From Alton Brown:

"When it comes to turkey, stuffing is evil. That’s because stuffing goes into the middle of the bird and is extremely porous. That means as the turkey around it cooks, juices that may contain salmonella bacteria soak into the stuffing, which then must be cooked to a minimum of 165 degrees F in order to be safe."

dcarch

I have been stuffing my turkey for 34 years with no ill effects. Onion, celery, dried bread cubes, salt and pepper, sage and a stick or two of butter depending on how much stuffing I need to make and chicken or turkey broth.

2 loaves of bread and a potato for each person, would have to be a 50 pound bird to fit all that into. Sounds very like a potato dumpling....without the parsley. No liquid in that dressing?
I do both, in and out...just like the burgers! LOL!. I usually do 12 cups of dry bread crumbs, couple of sticks of butter and sautee 2 onions ahout half a head of celery, a good handfull of parsley chopped fine....when the veggies are soft, add the bread crumbs, toss to mix with chicken broth and a couple of beaten eggs....add crumbled sage leaves and thyme to taste...usually about 1 teaspoon of each, unless it's fresh, then I add more thyme....and about 1 tsp fresh ground black pepper..Add chicken broth until it's the consistancy you like. For the stuff in the bird, I like it a little dry, as it picks up moisture from the bird and I hate mucky dressing. The stuff in the casserole dish gets more broth and dotted with butter before putting into a covered dish in the oven.

Linda - our turkey is rarely less than 24 pounds. I stuff the body cavity and the neck cavity, holding it closed with the flap of skin and toothpicks. Yes, there is always some stuffing leftover. The excess gets heated on the stove and mixed with the stuffing that comes out of the turkey when it's done.

dcarch: Been doing it this way for 50 years (I cooked my first turkey dinner when I was 12 years old) and like Kathy, I've never had anyone get sick.

The danger of stuffing in a turkey is well documented. But cooking it to safe temperature will completely eliminate the danger. The problem of cooking stuffing to safe temperature is overcooking the meat. Fortunately, when that happens, there is gravy. Gravy on overcooked turkey is still very delicious.

I do cook with stuffing inside the bird. Here is how I do it, taking advantage of the law of thermal dynamics:

1, Remove all bones inside the turkey without opening up the turkey. Yes, it can be done.

2. Pre-cook stuffing to 175F.

3. Immediately insert hot stuffing into the turkey. In fact, the hot stuffing is cooking the turkey from inside out.

4. Because the turkey is completely boneless, I can flatten the turkey substantially making it much easier for heat conduction.

Here is the wonderful part about doing it this way. You get all the bones plus the giblets to make a wonderful stock for the stuffing in advance. The totally boneless whole turkey, with stuffing inside makes it very easy for carving, serving and presentation. There is no need to scoop out the stuffing separately in a messy way. You will not need to overcook the bird to be safe. Very tender and juicy meat!

I can't find my pictures for turkey, but I do stuffed chickens the same way.

dcarch

This whole turkey is completely boneless

Stuffed boneless chicken, with crispy skin

In the bird......both ends. I do a 20 lb plus bird but there is never enough room for all the stuffing we want. So I also do some dressing. ,.....which is not stuffing.

The whole point is to have enough stuffing/ dressing for a sandwich the next day

<<The whole point is to have enough stuufing/ dressing for a sandwich the next day>>. Oh, yeah :-)

Like others, I've done mine in for decades and not poisoned anyone yet. In Australia I don't think anyone has heard of the concept of making it in a separate baking dish. I do a bread stuffing in the main cavity and MIL's sausagemeat stuffing in the neck end.

I'm coming up on 65 years, and stuffing in the bird has not killed me yet...

I also put the stuffing in the bird, and I recently saw an episode of "Good Eats" where Alton Brown admitted that he was wrong about stuffing in the bird, that it can be done safely. You need to update, dcarch, as I can't find it right now, there's just too many stuffing recipes coming up on Thanksgiving! (grin)

Mine is the "normal" average greasy bread. I don't like it at all, but my family likes white bread, onions, celery, sage and seasonings, moistened with broth and stuffed into the bird. It has to be moist, not dry. Elery, my DH, would prefer a corn bread dressing, not stuffed into the bird, and not moist. Since my daughter Amanda has been diagnosed as being celiac, I've gotten better at the cornbread dressing thing.

Annie

"----I'm coming up on 65 years, and stuffing in the bird has not killed me yet..."

Make America Safe Again!

Buy a thermometer! :-)

dcarch

I'm 63 and have never yet gotten sick from eating stuffing cooked inside the turkey. I stuff it at both ends and then always have extra and I bake it in a separate casserole but I add more broth and a couple of eggs. My stuffing is usually either all cornbread or a mixture of cornbread and regular bread and I add sauteed onion, celery, sage bulk sausage, bell's seasoning and broth. I like the stuffing that is cooked in the turkey best.

I always put the stuffing in the bird until a few years ago
when I started making Make Ahead Gravy. Now I buy extra necks, wings and backs
and make extra turkey broth. I use that extra broth and fat to make the
stuffing. I bake the stuffing/dressing in a casserole and everyone thinks it is
baked in the bird. The pluses are I can brown the top of the stuffing for added
flavor., the bird cooks quicker and there is no risk of contaminated stuffing.

We are only a tad over two weeks from T-Day and this thread ( and the other stuffing one) has driven me to do a stuffed roast chicken for dinner........you are all enablers!

My neighbour gave me a boneless-skinless turkey breast. I've been looking at recipes to decide how best to cook it. That will be our Thanksgiving dinner, as well as slow-cooker stuffing.

chase, I'm glad to see you. I think I might have to celebrate Canadian Thanksgiving too, just so I can have turkey twice. I really like turkey, I don't know why I don't make it more often. Add some of LindaC's cranberry jezebel on the side and it's a holiday meal!

