I don't make dressing anymore, but this one popped up on Facebook recently and has me rethinking that tradition. The person posting made a few tweaks ... garlic, Old Bay Seasoning, and dry sherry. Sounds good to me!

Shrimp and Grits Dressing

1 pound peeled, medium-size raw shrimp

3 cups chicken broth

1/2 tsp. salt

1/4 tsp. ground red pepper

1 cup uncooked regular grits

1/2 cup butter

3 large eggs, lightly beaten

1 red bell pepper, diced

1 cup fine, dry breadcrumbs

1 cup chopped green onions

1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Devein shrimp, if desired.

Bring broth and next two ingredients to a boil in a large saucepan over
medium-high heat. Whisk in grits, and return to a boil; reduce heat to
low, and stir in butter. Cover and simmer, stirring occasionally, 10
minutes or until liquid is absorbed. Remove from heat.

Stir together eggs and next four ingredients in a large bowl. Gradually
stir about one-fourth of hot grits mixture into egg mixture; add egg
mixture to remaining hot grits mixture, stirring constantly. Stir in
shrimp until well blended. Pour grits mixture into a lightly greased
11-x 7-inch baking dish.

Bake at 325 degrees for 55 minutes to 1 hour or until mixture is set. Let stand 10 minutes.

http://www.wellseasonedlife.net/2011/11/shrimp-and-grits-dressing-my-new.html

I make the dressing in the slow cooker now. I did it for the first time 5 years ago and every one loves it. It l'm away from my laptop right now but if you do a search at the top of the page l've posted the recipe a few times.

Thanks but that is not really traditional for Thanksgiving plus my MIL is allergic to shellfish.

I make my own concoction using Pepperidge Farm seasoned bread cubes.

I use fake sausage now, my SIL is a vegetarian, but it's still tasty. I love cranberries.

1 cup butter

3 medium celery stalks (with leaves), chopped (1 1/2 cups)

3/4 cup finely chopped onion

1 lb breakfast sausage

a bag or two of bread cubes

1 can whole berry cranberry sauce

Broth to moisten

1 1/2 teaspoons salt or to taste

1/2 teaspoon pepper

Poultry seasoning (I use Bell's) to taste, if necessary

Directions

• In large skillet, melt butter over medium heat. Break up and cook sausage. Cook celery and onion in butter, stirring frequently, until onion is tender. Stir in about one-third of the bread cubes. Place in large bowl. Add remaining ingredients and bread cubes; toss (or mix with your hands).
• Put in oiled baking dish and bake with the turkey

I can't wrap my head around a "recipe for dressing"...
I Begin with chopped onion and chopped celery, the amount depends on the size of the bird....which also indicates how many are coming for dinner.
I put a stick of butter in a large...I mean BIG like 14 inch....and add at least one good sized onion and 4 or 5 sticks of celery....both well chopped....If the crowd looks to be large I will add another small onion and a bit more celery....saute slowly until soft. Then add bread crumbs. You need to buy a loaf of good French or Italian bread, cut in into slices and spread it out and let it dry a bit, then put it in the Cuisinart on the shredding disc and make rough crumbs. Add that to the vegetables and the butter....add maybe, 5 or 6 cups for 1 stick of butter....toss until the butter is absorbed and sprinkle on dried rubbed sage.... about 1 tsp....or your own fresh sage....about 1 tablespoon, minced. Add thyme leaves, fresh is best, easily 1 tsp fresh, 1/2 tsp dried leaves....I also like to add 1/2 tsp dry marjoram. Then beat a couple of eggs and add to the mix.
Toss and add chicken broth....until it's the consistancy you like... easily 1 quart...more if you like it soft.
Give it a good grind of black pepper and the juice of half a lemon....more fi the lemon isn't juicy....taste. Perhaps add more salt? Maybe it needs a little sweetness? Add some chopped apples...
That will make a heaping 8 1/2 by 11 dish....cover with foil AND BAKE...MAKE SURE THE EGGS ARE COOKED.

I second the slow cooker method, esp if you like a moist dressing. I don't like mine crusty, but some people do, so the slow cooker doesn't really work well for that style. I always follow a recipe, just to get the proportions of veggies and bread somewhat close to reasonable. I like Pepperidge farm, too and usually look at the recipe on the back of the package.

Thank you all. Lindac92, The reason I need a recipe is that I grew up in a Russian household and my mother never made dressing and my MIL and others usually stuff their turkey which I would prefer not to do. Plus, unlike you, I am not an intuitive cook so tend to follow recipes slavishly .

Here are a few I have used over the years:

Thanksgiving
Stuffing (My Mom’s)

1 lb.
sausage meat

3 stalks
celery, diced fine

1 lg.
green pepper, diced fine

1 lg.
onion, diced fine

12 oz.
fresh mushrooms, diced fine

1 lb.
package Pepperidge Farm Herb Stuffing Mix

Boiling water, turkey or chicken stock. (I use turkey
stock.)

