Turducken
January 2, 2008
I was thrown for a loop a few weeks ago when my Grandma (hi Oma!) announced that we would be having Turducken for our Christmas Eve dinner. This time it wasn’t her thick German accent that was throwing me off – “Yeah, TUR-DUCK-EN” she enunciated and quickly explained: a turkey stuffed with a duck stuffed with a chicken. I instantly had two thoughts running simultaneously: either my family is crazy or we had just created the mother of all culinary inventions.
I later found out that Turducken wasn’t our family’s invention at all, but rather a very popular holiday feast in the southern states. Tante Evelyn (my aunt ~ did I mention we’re German?) had seen Turducken featured on the Food Network and thought it would be a fun addition to the dinner table this year.
All three birds are boned except for the drumsticks on the turkey and literally stuffed into one another then surrounded by a Cajun pork stuffing. I know, I had a hard time wrapping my brain around it, too.
Tante Evelyn ordered the pork-ish, gamey poultry from CajunGrocer.com who shipped us the deboned and stuffed bird(s) packed with dry ice straight from Louisiana. We unpacked and cooked similar to a traditional turkey: covered and baked at 350 degrees for four hours, then uncovered and continued to bake for an additional hour. The house smelled amazing all day.
Cutting the bird was one of the most fun “packages” we opened that night – everyone gathered around my Dad in the kitchen as he sliced and identified the different layers as they were exposed. The surprise factor for me was how evenly and perfectly moist every part of the bird turned out. I was a little nervous about the chicken and duck meat drying out in the oven for five hours, but somehow the combination of everything worked really well together.
When you eat the bird you can taste the different flavors, and the spicy pork sausage stuffing not only held everything together logistically, but also complemented the flavors and added a nice spice.
My final analysis: Turducken is an experience that tastes as good as it is fun to say 
Deboning three birds is more than intimidating to me, but here’s a recipe for the brave, sans pork stuffing: Turducken Recipe, courtesy of Paula Dean.
Entry Filed under: Holidays, Uncategorized. Tags: Sacramento, Turkey, turducken, turducken recipe, food network, southern traditions, cajun grocer, duck, chicken.
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1.
lostspartan77 | January 2, 2008 at 4:18 pm
You have to be making that up.
2.
sacfhoodies | January 2, 2008 at 5:50 pm
Nope - I wouldn’t have believed it myself if I hadn’t tried it. Although, I’m getting word around the office that turducken has been around for years. Who knew?
3.
lostspartan77 | January 2, 2008 at 5:57 pm
I can not imagine that a chicken would fit inside of a duck and that would then fit inside a turkey.
How about a Potato-Turkham-Berry?
I have tried for several years to master the art of cooking a turkey and usually it ends up a lot like the dinner scene from Nation Lampoons Christmas Vacation…
Take cubed potatoes, soak them in olive oil, add cubed ham, fresh cranberries, dust it with brown sugar, and stuff that in the Turkey.
4.
Cynthia Williams | January 3, 2008 at 12:52 pm
Paul Prudhomme invented this recipe years ago! Locally, Nugget Market sells them every year at Thanksgiving, but since my family prefers different dressings/stuffings than Nugget provides, we have the market bone the birds for us and then we assemble the birds, stuffing them with our choice of fillings and cook them. We’ve been doing this for the past 3 years and cook ours on the webber. Anyone wanting further information on Turducken should just google it and you’ll come up with all sorts of instructions, including the original one from Prudhomme. The local news stations usually do a feature on Turducken every year.
5.
sacfhoodies | January 3, 2008 at 1:08 pm
Great to hear that there’s a local option - the Nugget never fails to impress me.
6.
Another German named Evelyn | January 30, 2008 at 8:28 pm
Thanks for sharing Christine! Wow I’ve never seen this before but the picture of dinner with the rotkraut makes me miss my Oma even more. It’s great they opened up the menu to try new things and it looks like it was a hit! I have to send the recipe to my Oma in Deutschland and see if she’ll give it a whirl!