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Each November the phrase “stuffing vs. dressing” starts popping off on Google. It’s a tiresome and pedantic debate but one that also regularly revives a story—apocryphal, as far as I can tell—suggesting that the term “dressing” was taken up by sexually repressed Victorians because the thought of “stuffing” raised the specter of shtupping. (Yet “forcemeat” survived in Victorian parlance? Sure, okay.)
Prior to the 1850s, this tale goes, people were more than happy to stuff their fowl with vegetables and milk-soaked bread and whatever, while “dressing” meant preparing the bird for cooking—”drawing” or scooping out unwanted bits, trussing it, and the like. Allegedly, the neutered Victorian usage took hold, at least below the Mason-Dixon, and “dressing” eventually became synonymous with the carby thing you serve with the turkey. Meanwhile, perverse Yankees stuck with “stuffing.”
Isa Chandra Moskowitz, a vegan cookbook author and writer, wisely sidesteps the stuffing vs. dressing question entirely, calling her animal-free version of the Thanksgiving classic a “savory herb bread pudding.” In her cookbook I Can Cook Vegan, she likens it to a certain well-known brand of boxed instant stuffing mix, thanks to its heavy reliance on Thanksgiving’s holy hexad of sage, rosemary, thyme, celery, parsley, and onion. And she’s not wrong.
In many respects,this is the same stuffing I made with my mother each Thanksgiving when I was growing up. Instead of the fresh bread that Moskowitz calls for, we used the bags of fossilized bread cubes that show up this time of year in supermarkets across America. Instead of dicing the aromatics, my mom would feed them through a hand-cranked meat grinder—a technique she learned from her grandmother, from whom she inherited the grinder—resulting in a chunky vegetable paste that melts into the croutons. Beyond a nice little bicep workout, the benefits of this method still elude me, but tradition is tradition.
Where we really differ with Moskowitz is on fat. As a vegan she naturally avoids the copious amounts of butter that would end up in our stuffing, opting for olive oil instead. To be clear, most stuffing recipes aren’t all that hard to veganize, as long they don’t call for sausage or oysters, but lacking the richness of butter as well, vegan stuffing can be at a serious disadvantage in the umami department. So when I made Moskowitz’s recipe recently, I thought of using a vegan butter in place of the olive oil, to more closely replicate the stuffing of my childhood. But then I remembered that I don’t particularly like vegan butter, as most brands I’ve tried taste rancid or chalky, or they’re just uncanny simulacra that never successfully trick my brain into thinking I’m eating the real thing.
My solution? Infusion.
In place of the tasty, moreish milk proteins in butter, I use olive oil to extract as much flavor as possible from herbs and other aromatics. Following the same principles outlined by former Epi food editor Katherine Sacks, I start with a pot of cold olive oil—a cup is plenty, but two cups will leave you with lots of leftovers for drizzling on roasted vegetables, toasted bread, etc. To that I add many sprigs of fresh thyme, sage, and rosemary. (Dried herbs also work well, but because their flavor is more concentrated, a little goes quite a long way.) If I’m feeling like it, I’ll throw in a couple cloves of crushed garlic or a minced shallot to add some allium backbone too.
I cook the oil on low heat for five to 10 minutes, always mindful of the herbs and garlic beginning to brown and then burn, which will ruin the whole enterprise by turning it inedibly bitter. Once the pot starts to smell delicious, I turn off the heat and leave the herbs to further infuse as the oil cools. After it reaches room temperature, I strain out the solids and keep the infused oil in the fridge (to avoid any foodborne illness risk, however unlikely).
As a butter replacement in vegan stuffing (or dressing, or savory bread pudding) the infused oil harmonizes with the fresh herbs and vegetables, adding an ineffable layer of flavor that’s nevertheless solidly there—highlighting the nuances of the other ingredients so that you’re not just eating hot, wet bread. And infused oil is highly adaptable to whatever recipe you’re using, too; if your favorite stuffing is built on other flavors, feel free to swap in chile flakes, fennel seeds, citrus zest, or anything else that makes sense.
I have no dog in the stuffing vs. dressing fight (although I will call BS on the Victorian vulgarity thing). Name the carb you serve with your Thanksgiving main—be it a bird or a stuffed squash or whatever—anything you want. I only ask that you make it taste good, lest you have a true Thanksgiving brawl on your hands.
