The Turducken Factor

There are many things that go into the creation of a perfect Thanksgiving feast. Often times it's a combination of things like a juicy turkey and creamy mashed potatoes, Sometimes it's a succulent ham with candied yams, and other times it's a good selection of wine, conversation and merriment. Well, we had all those this year, and it was great. But what made the ultimate difference was what I like to call "the Turducken Factor". This is a scientific term that plots a graph where one axis measures the tastiness of a Turducken and the other measures the amount of fun had on Thanksgiving. I have put an example here from Science Weekly.



As you can plainly see, the amount of fun had at Thanksgiving is directly related to the tastiness of a Turducken. All I can say was our graph was off the charts this year. It was juicy, succulent, and tasti all wrapped up in a multi-meat and stuffing adventure. Here are some pictures of the creation of this years Turducken.

First you start with 1 raw chicken, duck and turkey. The turkey is the biggest and ours was about 24 lbs. The next largest is the duck and ours was 6-7 lbs. Our chicken was 4-5 lbs. You must completely debone each bird (except for the turkey, where you leave the leg bones). This is not an easy process, as you have to keep the bird intact, especially the skin as you remove all the bones. To do this, you must cut down the spine of the bird and begin to seperate the meat from the bone while trying to keep the meat together in one main piece.

Note: These pictures are not for the faint of heart.









Success!





Once you've deboned all the fowl, you lay them out and put stuffing on each one.







We had an andouille sausage stuffing for the turkey, a cornbread stuffing for the duck, and a shrimp stuffing for the chicken.

Then came time for the fun part. We closed the chicken up with skewers



Then we put the chicken in the duck, and closed the duck around the chicken, then skewered that shut as well



Then we put the chicken and duck inside the turkey, where yours truly then sewed the turkey shut





And then VOILA! You have Turducken



The next day, after cooking for 9 hours, we pulled it from the oven



Oh so tasty brown! We then remove the skewers from inside and cut it open. As you can see, each piece has three layers of meat with a different stuffing between each



And then time for the feast. The chart proves correct again and science prevails as there are nothing but happy faces






So what have I learned from all this? If there's birds for the pluckin, and fingers for the suckin, then you had better make a Turducken.

Happy Thanksgiving from the Three Chefs!



Coming up next:

Buenos Aires Goodbye Dinner and off to South America!