Spend enough time online this time of year and you’ll come across dressing recipes—or "stuffing," if you squish it into the bird (not recommended)—in countless variations. For starters, there’s the choice of bread, from classic fluffy white sandwich bread to cornbread, ciabatta, milk bread, whole wheat levain, crunchy crackers, even bagels. They are flavored with everything, including (but not limited to) cans of soup, French onion dip mix, mushrooms, sausage, bacon, crab, oysters, fruit and wild rice.

Sure, you can go wild with ingredients and make a dressing to steal the show, but why? Form should follow function and dressing’s role is that of neutrality. I’d argue that it’s a vehicle rather than a dish unto itself, the center of the Venn diagram that is the Thanksgiving plate, linking the roast turkey to the green beans, sweet potato gratin and gravy.

To that end, I say keep it simple. Sotto voce. That’s why I love the Milk Street Easy-Bake Herbed Dressing. It captures the classic flavors of dressing—butter, sage and thyme, aromatics—with enough shortcuts to earn its name.

Instead of hand chopping the shallots and herbs, it gets blitzed in the food processor with softened butter to make a turbo-charged flavor base to coat the bread. The bread—hearty white sandwich bread—then is toasted to amplify its wheaty flavor before being moistened with cream and broth to cook through. The only knifework worth mentioning is slicing bread and dicing celery. There’s even make-ahead potential to take the pressure off and allow you to focus on the important stuff.

If you have leftover dressing, you’re in luck. If you’re not the sort to layer it into a towering Dagwood sandwich with turkey, cranberry sauce and gravy, it can be smashed into a waffle iron to crisp up. (Haven’t tried it yet, though count me in. It’s the best way to reheat French fries, so why not dressing?) A “dressing waffle,” with a drizzle of maple syrup and some sage-flavored breakfast sausage sounds awfully good to me for the morning after. [Editor’s note: I have tried a dressing waffle and can confirm it is good.-CL]

I’ll endorse a different approach: Spanish migas. Literally translated as “crumbs,” migas is stale bread moistened with water and fried up with aromatics, meats, just about anything. The soaked interior of the bread turns custardy while the exterior crisps and browns. It’s an addictive combo and the perfect endgame for leftover dressing.

In a cast-iron skillet, sauté chopped onion or shallots in olive oil, then crumble the leftover dressing and scatter in a heated, oiled skillet. Cook until crisped and browned and top with a couple fried eggs and bacon for breakfast, or add shredded turkey and leftover veggies, even a dollop of gravy, to clear out the fridge.

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Matthew Card

Matthew Card is Milk Street’s Creative Director for Recipes and Products, resident coffee geek, knife collector and equipment junkie. He has 25-plus years of professional cooking, recipe development, food writing and teaching under his belt. When he’s not in the Milk Street kitchen or on the road hunting for new recipes and ideas, Matthew lives with his family in Canberra, Australia, where he does his best to dodge kangaroos on his mountain bike and is learning to love Vegemite.