Liver and heart from turkey, sautéed in butter and
minced.

Scramble sausage meat until no pink shows. Remove meat
from fat. Sauté vegetables in sausage fat until crisp tender. Remove from fat.
In a large bowl, mix meats, vegetables and stuffing mix. Add boiling water
until stuffing is desired consistency. Butter a baking dish, add mixture and
bake at 325 for 1 hour.

Sausage Potato
Stuffing

1 lb. sausage roll

1 tbs. oil

1 medium onion, finely chopped

3 medium celery stalks, finely chopped

1 1/2 tsp. each of dried sage and thyme

Salt and pepper to taste

5 lbs. potatoes, peeled

Chicken or turkey stock to just cover potatoes for
cooking.

Simmer potatoes in stock until just cooked (do not over
cook) and rice. (Or dice potatoes in ½” dice prior to cooking.)

Combine sausage meat in a large bowl and break up with a
fork; season with salt and pepper. In a
large skillet, add oil and saute onion, celery, and mushrooms for about 10
minutes, or until vegetables are soft. Season to taste with, fresh or dried
sage, thyme, and oregano. Add meat mixture and cook over medium heat until sausage
is cooked and lightly browned. Drain fat.
Add the meat /vegetable mixture to the potatoes. Mix well and
refrigerate. If using to stuff a turkey, chill thoroughly before filling the
bird. If baking on the side, proceed as follows. Heat oven to 350 degrees. Bake
the dressing in a large covered casserole for 1 hour. Remove the cover and bake
for another 20 minutes to brown the top.

Wild Rice,
Chestnut and Apple Stuffing

2 pkgs Kashi 7 grain pilaf

1 cup wild rice

4 1/2 cups chicken stock

1 1/2 cups cider

1 tbs. Olive oil

3 shallots minced

1 small bunch scallions, sliced

3/4 cups chestnuts, chopped

2 tsp. Butter

2 apples, diced

2 tsp. fresh thyme, minced

2 tsp. fresh rosemary, minced

2 tsp. fresh sage, minced

Salt and pepper

Cook the pilaf with 3 cups of stock, 1 cup cider
according to package directions. Cook wild rice in 1 1/2 cups stock, 1/2 cup
cider until just tender. While rice is cooking, saute chestnuts with butter
over medium heat until crunchy about 3 minutes. Drain chestnuts on paper
towels. Drain cooked wild rice and add to cooked pilaf, add olive oil and stir
to mix. Add remaining ingredients to pilaf, stir to incorporate. Cool mixture
and then fluff with a meat fork. (Do not skip this step.)

Place stuffing in baking dish and bake covered at 350 for
30-45 minutes until heated through.

Harvest Stuffing

1 lb.
ground pork

3 stalks
celery, diced fine

1 lg.
onion, diced fine

12 oz.
fresh mushrooms, diced fine

2 Granny
Smith apples, diced

¼ cup
dried cranberries, diced fine

1 lb.
toasted stale whole wheat bread cubes

2 cloves
garlic minced

¼ cup
ground walnuts

1-2 tsp.
brown sugar

1-2 tsp.
cinnamon

Boiling water or turkey/chicken stock to soften stuffing

Scramble sausage meat until no pink shows. Remove meat
from fat. Sauté vegetables and apples in sausage fat until crisp tender. Remove
from fat. In a large bowl, mix meat, vegetables, seasonings, walnuts and bread.
Add boiling water until stuffing is desired consistency. Butter a baking dish,
add mixture and bake at 325 for 1 hour.

Natalie, I've made this one several times since it first appeared in Bon Appetit 20 years ago. I like that I can make it a day ahead, reheat for the meal. When doing it that way ahead, I'll bake it about 25 minutes, cool, cover and chill in the refrigerator. Take it out of the refrigerator several minutes before you want to finish baking, then transfer to the oven for another 20 minutes. Drizzle with a little more chicken broth if it begins to look too dry but I like it nicely browned.

I don't always have the variety mushrooms the recipe calls for either, any that look good in any combination and are affordable are fine! I've made it with a generous amount of all crimini, still a hit.

Bon Appetit Three Mushroom dressing

lindac's recipe, sans eggs and substituting poultry seasoning for the herbs, is pretty much the way my mother made her dressing and so do I.

I make it like Lindac, but I use mostly white cornbread and a little bit of rolls or biscuits or other bread.

Here's my recipe such as it is. It's something you just make and don't really measure!

Thanksgiving Dressing

Cornbread pre-baked days or weeks before and frozen, then
thawed in refrigerator

Store bought white bread toasted on both sides, then broken into pieces.

Crumble cornbread and toast into a large bowl

Chop celery, onion and red pepper into small dice. About 1 ½
cups of each.

