Turducken?

Turkducken?

By Mary Jo

For today's Christmastide post, we'll discuss turducken .Yankee that I am, I had never heard of this dish until I moved to Maryland, which is south of the Mason Dixon line, though barely.  I vaguely thought it was an old traditional dish from Maryland's Eastern Shore and was popular around the holidays.  It consists of a deboned chicken stuffed into a deboned duck stuffed into a mostly deboned turkey. (Wings and legs kept their bones for aesthetic reasons, I presume.) There is also bread or sausage dressing. In other words, it's one heck of a lot of very solid poultry!

I've never had turducken, but when a nice boutique-ish grocery store near me advertised it for the holidays, I figure what the heck, give it a try.  It was priced by the pound, so I ordered online thinking I was ordering one pound. When I got to the store to collect my goodies, I found that the online store interpreted that as one whole turducken, and here was this huuuuuge chuck of bird.  Urk! The butcher kindly cut it in half for me and it now resides in my freezer waiting for a day when I have the nerve to roast it. 

Naturally I had to research this dish, as one does <G>, and Wikipedia.org informs me that the modern version is attributed to chefs in Louisiana in the mid 20th century, so Southern but not a very old tradition.

However, stuffing one animal inside of another is a very old cooking technique which goes back to the Middle Ages and even Roman times, and is called engastration. A turducken qualifies as a "three bird roast," and the British version is a Gooducken, with a chicken stuffed into a duck stuffed into a goose, since goose is a popular holiday dish in Britain. 

But there are all kinds of variations using any birds and stuffings you wish. This from Wikipedia: 

 In his 1807 Almanach des Gourmands, gastronomist Grimod de La Reynière presents his rôti sans pareil ("roast without equal")—a 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 bunting and a garden warbler—although he states that, since similar roasts were produced by ancient Romans, the rôti sans pareil was not entirely novel. The final bird is very small but large enough to just hold an olive; it also suggests that, unlike modern multi-bird roasts, there was no stuffing or other packing
placed in between the birds.

The mere contemplation of this makes me consider turning vegetarian, but as history it's very interesting, and sounds very medieval! 

Have you ever had turducken, gooducken, or one of their many cousins?  If so, tell me what you think!  Because one day soon I intend to confront the half-turducken in my freezer, and I want to know what to expect!

Mary Jo

Comments

[Sue McCormick]

OH MY! Fascinating.

No, I've never had such a meal; I doubt I would try one. It just doesn't sound like my type of meal.

[Kareni]

I've known of turducken, but I've never sampled one. I look forward to a future report, Mary Jo! (And oops on the one pound sample versus the whole thing.) I was half expecting your litany of the rôti sans pareil ingredients to end with '... and a partridge in a pear tree', but the pear tree would not have fit in the original bird. And now I'm wondering what a bustard looks like.

[Pamela DG]

You are a braver woman that I am. I wouldn't get one. But if I sat down at a table and it was served, I'll be polite and try it. I do have southern cousins who are as likely to feed me 'possum as they are to do a deep fried bird, or even a turducken.

[Anne H]

I served a turducken roast for last week's Xmas dinner with my brother, daughter and a family friend (who lives alone and had been self-isolating). I would not have bought it myself; my ex husband left it in the deep freeze when he moved two provinces away in early November. I basically cooked it as an experiment (and had a frozen stuffed turkey roast available as a backup). My friend has family in England who were very curious about the outcome.
My turducken was not like yours in construction. As I learned only after cooking it, it wasn't chicken nested inside duck meat nested inside a turkey breast, with a little dressing between the layers. It was an outer layer of what tasted like duck meat surrounding chunks of other chicken and duck meat separated by an Italian sausage dressing. The whole was bacon wrapped and held together by netting.
I roasted it like a stuffed turkey breast and that was fine - you just have to test with a thermometer to ensure that the interior meats are cooked. The bacon helped to keep the outer meat moist while the interior ones cooked. As I was not sure about the drippings, I bought some frozen turkey gravy from one of my favourite local restaurants. That was a good choice. There were a lot of drippings but they were really salty and greasy. The turducken would not slice properly but came apart in chunks. The amount of stuffing exceeded the amount of meat and the taste of the stuffing overpowered the meat.
I served farm buns, mashed potatoes, wild rice with cranberries and steamed green beans with the turducken.
On the whole, we all agreed that the meal was good, but we wouldn't buy another turducken, at least from the same source. I may talk with my local butcher about how he constructs his turducken. I believe he separates layers of meat (chicken in duck in turkey) by just a small amount of dressing. But I think the stuffed turkey roasts being offered by my local grocer are more economic and tasty than the turducken.

