by Melanie Denyer

Created on: January 26, 2008   Last Updated: December 08, 2011

There are probably as many family variations on how best to prepare a turkey for Christmas, Thanksgiving or Easter as there are families around the world. Some like to roast the turkey upside down until shortly before the end of cooking, in order to keep the breast moist, while others start on one side and change to the other and, naturally, many of us still roast our turkeys breast up. And then there's the debate about a constant heat throughout the cooking time, or a half hour blast before lowering the temperature.

But what about stuffing? There's many a turkey caused food poisoning from being stuffed the wrong way, since the stuffing not only affects the cooking time but the way in which the bird cooks. So how do you make sure your lovingly stuffed bird is remembered for all the right reasons?

First off, always stuff the neck end first. I generally loosen the skin away from the breast at the neck end and push a little stuffing up between the two to get a little extra flavour in there.

If you've any stuffing left over, your next temptation may be to shove it in the bird's chest cavity - just the right kind of space, or so it seems. Don't! Unless, that is, you've made sure that you only put a thin layer inside to provide flavour to seep out into the meat and add moisture during cooking. It is very important to keep a cavity in the centre so hot air can flow unimpeded to the breast plate and cook that tasty white meat from beneath - not doing this will either result in your turkey being overcooked and dry, or undercooked and unsafe.

But I like my stuffing and I still have some left, you may say. That's fine: put it in a shallow dish and put it in the oven with the turkey for the last half hour of cooking.

Of course, no article about stuffing a turkey would be complete without at least considering what to stuff it with. I have never in my life used a dehydrated 'stuffing mix', since these tend to be just flavoured breadcrumbs, letting down an otherwise excellent meal. Instead, I prefer to make my stuffing fresh. It's no more hassle than a packet mix and it tastes so much better. If you really have to cheat, pick up a fresh, ready-made stuffing from your butcher or the chilled section of the supermarket: it really makes all the difference.

Simply take a pound of ground pork, a couple of handfuls of breadcrumbs and a finely chopped onion and mix them together with an egg. Then add other ingredients according to your tastes and the occasion: dried cranberries and

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