Easy Oyster Dressing Recipe: Southern Thanksgiving Side Dish (2024)

FAQs

What kind of sauce goes with oysters? ›

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.

"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.

While oysters aren't commonly associated with a Thanksgiving feast, they actually played a larger role in the origination of the holiday than you'd think. The mollusks were likely feature prominently on the tables of early American settlers, unlike a turkey.

Oyster sauces today are usually made with a base of sugar and salt and thickened with corn starch. Oyster extracts or essences are then used to give flavor to the base sauce. Other ingredients, such as soy sauce and monosodium glutamate, may also be added to deepen the flavor and add color.

As you shuck, nestle finished oysters on top of the prepared serving bowl of crushed ice, with their hinges facing inward, leaving enough room for a ramekin of mignonette and a few lemon wedges. If you are planning on shucking a lot of oysters, serve them in rounds to keep them as fresh and cold as possible.

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.

The most popular Thanksgiving side in the U.S. is mashed potatoes, which reigns supreme in 9 states. The second most popular side is rolls, being favored by Utah, Florida, North Carolina, and West Virginia. 74% of Americans expect to be eating at least 4 side dishes on Thanksgiving.

Is dressing a southern thing? ›

But many people insist on one term or the other regardless of how it's prepared or what's in it. The term dressing is most commonly used in the South, but it's popular in pockets throughout the US.

You may have heard the saying that you should only eat oysters in months that contain the letter "r," meaning oysters harvested in the warmer summer months of May through August were not safe for consumption. However, oysters are now sold and consumed year-round with little to no worries.

Rule of thumb is at least 4,000 years old. Foodie tradition dictates only eating wild oysters in months with the letter “r” – from September to April – to avoid watery shellfish, or worse, a nasty bout of food poisoning.

In the northern hemisphere, the old rule that native oysters should only be eaten when there's an 'r' in the month still holds true; so eat oysters from September to April. During the summer months they're busy spawning, and their flesh becomes unpleasantly soft and milky.

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

I mess with a little lemon, horseradish and occasionally co*cktail sauce, but a twangy hot sauce is always my go to when adding a lil sumthing. Here are a few different types of craft hot sauces that pair really well with oysters.