Dreaming About Turducken

The turducken is a food that is based on older royal-feast main courses of de-boned nested animals roasted to perfection. In America the turducken was popularized by the television football analyst John Madden, and has since entered the American consciousness as an elite Thanksgiving dish, something that's reserved to be purchased whole from one of the few Louisiana sellers or purchased in pieces and put together ones-self.

The name "turducken" comes from TURkey-DUCK-chickEN. The dish is, if you're unaware, a turkey stuffed with a duck stuffed with a chicken.

In 2003, when the dish was first being popularized, my roommate at the time Ryan, a person I've featured in my blog from time to time and close friend, decided that that year we'd do a turducken, found a butcher to de-bone the birds and got a hold of the fixings for three awesome dressings.

That's another one of the staples of the turducken. I'm trying to make it a staple anyway: if you're going all out with the turducken in the first place, you should make three separate stuffings.

That first year the stuffings were: andouille sausage based; oyster based; and corn-bread based. While Ryan was the leading force and financial backer, Corrie and I had the time and know-how to put it all together, and pretty much made the dish.

It's cooked slowly on low heat; if it gets too hot the fat from the duck will deep-fry the other two birds from the inside.

It was awesome.

This year Corrie's parents were on a California trip for a specific reason, and were able to swing down to Long Beach for Thanksgiving. Corrie's dad made a comment about the possibility of us doing a turducken for the meal, to which Corrie laughed off at first. Eventually she decided that doing a turducken would be the perfect cap to her folks' California trip, and the plan was afoot.

She gathered the things, I sharpened my knife, and we made it happen.

Here's a picture that's reminiscent of Christmas Day before the gifts get ripped into:



I set about carving the birds, de-boning them. I started with the chicken because it's the least important if you screw it up. I try to liken it as carving the raw bird in reverse. If you've ever carved up a whole raw chicken, with a sharp enough knife and enough patience, de-boning is possible. Think about it as removing the carcass from the bird instead of the meat from the carcass; carving in reverse order.

It worked well, and so I repeated the method with the duck. Some observations: the duck's wings are much larger and tougher than the chicken's, relative to the frame, while the duck's thigh/drumstick is smaller than the chicken's, relative to the frame.

I repeated the method again with the turkey, while leaving the bones in the thigh/drumstick and leaving the wings on, to make it look more like a real turkey. Here's a shot of the de-boning process wirth everything done and ready to rock. The chicken is on the left with the darker meat duck next to it separated from the turkey on the right by the bowl of bones in the middle (by the timing on these pictures I learned that it took me just under an hour to de-bone the trio):



Lacing it up is really the first time that takes two people to do. One person needs to hold while the other laces. The method we used was the no-needle sew job. You pierce opposing sides of the skin with a sharp-ended skinny rod at intervals, then lace around the rods like you would a shoe. Carefully tightening brings the skin together.



A labor of love is ready to be given a butter-and-thyme massage and roasted to perfection. (Had to bring out the big-guns for this day: black cap and apron.)



I was at work on the Turkey-day itself, but I heard the turducken was good (by Corrie's parents; Corrie felt she'd overdone the chicken). The three stuffings I used were: traditional bread with jack-o-lantern seeds and sage; buttered rice with exotic hot peppers; and corn bread.

This Thanksgiving wasn't all turducken. Corrie put together a grand menu, and pulled off everything. She made a roasted butternut squash soup with goat cheese fondue added for sexier flavor. She put together a very smart cheese plate with globe grapes, blueberries and crackers. She roasted beets for a chicory and beet salad. She made pumpkin pie with ginger snap crust and even made a ginger sorbet to top the pie.



That ginger sorbet is killer.

This was Corrie's Thanksgiving...I just carved some raw birds and made some stuffing.