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Post by meggie on Oct 11, 2014 13:04:15 GMT -5
With Thanksgiving weekend upon us in the great wet North, I wondered if anyone had ever made their turkey stuffing in the slow cooker. I've seen several recipes on line with varying comments from 'great, the only way to make it' to 'yuck, turned out like stuffing soup'. Canadian Living magazine, which is usually a great source for recipes, has one where you put the onions & celery in raw.
www.canadianliving.com/food/savoury_slow_cooker_stuffing.php
Any helpful tips from the great cooks here?
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Post by ruffles on Oct 11, 2014 22:51:04 GMT -5
We use Pepperidge Farm and have tried it with canned chicken broth instead of water, then baking it in the oven in a covered dish. It's all right. I can tell the difference between that and what's been baked in the bird. Not only that, The bird tastes different if it's been cooked without the stuffing. It's pure bird. None of the stuffing seasonings are there. It never occurred to me but it definitely is a two way street for the flavors. I completely enjoyed the pure turkey taste (Provided the turkey is not over done.) It was novel. I also love the bird that's been stuffed (a lot). As for the stuffing, I want what's been cooked in the bird. It's better. .......... Some people might not notice the difference. I'm not one of them. As I sit here, I wonder how it would taste if something like the turkey neck was baked in the stuffing dish. That might take more time and you wouldn't want the stuffing to dry out. ............. I have no idea how this would work in a crock pot.
As for precooking the onion and celery, I didn't and I don't remember that it affected the over all texture. It's been a long time since I've tried this. Although, Wendy does it and I haven't noticed the veggies being under cooked. I suppose you could sauté them a little bit or nuke them for a minute or so. .......... My sense is that it would take a longer time to bake the stuffing in a crock pot but then you will have the turkey in the oven for a good while anyway. ......... Why don't you want it in the bird? Is it a case of needing more stuffing than fits in the bird?
Not sure that I've been much of a help with this one. My thought is that baking the stuffing in the crock pot would be much better than doing it in the oven. I would stick with Pepperidge Farm.
We use crock pots for the squash and turnip. Both can be boiled, mashed and seasoned before sit down time and then kept nice and warm in crock pots. The taste is just the same as that wonderful fresh taste as if prepared and served immediately from the heated pan on the burner. This gives an incredible advantage for the timing of the whole meal. There's no waiting for them to finally boil. Actually, Wendy has taken to cooking the squash at her place and then bringing it here in the crock pot. It works. The mashed potatoes still need to go directly from the pan to the table. They don't sit as well.
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Post by meggie on Oct 12, 2014 2:36:01 GMT -5
I always make my own stuffing and cook it inside the bird, and put any extra in a casserole dish with the bird. I just happened to see the recipe and wondered how it would be if you wanted extra stuffing, or stuffing without the turkey, I guess. I cook my celery and onion before adding it to seasoned bread cubes. Is Pepperidge Farms a stuffing mix?
When I used to have to take an hour to go pick my Mum up, I would have the turkey done and resting, and would prepare the gravy and keep it hot in the crock pot. It also meant that I could have the roaster washed and out of the way. For acorn squash, I take out the seeds, cut it in fairly big sections with skin on, and steam it in the microwave. Just before serving, I put it skin side down and put some butter and brown sugar in each section and put it in the oven for a few minutes. Turnip is a no show but lots of brussel sprouts, and usually the last garden carrots. Agree about the mashed potatoes--mash 'em & serve 'em.
All my children have commitments or work this weekend so I'm going to a friends on Monday. We'll try to have a family turkey dinner in the next week or two depending on everyone's schedules. I usually do the dinner at my house anymore and miss all the great leftovers.
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Post by ruffles on Oct 12, 2014 8:12:41 GMT -5
Pepperidge Farm is a dried seasoned stuffing mix. It has become ensconced in our traditional dinner. The box tells you how much water, butter, onion and celery to add for the amount that you want. The butter/margarine needs to be melted so I do it all in a pan on a low heat and mix the stuffing in that. Naturally there is the opportunity to tinker with it a bit. I use the chicken broth and garlic salt. I absolutely love Pepperidge Farm's flavor. The onion and celery are never pre-cooked. Everything is thoroughly cooked in the bird. We always get a large turkey, 22/23 lbs., and always have leftover stuffing. This would be for 11 or 12 people. Totally with you on the leftovers. Christmas is at my house. It's well into January before needing a grocery trip again. How many people do you have for your family gatherings? You have a lot of grandchildren now.
We have different traditional veggies! *grin* Turnip is a must here. Not everyone eats it but we can't be without it. Sounds like you have the squash down to a science. How do you steam squash in the microwave? ....... We have appetizers also which include fresh veggies and fruits with dips. This gets the 'green plus' into the day.
We put Christmas off by a day or two one year because my brother who lives here wanted to go south to share the holidays with the rest of our family there. We couldn't imagine Christmas without him so we waited until he returned to celebrate. Christmas day felt extremely weird to me that year. You KNOW that Christmas is happening for everyone else in the whole world but I was still baking in the kitchen that day. Of course we had our own beautiful celebration together...later.
