The Thanksgiving Side Dish Duff Goldman Loves So Much His Mom Still Makes It Every Year

What is Thanksgiving without its traditions? Most families have at least one dish that is a Thanksgiving staple, something everyone expects to eat each year. According to YouGov, there are six traditional dishes that over 50% of Americans expect at a Thanksgiving dinner, including turkey (brined, fried, or otherwise), mashed potatoes, stuffing, gravy, bread, and pie. When Tasting Table spoke with celebrity baker Duff Goldman and the subject turned to Thanksgiving, he surprised us with a lesser-known favorite that he has every year — oyster stuffing.

If you've never heard of oyster stuffing before, it's probably exactly what you think it is. A traditional oyster stuffing is made with bread, a mix of aromatics and spices, and diced oysters. "My mom makes this every year and it's just for me, because I'm the only one that likes it," Goldman says. "I love it and nobody else does, which I don't understand. It's great."

So how did Goldman come to love the stuffing if no one else in his family enjoys it? "I grew up on Cape Cod. We grew up on the water in Massachusetts. We ate a lot of seafood," he explains. "Where we grew up, it's the town next to Plymouth where the pilgrims landed in the first place, and we got some pretty authentic Thanksgivings happening there."

Many modern versions of turkey stuffing are made with sausage or mushrooms, and oyster stuffing is not much different. While seafood is plentiful in Massachusetts, oyster stuffing originally came from England. It caught on in America because turkey was expensive, but oysters were incredibly cheap, so you could really add a lot of extra protein to the meal by using oysters in the stuffing.

It's hard to imagine any food being so abundant now, but a couple of hundred years ago, oysters were sold in every city, and oyster bars were as ubiquitous as hot dog carts. There were so many oyster shells around that cities used them to pave roads. So, even though it might sound uncommon today, oyster stuffing was a no-brainer for our ancestors.

The addition of oysters ensures that you have a flavorful and moist stuffing, whether or not it's actually stuffed in a bird or just cooked in a casserole dish. If you want to try it yourself, make sure you follow the recipe precisely. It's important to cook raw shellfish completely before adding it to stuffing, which is why many recipes suggest baking it as a separate casserole rather than inside the bird.