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.

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.

Mignonette sauce is a condiment made from vinegar, minced shallots, and pepper and served with raw oysters and clams.

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.

In Western culture, there are three basic types of salad dressing: Vinaigrette; Creamy dressings, usually based on mayonnaise or fermented milk products, such as yogurt, sour cream (crème fraîche, smetana), buttermilk; Cooked dressings, which resemble creamy dressings, but are usually thickened by adding egg yolks and ...

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.

A bright, crisp white wine is the quintessential beverage pairing for freshly shucked oysters. The right wine cuts through the oysters' saltiness while complementing their delicate ocean essence. We recommend a zesty Sauvignon Blanc, with its racy acidity and notes of grapefruit and lemongrass.

The most common uses for oyster sauce include stir-fry sauces, glazes, and marinades. Oyster sauce flavors chicken, beef, vegetables like broccoli, noodles, and rice dishes. It is an important component to cashew chicken and even a type of radish cake. Make homemade hoisin sauce or teriyaki sauce by using oyster sauce.

What traditionally gets served with oysters? ›

Collectively, Americans consume five million gallons of cranberry sauce during the holidays each year. This side dish has become essential to Thanksgiving menus, whether you opt to buy it (as 76% of Americans do) or make it yourself. It's hard to pinpoint exactly who invented the concept of cranberry sauce.

Ironically, the term “dressing” replaced stuffing because many folks found it offensive. (Can you see all of the social media posts and hashtags that would have been made?) As far as stuffing/dressing becoming a regular staple of the Thanksgiving Day meal, there are written records as far back as 1836.

Enjoying some seafood with co*cktail sauce is acceptable and even encouraged, but oysters have a flavor that stands on its own. Stick to just a drop of lemon juice and let the flavors of the oyster speak for themselves.

Slurp, Then Chew

Slurping, not chewing is a myth too frequently attached to oyster eating. Use a tiny fork to release the oyster, then pick up the shell and slurp down the oyster, chewing once or twice before swallowing. If you don't chew it, you won't experience the full flavor.