Easy Oyster Dressing Recipe: Southern Thanksgiving Side Dish (2024)

FAQs

What is the difference between stuffing and dressing in the South? ›

"Stuffing is cooked in the cavity of the turkey, so the juices soak into the ingredients, making it more flavorful. Dressing gets cooked on its own and needs extra liquid to make it flavorful." So stuffing is cooked inside the bird. Dressing is cooked outside the bird, usually in a casserole dish.

Serve your oysters with classic southern side dishes such as grilled corn, red potatoes, coleslaw, or cornbread, and you'll have a delicious meal that your guests are sure to remember. Lowcountry living at its finest!

Dressing: Dressing typically includes ingredients like cornbread, white bread, or biscuits, mixed with vegetables, herbs, spices, and sometimes sausage or other meats. It is often moistened with broth or stock and baked in a casserole dish until it forms a crust on top.

While oysters aren't commonly associated with a Thanksgiving feast, they actually played a larger role in the origination of the holiday than you'd think. The mollusks were likely feature prominently on the tables of early American settlers, unlike a turkey.

This is down to a science: A 2015 survey conducted on behalf of the poultry company Butterball revealed that, regardless of how the dish was cooked, most of the country—including 100 percent of New Englanders—refers to the side as stuffing, while Southerners are devoted dressing fans.

But for the Thanksgiving side dish in the South, the term dressing was adopted in place of stuffing, which was viewed as a crude term, during the Victorian era. Although dressing and stuffing are interchangeable terms, the signature ingredient of this Thanksgiving side dish in the South is cornbread.

Mignonette is a classic sauce for serving with oysters. A classic, proper one is made with just red wine vinegar and eschalots (called shallots in the US). No messing around with oil, no sugar, no salt. It's meant to be clear and pink and pure, not sweet, oily and brown.

As you shuck, nestle finished oysters on top of the prepared serving bowl of crushed ice, with their hinges facing inward, leaving enough room for a ramekin of mignonette and a few lemon wedges. If you are planning on shucking a lot of oysters, serve them in rounds to keep them as fresh and cold as possible.

Dressing Is For Midwesterners

Generally, in the Midwestern states, it's called stuffing regardless of the ingredients or whether it's cooked inside a turkey.

The stuffing mixture may be cooked separately and served as a side dish, in which case it may still be called 'stuffing', or in some regions, such as the Southern US, 'dressing'. This is from Wiki. Basically, everyone except a tiny percentage of Black people with family in Alabama calls it stuffing.

Is it OK to eat oysters in November? ›

A years-long myth about eating oysters during the summer, debunked. In the fall and winter, glasses of bubbly whites and ice-cold trays of half-shells crowd restaurant tables. Oysters are in season, and they typically taste best between the months of November and April.

Millions of people across the United States will sit down to a traditional Thanksgiving meal, including turkey, potatoes, squash, corn, and cranberries.

The primary difference between stuffing and dressing is that stuffing is cooked inside a bird and dressing is made on the side. As with many food traditions in the U.S., regional loyalties to stuffing vs dressing abound.

Names for stuffing include "farce" (~1390), "stuffing" (1538), "forcemeat" (1688), and relatively more recently in the United States; "dressing" (1850).

Dressing is more commonly used to refer to the dish in the South, while stuffing is the more frequently used term in the North, Southern Living reported.