Stuffin' Muffins

A quick and crispy way to make stuffing the life of your Thanksgiving celebration.

Around this time of year, the debate heats up about those delectable mixtures we serve at our festive holiday meals. The first question is whether it is called "stuffing" or "dressing." Someone told me that it is "stuffing" if it is cooked inside the bird and "dressing" if you make it in a casserole pan. In my culinary dictionary under "stuffing" it says, "See dressing." Theories abound about the food safety of cooking the stuffing inside a large bird where the internal temperature will hover around the danger zone for bacterial activity. But others feel the flavors released by the stuffing are essential and help to keep the turkey moist during the long cooking process. People's favorite stuffing seems to depend heavily on childhood memories. They like it the way their mother made it with bacon or sausage, white bread or corn bread, chestnuts or cranberries, onions, potatoes, rice, celery, apricots, prunes or apples. That is the flavor they crave, because it awakens such vivid food memories. My mother always baked her stuffing inside the turkey. The bird was stuffed, trussed, coated with butter and loaded into the oven before 6 a.m. It was roasted to a golden brown and then tented with foil to cook through. By noon, the pan was filling with juices, and the stuffing was bursting from the cavity. But when we finally sat down to eat, that little knobby protrusion was usually gone, picked away in a series of surreptitious attacks by the children. Those crunchy, savory morsels may have been our favorite part of the whole meal.