Annie

I really like turkey too but it's really only in the shops around Christmas time :-(

Yes, Annie Linda's Cranberry Jezebel is a must !!!!

I keep a jar of that, sealed in a canning jar in the refrig at all times....it's so good on a pork roast.
I also love turkey....and it's so cheap....and easy. If you were smart enough to buy a fresh turkey on sale the day after thanksgiving and cut it up and freeze is you can roast half a breast and a drumstick any time.

Our frozen turkeys are all on sale now around 99c/lb. I like small ones and I found a 9-lb one for the freezer. It was the smallest I could find. At 99c, turkeys are cheaper than chicken per lb.

Inside and outside. Stuff both ends of the bird and bake the rest in a pie tin. Oyster dressing, here.

I prefer dressing - that is, stuffing baked in a casserole - especially when you can butter the casserole lavishly & dot more butter over the top. I like buttery crunchiness!

a stuffing bag solves food poisoning issue since if you use it like Alton brown did in his demonstration the stuffing is hot in bag before it goes into bird.

there is also a method that uses a kitchen torch to scorch the inside of bird before cooking begins but I have never tried it. it is suppose to prevent the inside still being raw when bird is done cooking.

Another vote for Linda's cranberry Jezebel!

It is possible to cook a turkey fully so that the stuffing is also completely cooked through and safe to eat, without thermometers or any other tricks. The people who make people sick, as far as I can tell, are the ones who make one turkey a year, maximum, don't cook a lot to begin with, and just kind of wing it rather than learning what they need to do, as well as those who have been doing it for so long that they forget to be careful about temperatures and pathogens and are distracted and let the bird get by them not completely cooked.

Even though the poultry and eggs I get are far less likely to have endemic salmonella, etc., I still keep food safety in mind, use separate utensils, am careful about what's getting polluted in the sink, and am extremely careful about cross contamination. If you have good general food handling practices, and use them regularly, it makes festival cooking when one is tired and distracted a lot easier!

Stuff stuffing inside a plastic bag then stuff bag inside the turkey makes no sense to me. Definitely not very Norman Rockwell -ish. There are so many other appetizing ways to have safe stuffing.

Torching the inside of a turkey may not work very well. Two laws of physics:

1. As long as there is water inside the turkey, temperature will be no higher than 212F.

2. The thermal conductivity is a constant, and can't be changed, regardless of heat source. Torching will burn and blacken the inside very quickly, not giving enough time to cook the inside thoroughly.

I can be wrong, having done neither with a turkey before, because there are other better ways.

dcarch

Ugh, I'd rather chance salmonella, listeria, and anything else you can name than eat stuffing cooked in a plastic bag. There's nothing wrong with a casserole dish if you don't want to stuff the bird.

Actually Alton used a cloth vegetable bag.
Back in the day when you had to spend 45 minutes pulling pin feathers and singing a turkey, I would prep the turkey the night before. I had made and refrigerated the stuffing earlier in the day, and I stuffed the bird night before and put the whole roaster on the screened porch....and hoped it didn't freeze or get much above 40 degrees.....No one got sick!! AND lacking a good thermometer, I cooked the turkey until the wings fell off...so you know the stuffing was hot!!

Now, turkeys come without pin feathers....and are grown so fast they cook in about 2/3 the time they used to....so I make my stuffing a bout an hour before stuffing the bird, and it's hot, sautee the veggies, beat a couple of eggs with some broth, dump the seasoned bread into the pan with the sauteed veggies, top with the stock and eggs....cook and stir and keep adding stock until all is as moist as I like, and put the very warm stuffing into thawed bird and pop it into the oven....and check often with an instant read....that I didn't have back in the "olden days".
Nope....no bag...not necessary.

lindac92 I think the bag was used by alton as an easy way get stuffing out of the bird as well.

I don't understand that. You either spend time spooning stuffing into the bag or spooning it out of the bird. It's not onerous either way.

Thanks for the clarification about the muslin bag. It still seems like more trouble than it's worth for no gain.

writersblock alton did not spoon stuffing in to the bag he used a plastic cutting mat as an impromptu funnel. the bag was filled in less then 15 seconds. you can see the whole stuffing episode it is called "Stuff it " season 8 episode 12 of good eats.

or you can read the stuff it episode transcript

And the same plastic cutting board works for getting the stuffing into the turkey...without a bag.
And I have an antique sterling Scottish stuffing spoon meant to spoon the stuffing out of a big bird, and I find it a much nicer presentation than pulling a bag out of the turkey and dumpign it into a bowl.

Oh, the pinfeathers! I remember pulling the pinfeathers as a kid. My mother would say to just pinch them under the skin with my nails, but I don't have her tough talons and I couldn't get them to pop out that way. My hands would get so cold! Finally, my father started giving me pliers, while my mother regaled me with stories about "plicking" and other yucky poultry farm chores. Nowadays, there are hardly any pinfeathers, and I use the tip of my paring knife. We have it easy, but I don't seem to mind at all. :)

Oooh! Linda, if you don't mind, I'd love to see a picture of your antique stuffing spoon sometime! I just use an old cooking spoon with a smallish, pointy bowl on it. :)

Stuffing spoon? I have old family movies that have my sister and I using our hands to shove stuffing into the turkey, LOL. And I have pictures of Ashley and Amanda doing the same thing.

Grandma did make us wash our hands, but still. Of course, Grandma cooked a turkey something like 9 hours!

Annie

Hands shove it INTO the turkey....a stuffing spoon, spoons it out.