Turducken - A Royal Roast

Turducken - a culinary adventure approached with excitement, trepidation, fortitude and gusto.

For those of you not in the know, a Turducken is also known as a Royal Roast or a nested roast.  The name come from an amalgam of the three main ingredients; A TURkey stuffed with a DUCk stuffed with a chicKEN.

I must admit that I am not the worlds greatest fan of turkey roasted.  Usually it is too dry for my liking and while the flavour is not too bad, its the fact that the meat must be washed down the gullet with large amounts of libation that I find off putting.  And yes, I am well aware that there are numerous ways to roast the perfect bird but so far I have not been impressed by any of these attempts to improve the lot of the dry turkey.

Enter the Turducken and in my opinion the saviour of the roasted turkey.  My main concern with the whole concept was that if the interior birds were not to be roasted in the normal fashion then would not the fat and skin make the whole lump of protein, greasy, fatty and unappealing?  Turns out the answer is no, it did not.  In actual fact, the extra moisture made the turkey meat moist and succulent.

There are a few articles on line and in particular on Wikipedia referring to the history and the process of attempting a nested roast but here I will share some of my findings.

1.  Get a bigger turkey than you think.

We used a 4.5kg turkey, a 2kg chicken and a 1.8kg duck.  When I do it next, I will use at least a 5kg turkey. When it came time to layer the fowls, the turkey was a bit tight and we had a lot of trouble squeezing the stomach together.

2.  Free-range, free-range, free-range.

The turkey and the duck must have been allowed to roam free while the chicken had to be cage-bred.  How do I know?  Because the chicken was the easiest to de-bone, indeed I used a knife only to slit the belly and my thumbs separated the bulk of the meat from the skeleton.  It was also a lot softer than I was expecting and much easier to compress.  The chicken also had very little flavour

3.  A sacking needle would be good right about now!

All the thought I put into the venture from the ordering of the birds to the whole process of where to do it, equipment in he form of knives and so on, I gave no thought to the securing of the finished article.  A sacking needle and kitchen string would be a god idea, in the end, bamboo skewers sufficed but really were not the ultimate answer.

4.  Stuffing.

I gave no thought to this at all so it was fortunate that Penny did.  She made a traditional style sausage stuffing with cranberries, walnuts and other yummies that was smeared between each of the layers.  This gave the finished result an extra flavour kick.

5.  Get someone to take photo's

Someone else took the photos posted here. I would not have wanted to have kept stopping and cleaning hands to handle a camera.  And you will want to take photos.  You can describe the process and the end result but the photos are going to be the clincher.  This photo show me having stabbed myself ever so slightly with my flash knife.

6.  Time keeps on slippin', slippin, slippin

There was about 2 hours work which was much more than I thought.  Slow and steady might win the race but without proper footwear also gives you a sore back.  You can not puncture the skin and not just for presentation either.  Puncturing the skin could result in a fatal flaw that could see the whole enterprise ruined.  Take your time and do a proper job.

7.  Invite them and they will come.

A bird like this will feed 20 people easily.  Easily.

8.  Bacon, bacon and bacon.

A protective layer of copious amounts of streaky bacon will help protect the skin and keep i from tearing and splitting.  Plus, taking the bacon off and reserving while roasting the bird for the last 20 minutes will help glaze it up nicely.

9  Low and slow.

The bird went into the oven about 120 degrees C at 9am and come out about 5.30pm.  This is not a weekday quickie meal.  The low temperature and long cookin time is required to enure the insides are cooked and the outside is not charcoal.

10.  Meat thermometers a must.

This one stands to reason really.

Following are some random photos of the event.

Trying to figure out the best way to remove the thigh bone without detatching the thigh

I thought it would be big enough at this point

Watch where you put your finger and the end of a sharp knife

Take one turkey, then add a chicken and a duck

And still it keeps coming

Layer upon layer upon layer

The money shot

Bacon goodness

All trussed up and one place to go

Bugger!

Three people tying and one shooting the photo's

Yip, a sacking needle would be real handy

Turkey, stuffing, chicken, stuffing... now where is ths duck?

Dont forget the stuffng

One boned out turkey

Look at all that duckie fattiness

Add caption

We don't need no stinking knife

Like a surgeon, cuts for the first time!

Just meaty duckie goodness

This is what puts the backbone in you, Duckie!

Lots of damn fiddly bits

Mmmmmmm

Did not need a knife for the chicken

Nealy finished the turkey

 

 

One turkey sans skeleton