Stuffing

It will take about 45 minutes to peel the pearl onions for this recipe. If you're strapped for time, you can substitute 1 1/2 pounds of thawed frozen pearl onions, which won't need to be blanched.

Serve this stuffing alongside your Christmas turkey, ham, goose or duck. Add an extra dose of chestnuts to your meal by offering the Brussels Sprouts with Chestnuts and Bacon.

Here is a colorful dressing that is baked alongside—rather than inside—the turkey.

Pennsylvania is now a national center for cultivated exotic or "specialty" mushrooms like shiitake and crimini, but early colonists found plenty of familiar wild mushrooms growing free for the picking in the forests of their new world. The tradition finds expression in this mushroom-lover's dressing, which blends both wild and cultivated fungi for maximum flavor.

For best results, make this stuffing with day-old Buttermilk Corn Bread.

Active time: 1 hr Start to finish: 2 hr

This easy dressing makes a great side dish for roast chicken or fried pork chops.

A nice stuffing for poultry or an excellent accompaniment to pork tenderloin or salmon.

Caramelized pears plus dried apricots, cranberries, and prunes add intense fruit flavor to this stuffing from Rochelle Palermo Torres, a freelance recipe developer and cooking teacher.

Beverly's Grandma Stoll lived in Deep River, Connecticut, and her whole family converged on her house during the holidays. They all have taken the recipe with them wherever they moved. My Southern friends love this variation to their traditional turkey dinner because of the natural, down-home, unexotic flavors of the dressing. Beverly use the liver, but I don't .

Sourdough bread complements the Italian flavors in this stuffing from Bruce Aidells.

Chilies and corn—staples of the southwestern diet—are the hallmarks of this stuffing. Its intense corn flavor comes from a mixture of corn bread, corn chips, corn kernels and cream-style corn. It gets its zip from poblano and jalapeño chilies.

This stuffing is based on ingredients prevalent throughout the Midwest. Michigan dried cherries are often used to accent dishes in that state, while prunes, raisins and dried currants are often found in many sweet and savory recipes from Ohio and Indiana. Using only three tablespoons of butter for ten servings makes this dish low in fat, too.

Cajun flavors—andouille sausage, corn bread, red bell pepper and cayenne pepper—combine in an excellent side dish that brings color and spice to the Thanksgiving table.