Vegetarian Stuffing

From StoneHome

In many ways this is a mockery of stuffing; it isn't made, for example, inside meat. Still, we've all got two vegetarian relatives: the normal one, which just carries on eating plants, and the activist, which won't be happy until you've tried a not-dog (again) and which generally eats Jello up and until the day you snap and tell them what Jello is. This dish is for that second relative, who thinks that it's important to eat things that look like what the other people are eating, who spend huge amounts of money to purchase beans shaped like meat. They're gonna want stuffing, even though they don't want something to have been stuffed.

Let's accomodate, so that we can "go check the stuffing" any time our poker face is at risk.

How to fake meat

There are certain things that meat does to the contents of stuffing which one needs to understand if one is to simulate them. Our goal is to fabricate a fake dish which is similar enough that the family has to keep asking whether the normal stuffing is in the red bowl or the blue bowl. The task is made far more difficult by egg-based stuffings, even with the vegetarians which eat eggs (babies aren't meat!;) unless you're feeling lucky, consider abstaining.

First, remember that stuffing is different from the edge to the center. That's why stuffing is mixed together again before serving (and why serving stuffing directly out of the bird is such a bad idea;) one wants the variety of textures of the stuffing represented in each bowl. That's also why some people bake the stuffing for half an hour after the bird comes out, generally during carving and table setting: the range of textures is made more severe, and stuffing which is too wet can be partially crisped and dried, saving the mix. We really need that effect here to make a similar range of textures; expect to bake both stuffings.

Use the same stuffing basis for the real and vegetarian stuffings, abstaining from things like bacon and sausage where nessecary; prefer stuffing recipes with little or no meat.

Simulating the bird

Get a few slices of one of the fake meats such as tofurkey. We use these to keep there from being direct heat applied to the stuffing during the initial cooking, much as the carcass does with the real stuffing. Because they're so thin, the tofurkey slices will be destroyed in the process. Using a heavy vegetable broth, preferably involving both lentils and mushrooms, baste the surrounding non-meat compulsively - every 30 minutes or so, but quick like the ninja to keep from draining the heat from the oven, for the same amount of time as the real stuffing. Keep the baste in the oven (probably in the pan with the fake bird), so that the baste will be hot; using room-temperature broth to baste the stuffingesque loaf would ruin the cooking process. Every hour and a half, put a few extra slices of tofurkey on the loaf to keep a moist surface, to prevent burning flavor from entering the stuffing.

When you pull the bird, pull the fake stuffing too. Take the tofurkey off of the loaf just before you begin to unload the bird; you're trying to keep steaming times and so forth roughly equivalent. The vegetarian stuffing will be wetter and less oily than the real stuffing; add a *tiny* amount (ten drops per pound at most) of a fragrant food oil such as olive oil to the stuffing as evenly as possible in order to compensate. Fluff both stuffings simultaneously, and return them both to the reduced-heat oven simultaneously. The two will lose moisture at rates corresponding to their moisture and the oven's ambient moisture; the wetter one will therefore dry out faster, and the two approach moisture parity. The browning of the surface is more about oil than wetness; they should both brown roughly evenly. As normal, remove the stuffings halfway through, re-fluff and reinsert.

What to expect

Unless you have visible ingredient differences, or use a starch source which is very vulnerable to meat oils such as extremely soft breads or loose starch, the two stuffings should come out fairly difficult to differentiate short of taste testing. Remember, your vegetarian friends get ill when they eat meat protiens, so pay close attention to which is which; nothing's worse than when holiday over-eating has to come back out, and the similarity from this process can be surprising.