Oyster Stuffing
Oyster Stuffing
I would gladly trade everything on a traditional Thanksgiving table for a plateful of my cousin Frances’ oyster, bread and pecan stuffing. She learned it, she says, from her mother, Myrtle Anderson Webb, who was my grandmother’s twin sister. She reckons it probably came from my great-grandmother, an Irish woman named Artie Rose.
The oysters can be fresh, says Frances, but she uses canned. Mixed with the turkey juices, the final flavor isn’t fishy, but delightfully meaty and rich.
It was on Frances’ table every Thanksgiving when she was a child in Chicago. After she went to England to serve in the Office of Strategic Services during World War II, she married a Scot and settled there, and has used the American Thanksgiving recipe for the Christmas turkey. She likes it so much, she ignores the British tradition of making two different stuffings every holiday–one chestnut, one bread–and fills both ends of the bird instead with her mother’s oyster stuffing.
How wet or dry it is depends on how much butter and wet ingredients you use, says Frances. Hers turns out differently every year, she says, but squishy or dry, it “still tastes gorgeous.” Frances prefers pecans, but says walnuts work too.
Oyster, Bread and Pecan Stuffing
Active Work Time: 25 minutes
Total Preparation Time: 55 minutes
Butter
1 tablespoon oil
2 small onions, diced
Dash mixed dried herbs (oregano, basil, sage)
2 cups button mushrooms, chopped
1 cup pecans, chopped
1/2 cup finely chopped celery
3 cups toasted bread crumbs
1/2 cup chopped canned oysters
1 egg, beaten
Salt, pepper
Melt 1 tablespoon of butter in the oil in a skillet over medium-low heat, then cook the onions until they are translucent, 5 to 8 minutes. Do not brown. Toward the end of cooking, add the dried herbs and mushrooms, raise the heat to medium, stir and cook ever so briefly, only until the scent begins to rise.
Remove from the heat, mix with the chopped nuts, celery, bread, oysters, beaten egg and salt and pepper to taste. Stuff in a turkey or place in a 13×9-inch glass baking dish and bake at 350 degrees for 20 minutes.
6 to 8 servings. Each of 8 servings: 208 calories; 169 mg sodium; 35 mg cholesterol; 15 grams fat; 2 grams saturated fat; 14 grams carbohydrates; 5 grams protein; 2.68 grams fiber.