What to buy: The oysters must be fresh from the shell. If your shucking skills are not adequate, check out our tutorial or have your fishmonger open them for you, and be sure to reserve their liquid (a.k.a. liquor). Choose oysters that are heavy for their size and smell like the sea. Here’s a few you should know, but do your best to buy whatever’s local. (If you don’t like oysters, mild Italian sausage is a great substitute.)

Use good-quality cornbread made with stone-ground meal. (You can make it yourself ahead of time and freeze it.) If you don’t want to make your own, buy a pan of cornbread at a good bakery or specialty-foods store.

Special equipment: An oyster knife has a broad, thin, but sturdy and rigid blade. Some have a small hook at the tip to help wedge open the shell. An oyster knife shouldn’t be sharp. The blade has to be just thin enough to insert into the tightly closed shell and strong enough to pop the shell apart without snapping or bending.

Game plan: The heat and time required to safely cook stuffing that’s packed into a good-size turkey usually results in a breast with the flavor of sawdust. The stuffing should be cooked to 160°F, the same internal temperature required for the turkey, so you’d think it would work perfectly. But when the bird is at 160°F and ready to serve, the stuffing (insulated against the oven heat by the bird) is still undercooked and needs at least another 90 minutes in the oven. Which is why preparing your stuffing separately, as done here, is ideal.