Dressing that tasted like stuffing - Success!
Every year since my daughter got married there has been conflict over stuffing the turkey vs. making it on the outside. I have never stuffed a bird, but then again only half of us even eat dressing so that would be a waste, and frankly I don't have a clue how to do it. My son-in-law insists that it has to be inside the bird for the right flavor. Last year we ended up having 2 turkeys. One was roasted and stuffed, his recipes, the other was deep fried, and I did not bring my dressing. End result was the roasted turkey was dry, the stuffing was mushy and bland. He was even disappointed. The fried turkey was delicious.
This year I got an 18 lb turkey for the fryer and he got a 12 lb turkey to roast. My daughter convinced him to let me do the dressing, and to put the little turkey away. There were only 8 of us, and 2 are children. So to be nice I had to get that turkey drippings flavor into the dressing. I made a nice rice turkey stock, used my recipe for a herb sauce, and used that to moisten the dressing mixture. Then when I put it in the oven I also put in some smoked turkey wings, as they cooked I poured the drippings off of them into the dressing. I did put one wing directly on top of the dressing and that really made a difference. For the gravy, the day before I roasted some raw turkey wings with onion and got the drippings off of them to add to the gravy. That worked well. Both him and his dad were very impressed with both the dressing and the gravy. As a matter of fact that was the first thing his dad complimented. Now I have to write it all down so I remember how to do it again.
By danhole
on Nov 28, 2008 08:05 AM
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I don't stuff the turkey either so I love your use of the roasted raw and smoked turkey wings. That was brilliant!
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Thanks Gio. That means a lot, coming from you!
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i don't stuff, either. and i'm with gio: innovative genius, you are. i LOVE deep-fried turkey!!!
;-D
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I'm getting a late start on this and I forgot to get raw turkey wings to roast. I have 3 smoked turkey legs, so I hope this works! I'll report back!
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Hey, what a great idea! I hope it turns out well this year, too.
Too late for us this year, but, I'll bookmark this for next year. Happy Thanksgiving!
~TDQ
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Well, I chickened out and sent my husband to get some raw turkey wings. I am really glad I did, since the juices from the smoked ones was a smoky-sweet flavor. Very odd flavor that I did not want to use. The problem with the raw ones was they looked defrosted but out of the package they were frozen on the bottom, so it took twice as long to roast. It still turned out very well. There was a discussion at the table about the terms dressing vs stuffing. I said I had made dressing, but my son in law said that it was so good it deserved to be called stuffing!
Hope you all had a happy turkey day!
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