Thanksgiving can be stressful. For many this holiday, families come together only to be torn apart by the same deep disagreement that divides dining tables across America. Late November can easily bring the exasperation of having the same argument, with that same uncle, once again, suspecting your well-reasoned position may never break through to him. I refer, of course, to the question of which Thanksgiving side is the best.
Fortunately for all, there is a clear answer to this conundrum: stuffing. Stuffing (or dressing, if you prefer) is not only the best Thanksgiving side; it is the perfect Thanksgiving side.
Perhaps you've seen the meme: a collage of typical Thanksgiving sides with the caption "one must go." Whenever the challenge appears on social media, comment sections overflow with criticism of the respective dishes each user would take off the table. And those criticisms are often valid, as most Thanksgiving sides have clear, common pitfalls. Mashed potatoes can turn out chalky or gluey or underseasoned, fit only as a vehicle for gravy. Vegetables might be boiled beyond any recognition, much less any flavor. Even at its best, cranberry sauce might be too sweet or too tart for any given person's taste, and it's nearly impossible to make a good version on your own if you don't want to use the canned stuff. And then there's the turkey, dry as sand more often than not.
Not so with stuffing. It is genuinely difficult to "mess up" stuffing, and there are many different ways to make it right. Whether you plate up stuffing that's crispy or soft or a mix of both, whether it came straight from a box or was assembled meticulously from scratch and roasted inside the turkey, it'll be good. It's one of the more flexible Thanksgiving recipes—you can make stuffing in oven, slow cooker, or on the stove, wherever there's room in between other, less forgiving dishes. What's more, stuffing holds up extremely well to experimentation. You can throw in jalapeños, or oysters, or use cornbread, or swap out some of the turkey or chicken stock for cooking wine.
What's necessary to make stuffing stuffing? Herbs, aromatics, carbs, meat (though mushrooms make an excellent substitute). In other words, all the best things in any Thanksgiving meal. Best of all, stuffing stands on its own; it never needs a blanket of gravy or a cloud covering of marshmallows. Even dry stuffing—unlike, say, flavorless mashed potatoes—will taste and smell distinctly like Thanksgiving.
By bringing so much together into one dish, stuffing offers a preview of the leftovers, the best part of the Thanksgiving meal, when you Frankenstein's-monster up a plate of whatever happens to have made it into the fridge the next day. If you like Thanksgiving, you like stuffing, and vice versa.
Stuffing, in short, is the everything side. There is nothing that better represents the holiday, and nothing else ties together all the different parts of the meal like stuffing does. It is a reminder that, no matter how many mistakes get made with each different contribution to the feast, it's still all better together than apart.
Philip Jeffery is deputy opinion editor at Newsweek.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
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