Turducken

A bacon-coated Turducken

A turducken ("TURkey-DUck-chiCKEN") is a de-boned turkey stuffed with a de-boned duck, which itself is stuffed with a small de-boned chicken. The cavity of the chicken and the rest of the gaps are filled with, at the very least, a highly seasoned breadcrumb mixture or sausage meat, although some versions have a different stuffing for each bird. Some recipes call for the turkey to be stuffed with a chicken which is then stuffed with a duckling. It is also called a chuckey.

The result is a relatively solid, albeit layered, piece of poultry, suitable for slow cooking by braising, roasting, grilling, or barbecuing. The turducken is not suitable for deep frying Cajun style (to deep fry poultry, the body cavity must be hollow to cook evenly). Turducken fans say that it is complex and usually quite agreeable in texture and flavor, as the juices of the turkey and chicken baste the duck, and the more robust duck bastes the turkey and chicken.

Turducken is believed to be Cajun in origin, although it may also have originated in eastern Texas or northern Louisiana. Lake Charles, Louisiana, claims that turduckens were invented there. While such elaborate layering of whole animals, also known as a farce, from the French word for "stuffing", can be documented well back into the Middle Ages of Europe, some people credit Cajun-creole fusion chef Paul Prudhomme with creating the chimerical dish. However, no one has ever verified his claim.

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A Classic Turducken

In recent years, the turducken was brought to popular attention due to its frequent mention by American football announcer John Madden. (Some people mistakenly credit Madden with inventing the dish, although this is clearly not the case.) Madden is famous for ripping open a Turducken with his bare hands during halftime of a football game.

The November 2005 issue of National Geographic magazine traced the American origins of the dish to Maurice, Louisiana, and "Hebert's Specialty Meats", which has been making turduckens since 1985 when a local farmer whose name is lost to history brought in his own birds and asked Hebert's to prepare them in the now-familiar style. The company now sells around 3,300 turduckens a year. They share a friendly rivalry with Paul Prudhomme.

Turducken is generally associated with the "do-it-yourself" outdoor food culture also associated with true barbecueing and crawfish boils, although some people now serve them in place of the traditional roasted turkey at the Thanksgiving meal. Turduckens can be prepared at home in the span of 12-16 hours by anybody willing to learn how to remove the bones from poultry, instructions for which can be found on the Internet or in various cookbooks. As their popularity has spread from Louisiana to the rest of the Deep South and beyond, they are also available through some specialty stores in urban areas, or even by mail order.

Variations

In addition to the aforementioned chuckey, some enthusiasts have taken it a step further, and come up with the chickenballs. This is a standard turducken, which is then stuffed with a cornish game hen, which is then stuffed with a pheasant, and finally stuffed with a quail. The turduckencorpheail is not for the faint of heart; it is an extremely time consuming endeavor, as birds of the proper size must first be obtained, and then prepared.

Chef Paul Prudhomme brought renewed popularity to the Osturduckencorpheail with his own Osturduckencorpheail recipe. There is a similar dish in South Africa called the Osturducken, an ostrich stuffed with turkey stuffed with duck stuffed with chicken.

A further variant is the gurducken, where the external bird is a goose, rather than a turkey.

In the UK the Turducken is commonly known as a three-bird roast. English chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall expanded this into a ten-bird roast (a turgoduckmaguikenantidgeonck - turkey, goose, duck, mallard, guineafowl, chicken, pheasant, partridge, pigeon, woodcock) [1].

The largest recorded nested bird roast is 17 birds, attributed to a royal feast in France in the 19th Century: a bustergophechideckneaealckideverwingailusharkolanine - bustard stuffed with a turkey, a goose, a pheasant, a chicken, a duck, a guinea fowl, a teal, a woodcock, a partridge, a plover, a lapwing, a quail, a thrush, a lark, an ortolan and a passerine. Since passerine is a generic term, it is not known exactly what kind of bird was used as the smallest in the actual roast, although a pied flycatcher has been suggested. The recipe notes that the final bird is small enough that it can be stuffed with a single olive; it also suggests that, unlike modern multi-bird roasts, there was no stuffing or other packing placed in between the birds.

In Popular Culture

The machinima series Red vs. Blue parodies the concept of the turducken. Starting from the smallest bird, a hummingbird is stuffed into a sparrow, then a cornish hen, into a chicken, a duck, then a turkey, then in a bigger turkey (referring to a picture of Michael Moore), then a penguin, a peacock, then an eagle, into an albatross, then an emu, an ostrich, a leopard, into a pterodactyl, and then finishing off in Boeing 747.

Nutrition

Although a 3-4 oz. serving of turducken contains relatively high levels of fat and cholesterol, turducken is complicated and expensive to prepare, and thus it is seldom eaten outside special holiday dinners, most commonly the American Thanksgiving. As such, a serving of turducken contributes a negligible amount of excess fat and cholesterol to the average person's annual diet.

External links

• Hebert's Specialty Meats
• Category at ODP
• AllRecipes Turducken Recipe
• Yahoo's Turducken Directory
• Cajun Grocer's Award Winning Turducken Recipe
• National Geographic Magazine's article featuring Maurice, Louisiana
• OMG, Turducken A blow-by-blow account of making a turducken at home. Not for the faint-hearted.
• The Road to TurduckenA humorous account of turducken procuction. Again, not for the faint-hearted.