My assumption is that you do not come to these weekly soundbites with the idea of picking up recipe tips, but Thursday is Thanksgiving and we all know that Thanksgiving is about, most of all, eating. Something I know something about.
It is time when everyone talks about his or her favorite potato choice; mashed, sweet, or as my mother used to say, "Why the hell not both?" And favorite sides, including the inexplicably popular cranberry sauce, a pointless, gelatinous mess that sits there on a plate staring at you like a blob-like creature from a horror movie.
But my mission today is to talk about what I consider the supreme Thanksgiving food — stuffing — and also to reveal a deep dark ingredient secret that I've never shared publicly before.
Now, I don't want to get into a debate about whether you should call it dressing or stuffing or whether it's not stuffing if it's not stuffed into the cavity. Makes no difference to me, it's stuffing — the bread-based caloric superstar that stands alongside King Turkey. It's not a side, it's a main.
Now, there are allowable shortcuts for Thanksgiving, but buying that stuffing in a bag should not be among them.
Grab a loaf of bread — any bread — and it's better than packaged stuffing. And toast the bread. Toasting adds flavor, which is why we don't wake up and eat a plain piece of bread in the morning unless we're in prison.
So you've toasted the bread, and what you do next is the deep dark secret part. And before I tell you what it is, let me tell you who gave me this tip. Her name is Patty Starter and she's a great cook, almost chef-level; makes souffles and French stuff in her normal sized Philadelphia kitchen. And one Thanksgiving 40 years ago, Patty let me in on a secret from her mother: Campbell's cream of chicken soup.
I know, that's a surprising tip from a great cook. Talk about gelatinous messes and you have cream of chicken soup. Coming out of the can, it looks like a yellowing ooze from a long-ago forgotten stream that was once mined futilely for gold. But I've checked the ingredients and they're not that bad — wheat flower, onion powder, celery flower if that's not a contradiction in terms — and what the soup adds to the stuffing is flavor, fat and salt, as well as thickness which can be mediated later with broth or water.
So, pour the one can of Campbell's cream of chicken soup over your toast, which you have cut up into manageable pieces, and then let it sit in the refrigerator over night. Or, do it tonight so it has a solid 36 hours or so of comingling with the bread. The key is to put it away in the refrigerator well out of sight so children and dogs do not get the idea to sneak a bite. Raw cream of chicken soup? I don't think the stomach was made for that.
So, the next day you put the soup-soaked bread into a pan along with your celery, onions, and enough butter to clog the arteries of an NFL lineman, it's perfectly safe to eat. You cannot get that level of flavor from any other concoction I've ever tried.
Now, there is another cream soup. A cousin of cream of chicken, if you will, that sometimes shows herself at Thanksgiving. I speak of cream of mushroom soup, which is utilized most often as an ingredient in that godawful side known as green bean casserole. I shall not go down that road, even a kitchen cook has his cream soup limits.
