Why Stuffing Lives Up to Its Name

Nov. 22, 2007— -- Stuffing is perhaps the ultimate comfort food. Everyone has their favorite, and everyone's mom/grandmother/whoever makes the best.

Some have rice, most have bread of some sort or another. Then there are the sweet ones with apples and nuts, and the savory ones with all the sausages and herbs.

No matter how they're done, around the holidays it's all about the bird, the pie and oh, that stuffing. There's also no better name for this dish. First, it stuffs the bird, then it stuffs our bellies, then it stuffs our thighs. A culinary trifecta if there ever was one.

No kidding about the calories. Eggnog may be the most caloric drink you'll have during the holidays (or any other time, unless you're prone to drinking heavy cream out of the carton), but stuffing is often the most calorically expensive side dish you'd ever imagine.

How expensive? On the light side, a cup will run about 160 calories -- but a cup of the high-end stuff can easily set you back more than 500 calories.

That many calories could be a meal for many people under normal circumstances. Indeed, you could make a nice breakfast with whole grain cereal, low-fat milk, fresh fruit and a scrambled egg for less than that.

Of course, we're assuming this stuffing is cooked outside the bird. Pack it into the cavity before roasting and you'll add at least another 100 calories to that total. Why? Because all that stuffing is getting "basted" by that slowly melting turkey fat as it cooks.

It may taste good, but you might want to serve it with a defibrillator. If you can't believe there's that much extra fat from the turkey, try this: Save a little of that cooked-in-the-bird stuffing and refrigerate it. The next day it'll be a bit firmer and seem almost waxy. That's the hardened turkey fat.

Figure that our cooked-outside-the-bird dish has about 42 grams of fat (almost 3 tablespoons) and nearly a third of your day's sodium allotment, and you have some serious food.