We each have our own holidays. Wendy does Thanksgiving. I do Christmas. Wendy has been doing Easter also. For Easter, I have my own little 3 lb. ham plus dinner the next day as well. Then I have leftovers for that too.
I LOVE having the whole family come celebrate together in my home and will knock my self out for that almost as much as I do for the irises. The whole house is dressed up for Christmas. It's beautiful. I wish this could happen more often. It is a whole lot of work for one person though.
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Post by meggie on Oct 12, 2014 11:48:15 GMT -5
We had to almost postpone Christmas two years ago. Dinner was supposed to be at David's who called about 9:00 Christmas morning to say that one of the girls was sick but they were going ahead with dinner. Half an hour later his wife called to say that Dave was now throwing up too, & dinner was off. There was a moment of 'Christmas with no turkey dinner!!' but my son-in-law come to the rescue and actually cooked a turkey that was frozen solid. He always puts sausage in his stuffing but didn't have any at home and the only store open was a Korean grocery store. The sausage he bought was a rather interesting pink but he though, 'sausage is sausage'. After about 3 hrs of slow cooking, the turkey was thawed enough to get the bag of giblets out, then the stuffing went in about an hour later. The turkey and the stuffing continued to cook for a couple of hours & was delicious, except the sausage in the stuffing that even though it was well cooked, was still the rather interesting pink colour!
For squash in the microwave, put about a quarter inch of water in the dish, spread out the squash pieces skin up, cover with saran wrap and turn back one corner. It takes about 7 min or so on high.
I always like to do Thanksgiving and now that my life is returning to some sort of normal, I hope to go back to doing it. Most of the family gatherings are at David's because he has the biggest house, plus he has one daughter that is better in her own house. For Easter, we shared the cooking. My sil took the turkey, I brought the ham & dessert, so Dave's wife only had to do the veggies. Unfortunately, Dean living up the coast, he's not with us for dinners very often.
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Post by ruffles on Oct 12, 2014 22:30:39 GMT -5
Uh Oh...You want holiday stories?
Sticky buns are a must at all of our holidays. One year one of my brothers called from my sister's house on a holiday. He said 'We had sticky buns!" Then, over the phone, we heard a knocking sound as if a piece of solid wood was banging on the table. So much for her sticky buns!!!
On the Thanksgiving day which was the week during the year I was finishing up my Associate's Degree, I had just completed my CPR training and certification. I was in the kitchen preparing the meal. Eddie (Still married then) was outside working on the car. He came in and went into the bathroom and called me in there. He had a 3 corner split in the skin on the bridge of his nose between his eyebrows. I left to get some first aid things to clean the wound. When I returned, he was passed out on the floor. Because of the CPR which was very fresh in my mind, I knew what to do. He was breathing and had a pulse, I had my son call 911. A cruiser came first and the cop stood in the bathroom's doorway with his walkie-talkie. He called for the ambulance and reported that this wasn't domestic violence. Eddie went to the hospital and the cop stayed to figure out what happened. He found a round brown spot on the garage floor which he said was blood and also noted that the garage door was not completely raised. Evidently Eddie walked into the door. While I was at the hospital, the neighbors came over, cleaned up what blood there was in the bathroom and basted the turkey. Eddie came home and had to take it easy. On Monday, I went back to school and told my story with thanks and appreciation for my CPR training. It shot around Building 20 like wild fire.
Meggie, I am very thankful that things are restoring to normal for you.
I've been asking the stores for 93% fat free hamburger and they don't have it. One place told me they stopped it because of the pink slime that's in it. I didn't realize there was pink slime in it. It looked normal when fresh. I broke it down into 1 lb packages for the freezer. It doesn't look pink when it is frozen. Hope they can resolve this, otherwise it will seriously affect my spaghetti recipe.
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Post by Amanda on Oct 13, 2014 9:25:30 GMT -5
I don't have much to contribute here, but I did enjoy the thread and am now very excited about Thanksgiving!
We're a Pepperidge Farm family, too, but there has never been a Thanksgiving in my life where the stuffing was actually "stuffed" into the bird. My Dad cooks and slices the turkey ahead of time and it is perfection. The stuffing is made separately and baked. It usually gets some of the dark meat (finely chopped/shredded) baked in with it to flavor it up. When my Papa was living, he liked his stuffing juicier, so there was always a dish of regular and a dish as he liked it. He's been gone for nearly a decade and we still have both kinds.
Thanksgiving dinner is usually lots of brownish hues on the plate -- very delicious, but Mom always says we have to eat something green. I don't know how or why it started, but our green vegetable has always been the rather non-traditional choice of broccoli (which is my favorite veggie). Mom will then use a tiny crock pot to melt some cheese to drizzle over it. About four years ago, I arrived to Thanksgiving (pies and pumpkin cheesecake in tow, which is my annual contribution) and found that Mom had made a big pot of green beans and there was no broccoli in sight. I like green beans a lot, and they probably fit in better at Thanksgiving, but I was appalled. I'm rather devoted to my holiday traditions, anyway. When dinner was served, a few other people mentioned the broccoli having gone missing, and so it came right back the next year along with an annual mention about how I'd have a meltdown if there was no broccoli.
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