[Constance]

While I have not had turducken, my sister in (southern) Ohio ordered one for a Christmas feast a few years ago. It came from a butcher in Louisiana who specializes in making them for the holidays. When confronted with the problem of how to carve the bird (birds?), my brother-in-law resorted to that most modern of resources and went to YouTube. There were many, many YouTube videos of both professional and not-so-much attempts to carve the turducken. We all found it funny that a dish served in Roman times required video for modern carvers! Good luck with yours, Mary Jo!

[Mary T]

This was an interesting post, but I think I'll pass on this particular dish.

[Lil]

I've heard of this in historical cooking contexts, but I didn't realize people were still doing it. Will it be hard to cook, getting the inner meat cooked without drying out the surrounding turkey?
All in all, I think I'll stick to imagining it at a medieval feast and leave it off my own dining table.

[Annette N]

I have read about historical meals. I have read about the idea of one thing within another. And for me, it has never been high on my priority list to have a turkducken or anything like that.

To be honest, when I read about the thing that started out with a bustard, I considered giving up food altogether. Who wants to eat a tiny songbird? Not I!!!!

I guess I would have starved during Roman or Medieval times. Shoot fire, eating out of a common trencher turns me off. I admit it, I am too picky to have survived in the past.

I hope that everyone is taking care and staying well.

[MaryJane Rings]

agree

[Linnea J Priest]

I have heard of turducken for years. I was never interested, as I don't like duck. It is too oily for my taste. I became a vegan, so now I am REALLY not interested for myself. I did cook a free-range turkey for my family for Thanksgiving, though. Tradition! and for Christmas they get flank steak marinated in Mary Hunt's (Debt Proof Living) "magic marinade" and broiled. I used to cook beef tenderloin for Christmas, but it got to be too expensive. And the flank steak disappears pretty quickly!

[Teresa Broderick]

I've heard of it but never had the chance to try one. I'd eat anything but if I tried to introduce something like that to my family, they'd probably all leave home!! Including my husband :):)
They're not very adventurous.

[Mary Jo Putney]

Sue, I suspect it's not my type, either!

[Mary Jo Putney]

LOL about the pear tree, Kareni. Here's a link to the bustards. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bustard They are large, and the largest birds are humongous. As they would have to be.

[Mary Jo Putney]

Possum. Hmmmmm.... I might prefer to take my chances with the turducken, *G*

[Mary Jo Putney]

Anna, thanks for the great first hand account! You get points for courage, but the particular turducken you tried doesn't sound worth repeating. At least you have more space in your freezer now. *G*

[Mary Jo Putney]

LOL about using modern videos to figure out how to carve the turkucken. Now I have to look them up.

[Mary Jo Putney]

Mary T, I should probably not have let my curiosity get the best of me. *G*

[Mary Jo Putney]

Lil, I imagine that covering it with foil or using a plastic baking bag would work well, along with a good baking thermometer to ensure that the interior gets hot enough. we'll see.

[Mary Jo Putney]

Annette, I suppose if we were raised in the past we would have been toughened, but since most of us would have been peasants, we'd probably have been lucky enough to have a mostly vegetable diet, which sounds more appealing after reading about the major bird roast.

[Mary Jo Putney]

Linnea, as a vegan, it was good of you to produce the kind of animal flesh meals your family wanted. My brother and his wife are vegans, and when he told me about the Christmas dinner they were getting from a vegan restaurant, it sounded pretty darned good!

[Mary Jo Putney]

Teresa, if you want some time to yourself, you now now how you could get it. *G*

[Karin]

I have heard of turducken, but I thought of it as mostly mythical, not something that butchers prepare nowadays. So I am surprised to hear how many commenters have tried it! I think I'll pass. I do love duck and goose, but one at a time is enough.

[Christina Courtenay]

Interesting! I think I’d try it once but only if I don’t have to cook it myself:-)