I am vegan, as well as alot of family and friends, so I always cook a side dish of vegan-friendly stuffing in a pan. To accompany that, I make a delicious tofu/mushroom/sweet onion/celery/stuffing layered casserole with miso gravy (or Naam gravy if you are lucky enough to live in Vancouver). Mmmmmm... moi secret "stuffing" dish is loved by all guests, meat-eaters and veggie lovers alike!

Cook the dressing outside the bird, for a turkey that roasts faster and more evenly, inside and out. You'll end up with a moister bird at the end. In last Wednesday's New York Times food section, Mark Bittman warned, “too often stuffing absorbs too much of the cooking juices and comes out a soggy, unappealing mess.” Two guesses as to what’s giving up all those cooking juices to the stuffing.

My mother always made the dressing in a pyrex bowl totally separately from the turkey, but the friend who's cooking the turkey at my place is actually stuffing the bird, because his mom and his grandmother did it that way.

By the way, for those who answered my no-claibrated-knob-on-the-ove-so-what-should-I-do question a few open threads ago, thank you!

What I ended up doing is buying an oven thermometer AND a knob that had SOME calibrations, and although they're not correct, I memorized the fact that when it's on 450-degrees, it's really 400, which is the pre-heat temp I was told we should start with, before turning it down.

Also I bought a meat thermometer, so we MIGHT use that, too. He's en route over here NOW (10:47am) and I'm just about to get really excited about my first Thanksgiving at my very own place. (I've been in this apartment for 3 years, but always go elsewhere.)

curtis, the meat thermometer isn't a bad idea.

i like the stuffing outside the bird because that way you can get a yummy, crunchy crust on top (i dot mine with a little butter).

where did stuffing come from, anyway? what purpose did it serve? stuffing with aromatics (lemons, onions) i understand, because they add flavor and some moisture. but croutons?

The turkey is in the oven, and I'm really getting excited. Had what was probably the very most blatantly obvious (but what felt like inspired divine) epiphany possible about taking the wire dish drainer off the move-able white one on the left side of my double sink for dealing with the turkey before putting it into the oven.

Anyway... so far, it's very exciting. Again -- I'm not cooking it, but I'm helping. There's my little Restoration Hardware timer! That's our 20 minutes! Time to turn down the temperature.

Typically we stuff the bird AND bake a pyrex casserole dish full of the stuff too (we like stuffing). We use fresh rosemary in the stuffing and also also a rosemary rub under the skin.

By the way, that first turkey (turkey? the first bird, period!) to be cooked in my 1941 oven since I moved in back in 2003 turned out fantastic.

Between the meat thermometer that we stuck into the stuffing, and the oven thermometer in the oven, and the "relative" calibration that we figured from the new knob I had bought, it turned out beautifully. It took almost an hour more than we figured, though, for the little thing to pop out of the turkey, but we weren't starving, anyway.

But it probably helped that we started with a Bell & Evans turkey from Ottomanelli.