Add 2 eggs

Turkey broth, best with homemade broth but store bought
works. Add enough turkey broth to the
mixture so that it’s a little soupy.

Add salt, pepper, sage and poultry seasoning to taste. Yes,
taste it with the raw egg.

Place in a 9x13 baking dish and bake at 350 until firm, 45
minutes to 1 hour.

Jasdip, I know you would cut the amount of broth but what do you start with? Thanks so much for all your help. I am really looking forward to using this recipe next weekend.

Start out with 1 cup when mixing everything together. Just add more till it feels right. I don't remember ever using 4 cups of broth.

I'm making it for just the 2 of us next weekend; cut way back in volume, and it'll be a guessing game on amounts of stuff to use. I have some apples, and I'm thinking of tossing an apple in there as well. I remember my aunt always used to put apples and nuts (walnuts I assume) in her stuffing when I was a kid. I loved it.

It all really depends on just how dry those bread cubes are.

I checked my dressing recipe that's in my binder, and I use 2 cups of broth. The original recipe calls for 4 1/2 cups, but I wrote down 2 cups because that's all I needed. So just use what you need, start out with about 1 1/2 cups. And like Linda said, it all depends on your bread. I always mix the dressing with my hands so that I get a feel for it.

Thank you Jasdip for your dressing recipe! Even my MIL a die hard stuffer said it was delicious. Made Ina Garten' s Accidental Turkey (modified since I used autoroast on my Miele oven) and it was great. One thing I did was cover the breast with a bag of frozen peas while the turkey was coming to room temp before roasting. This kept the breast cooler than th legs so when I took the turkey out at 165 as measured in the breast, the thighs were at 175. The breast was juicy due to Ina's dry brine recipe. All in all a great Hanksgiving dinner. Hope all fellow Canadians on this board had a great holiday too.

Happy Thanksgiving to you as well Natalie, from Vancouver BC. Glad your T dinner turned out great. :). Our T dinner is today and our home is redolent with the luscious scents of sage savoury and cinnamon sweet. :)

Natalie, I'm so glad it turned out for you!!! I made a turkey breast for the first time ever, and we had the slow-cooker dressing as well.

@natiliewhatley: " One thing I did was cover the breast with a bag of frozen peas while the turkey was coming to room temp before roasting. This kept the breast cooler than th legs so when I took the turkey out at 165 as measured in the breast, the thighs were at 175." That is just brilliant IMO. Thank you for sharing this wonderful tip.

I read this somewhere so can't take the credit but it did work.

Well that's ingenious!....could use anything frozen....something I used to keep in my freezer was a zip lock bag with a wash cloth wet with a mix of alcohol and water....so it got slushy....good for owies.....and keeping a turkey breast cool.

Aren't you supposed to thaw frozen turkey in the fridge and not to room temp? Just asking.

The turkey is thawed (but I bought a fresh one). I dry brined it in the fridge for two days as in Ina Garten's Accidental Turkey recipe. The third night I left it in the fridge naked to dry the skin. The day of cooking, I took it out of the fridge 1 1/2 hours before to get to room temp before roasting but I put a bag of frozen peas on the breast to keep it cooler than the legs nd thighs. Then I roasted it as per usual on auto roast which sears at 450 and then drops to 325 for the rest of the time. Auto roast on my Miele oven does this automatically and is a convection setting. However, Ina gives the same kind of instruction for regular oven - sear at 450 for 45 minutes (I think but you could ch ck since the recipe is online) and then turns the temp down to 325. The only thing she does differently is put the turkey in feet first which is not necessary in a convection oven. I did put the thermometer into the breast (looking straight down put it in perpendicular to the kbreast bone in the deepest part of the breast avoiding touching the bone). I took the bird out when the thermometer reached 165. That allowed the legs to get to 175 or so which is better for dark meat. This prevented the breast from over cooking and drying out. I also rated it lightly tented for 30 minutes. The bird was not stuffed.

Regardless, if you read it somewhere, Natalie, you shared it with us. Thanks again.

Natalie, if the typos worry you, you can edit them. In gray above your own reply posts are two clickable words/symbols. The one on the left is Edit, and the one on the right is Delete. If you add, subtract or change something significant, it's good form to call attention to it, and say "Edited to Add" or "ETA" "Deleted a piece of misinformation" or some other thing to let people know it has changed. For formatting, typos, clarifications, etc., just go ahead and fix it.

For your top, original post, there's an edit button underneath that expires quickly so people won't be responding to something that has changed and create confusion (I so infer), so it's good to review it a couple of times after posting to make sure it looks right, while you can still fix it. For all the following posts in a thread, you can even edit what you might have posted on the old Gardenweb.

I'm not awake enough to tell if there's anything that requires editing in your post. I'm just following up on your typo message.

Thanks, pillog. I did go in and correct my typos. I hadn't noticed the edit/delete buttons before.