When cooked properly, the duck, the chicken and the turkey are all fantastic
on their own. If you put them all together, you'll end up with a Turducken.
I've never really been one for food fads. I am not a fan of molecular
gastronomy, avocado foam or oxygen bars, so I've always done my best to avoid a Louisiana food "creation" called the turducken.
If you've never heard of it before, you're probably living in a cave, but I'll explain. It's a turkey, stuffed with a chicken,
stuffed with a duck, stuffed with, well... stuffing. The coolest part of the whole creation is that each of the birds
is de-boned!
Just a couple of weeks ago I gathered a few friends to act as my ginea
pigs for my first turducken. Although there are recipes out there and "how-to" videos on making a turducken, I took
the easy (and intelligent) way out and procured mine already prepared from CajunGrocer.com. It showed up frozen solid, in a foam ice chest packed with dry ice, though all of the dry ice had evaporated by the
time mine arrived. I have to admit, the toughest part of the process is conquering the unknown. Since I had never
cooked one before, I had no idea what to expect. The defrosting process was the most daunting, but I did so by leaving
it on the counter for a full day, then placing it back in the refrigerator for another day. By day three, the bird(s)
were ready to be cooked. I wasn't sure how many people it would take to eat a single turducken. Although
the total weight was around 16 pounds, there were no bones to weigh it down. I'll tell you right now, 16 pounds of meat
is a LOT!
Even though it was my first time, the cooking part was easy enough for
a third-grader. I cut it open, placed it in a roasting pan, covered with aluminum foil and put it in the oven for four
hours. Then I uncovered it and cooked it for an additional hour. Yep. That's it. Believe me, it is
really that easy. Carving the finished product was also a brease, since there were no bones to interefere with my slicing.
The finished product was a real treat. Though they are
available with several different varieties of stuffing, ours was filled with a spicy Cajun sausage. The fat from
the sausage and duck really added great flavor and a little kick to the chicken and turkey. To complement the spicy
Cajun flavor, we paired the turducken with several side dishes, like my almost famous mac-n-cheese, dirty rice and a
cold salad.
