Next Level Home Ed – the Turducken

(The name becomes apparent pretty far down...)

For a large number of years now, my brother has hosted an event known as Pre-Thanksgiving. This is a time of year that occurs 1-3 weeks prior to the national holiday known as Thanksgiving. The purpose of the event is to celebrate the festive time of year with one's friends (and to gorge oneself upon vast quantities of delicious food), as many people return home to their families for the actual holiday. Over the years many turkeys have been cooked, and in many new and unique ways. This year, the challenge was to cook the fabled Turducken.

To begin, I would like to give credit where credit is due. Much of the work was done by my brother Rob, and I do not mean to take that away from him. I helped with the bird itself little more than in a single photographed step that you will read about. With that in mind, I've heard much of what was involved and will be writing to my best knowledge of the process as a whole.

To begin, and for anyone who does not know, a Turducken is exactly what it sounds like – though not found anywhere in the wild. It is a Turkey that has been stuffed with a duck, which has then been stuffed with a chicken. When choosing birds, this is not simply a Russian doll matching game. One must also attempt to account for the total amount of food they wish to be serving. With that in mind, the following birds were collected and prepared for the so to be masterpiece:

Now, unless you consider yourself uncanny at stuffing objects, I think you'll agree that it appears difficult to get each of these birds within each other. So, next step is to de-bone the fowl. It is important to now realize that if you find a wild Turducken it is, in fact, a boneless creature (see sharks as another example). De-boning the birds is a delicate process and all aspects of your work space must be appropriate (including the atmosphere). It is recommended that while you work, large knife in hand, you have set yourself to listening to Wagner. Imagine walking into the kitchen to see your chef, knife in one hand – dead bird in the other, while the following blasts through the background: Ride of the Valkyries(and yes, you should continue to listen as you read!)

We know have 3 sheets of bird, and have on the side created a vat of stuffing (sounds delicious I know!). At this point the masterpiece must be assembled. This is a simple layering process. Lay down and open the turkey, and coat it in a solid layer of stuffing. Align the duck, centered and in the same orientation, and top that with another layer of stuffing. Finally lay on the chicken, once more the same way as the duck. See below for a series of photos that demonstrate this process.

What we now have is in no way suitable for cooking. The following process is what I refer to as “next level home ed: where cooking meats [punned :) ] sewing”. If you can imagine, attempting to cook this masterpiece as is would result in many dry and burned sections while leaving most of the middle raw and under cooked. To solve this, and improve presentation, we must prepare the Turducken, both in appearance and practice to look like a turkey. This involves folding the outer edges together and sewing the seem to keep the legendary Turducken closed and in one piece.

To do this you will need 5* things: the aforementioned Turducken, 2 extra hands, a hefty length of butcher's twine, and a crazy needle that looks kind of like a bent nail that has a hole in an end for thread (*depending on how sizes work out there may be a last necessity, but it will be mentioned later). For this one person will be holding and pulling the crazy bird closed while the other stitches the seam that spans the length of the creature. Start near, but not at the base of the Turkey (we'll get the very bottom at the end). Keep the stitches close together but as far from the edge of the skin as you can. The bird is quite stuffed and the stitches can easily tear. Proceed slowly and include as many stitches as possible. Once you've reached the top, tie off your stitches and stand the bird on its head. It is likely that your creation is too full to easily stitch the bottom closed. At this point it is very helpful to have kept some extra chicken skin that you convenient removed before stuffing that bird (yes, we removed the skin in addition to the bones of that one). Instead of forcing the turkey closed, carefully graft on some extra chicken skin and close off the Turducken completely. See below for the work done during this step.

We're almost there! Take your crazy bird (it now looks like no more than a fat turkey) and stick it in your oven. For cooking specifications, you'll need to know your own bird size, oven temperatures and available time. However, once the bird reaches appropriate temperature, it is done. Remove your beautiful lightly browned beast – carve – and serve. Be aware that different sections will have different ratios of turkey, duck, chicken and stuffing.

This is not the end of the tale of the Turducken however. There is further exploration that needs to be done and discussed. For these, I will simply touch on some concepts for future thoughts and inputs. The question has been raised if Newton's Heat Equation can accurately simulate the heating curve of a Turducken (and thus help perfect the predicted cooking times). Why is this question raised? There is always the question of truth to how long it will take to cook one's individual bird. However, the conventional turkey is basically a shell of bird surrounding a nearly hollow center that is filled with a variety of stuffing. The combination of bird, meat and stuffing creates a very non-uniformed body. By contrast, the super-dense, boneless Turducken is possibly as close as one can get food to be a uniformed sphere of meat. Should this work, many people could be saved much stress with regards to the time requirements of their turkeys.

Lastly, is the Turducken, the king of the Thanksgiving fowl? Below are 2 alternatives that have recently come to light. The first is the Turturkeykey – courtesy of How I Met Your Mother, and the second is the Turduckenen-duckenen – courtesy of Vi Hart.


Turturkeykey
Turduckenen-duckenen

I hope you enjoyed reading and look forward to testing your own in the near future!