Is It Stuffing Or Dressing? Here’s The Official Answer

Happy Thanksgiving Week friends! T'is the week of being grateful, putting early Christmas music on hold (if only for a day) and eating yourself into a three hour nap. It's a glorious time.

If your family goes for a traditional Thanksgiving feast, odds are pretty good that you'll be eating a popular side dish: stuffing...or dressing...is there really a difference?

This is a debate that's haunted me for years. I've called it stuffing my whole life, but my mom's called it dressing. So I had to get a definitive answer; yes, there is a difference.

Though most people call it stuffing – it won in a landslide on our Facebook poll – that's only the correct term when the dish is cooked inside the bird. Per one Food & Wine writer:

According to most dictionaries, stuffing is defined as “a mixture used to stuff another food, traditionally poultry, before cooking.” Whereas dressing is cooked in a pan outside of the turkey cavity.

So there you have it. Whether you've been saying dressing all these years, or saying stuffing, you're right! And isn't that something to be thankful for?