazine and promising to "delight the palate," I was curious. It looked as though it might taste good.
It got me thinking: Now that natural food companies are in on the packaged-food and semi-homemade trend, is there a broad enough range of mixes on the market to have a taste test? If I was going to taste one end of the packaged-stuffing spectrum, I was going to taste the full spectrum.
After the jump, the results of the Serious Eats taste test of eight packaged stuffing mixes, along with some suggestions on jazzing up your store-bought stuffing.
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Posted by The Serious Eats Team, November 14, 2007 at 8:00 AM
When we talked to Bon Appétit editor in chief Barbara Fairchild about the November 2007 issue of the magazine, we asked her what her favorite Thanksgiving recipes from the issue were. This chutney, published here courtesy of Fairchild and Bon Appétit, was one of them. Here's what she said about it: "It's easy, different, and I like the texture. Plus, it's foolproof, so I'm giving it to a friend who never cooks the other 364 days of the year."
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Posted by Robyn Lee, November 12, 2007 at 11:43 AM
Although Ed Levine is a self-proclaimed semi-homemadeoholic when it comes to preparing Thanksgiving dinner, he does have a few tried-and-true recipes that he can count on to make the meal less "semi-homemade" and just plain "homemade." He admittedly uses Pepperidge Farm cubed cornbread stuffing instead of the homemade bread that the recipe recommends, but says, "This stuffing turns out so good I can't imagine actually making the Silver Palate stuffing recipe comes out any better."
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Posted by Jenn Smith, November 6, 2007 at 4:00 PM
Thanksgiving is about welcoming everyone to the table, and sometimes that means accommodating specific dietary restrictions. An increasingly common dietary need is that food be prepared without wheat, as the gluten present is intolerable by people with allergies and celiac disease.
Jacqueline Mallorca's The Wheat Free Cook collects recipes that substitute for—or are built on an absence of—this problematic ingredient, and includes a chapter on gluten-free groceries.
While her recipe for stuffing on one level simply substitutes rice-flour bread (available at many grocery stores including Trader Joe's and Whole Foods) for the traditional white or cornbread, it is nice to be able to follow tried-and-true proportions developed especially to factor the change in bread texture, so that your final product ends up crumbly but moist.
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Posted by Jenn Smith, October 31, 2007 at 2:45 PM
The "my" of this recipe's title is James Beard, who observed that "American food is anything you eat at home". As no meal is more associated with home cooking than Thanksgiving, and no food writer was a greater champion of our country's regional cooking, it seems fitting to select a recipe for the Great American Bird from James Beard's American Cookery. The recipe has simple flavors to let the taste of the turkey take center stage, and gives step-by-step for trussing. It's also a nostalgic choice: my grandmother made giblet gravy according to Beard's instructions.
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Posted by Jenn Smith, October 30, 2007 at 3:15 PM
Jean Anderson's A Love Affair With Southern Cooking is equal parts recipe collection, autobiography, and anecdotal history of the people and places that have influenced the food of the South. Taken as a whole it is the lovely, chatty product of her lifetime of curiosity about America's most distinct regional cuisine and includes a number of dishes that would fit well into a classic Thanksgiving dinner.
Stuffing or dressing: What do you do? According to Anderson, baking on the side is safer than stuffing the bird. I made her corn bread dressing this weekend (I'll admit to cheating and using corn bread mix), and it was surprisingly light and very tasty. This Southern classic may become my new turkey standard.
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