My condo smells like cooked poultry!

I have been wanting to eat turducken for a long time. Turducken is a magical dish where you stuff a duck with a chicken... and then proceed to stuff that into a turkey. I had several ways to go about this... I could buy frozen turducken from the supermarket. I was told that they were dry and not very inspiring. Even then, it looks like this item is only stocked around the time of American Thanksgiving... so I missed the boat on that. Also, it wasn't a very glamorous presentation of such a magical dish... to be crammed into a cardboard box and put into a supermarket freezer.

My other option was to buy turducken freshly made at a store. Web research showed that Cajun Corner was the best place to do this in the GTA. Further web research showed that their website was no longer active, and my phone calls to their number were not answered. Not good. Southern Accent serves turducken around Thanksgiving as a special event, but no amount of persuasion could get them to make one specially for me. If you haven't noticed the cultural theme, turducken is a Cajun dish.*

This left me with the only proper option to acquire Turducken... I'LL MAKE IT MYSELF! My turducken web searches lead me to the Cajun Grocer, which offers turduckens delivered anywhere in the continental United States... of which I am not a part of. :( Fortunately, the folks at Cajun Grocer were generous enough to provide the recipe for magical turducken online!

To get the birds, I went to The Healthy Butcher which makes turducken around Thanksgiving time... but not for Christmas. I had them de-bone all the birds for me. I recommend having the butcher do this for an extra fee. The birds from The Healthy Butcher were all locally raised, free-range, and organic. It's the best quality turkey, duck, and chicken I could find... and also the most expensive. I figured I may only make turducken once, so I should go all out.

The recipe from Cajun Grocer requires 3 different stuffings. One for each bird. The turkey stuffing (left) is traditional bread-based stuffing. The duck stuffing (middle) has rice, beef, and mushroom soup. The chicken stuffing (right) has rice and shrimp... but I made it out of rice and sausage.

This is what it looked like before I added the final chicken stuffing. That's 3 birds piled on top of each other. I used an 18 pound turkey, a 5 pound duck, and a 4 pound chicken. Do the math... that's a lot of meat.

This is what it looks like before it goes into the oven. We stitched up the turkey and flipped it upside down. It's boneless except for the turkey wings and legs. It's a slippery sac of meat and stuffing.

Tragically, the turkey split halfway through baking. The recipe called for a 25 pound turkey, but I went with a smaller 18 pound turkey. I may have went crazy with the stuffing too. But it's no big deal. I cover up the split with aluminum foil, and it's ready to go back into the oven. The split actually helps heat get into the turducken so it cooks faster now.

During the baking process, I am fanatical about keeping the birds moist. I've read stories about moist chicken and duck... but a really dry turkey layer. I take the turducken out of the oven every hour and re-baste some of the juices back on top. I also cover the top of the turducken with aluminum foil to prevent drying/burning. Finally, I put a pan of water in the oven to keep the humidity level up. These are all lessons learned from cooking dry turkeys in previous Christmases past.

I am quite proud of the final product. It was a juicy and moist turducken that was rich with flavours. I invited some friends over and we managed to eat a fair bit of it. I'm saving the rest for leftovers this week. I'm quite happy that it all worked out besides some minor setbacks. It's the first time I made turducken, so it's a pretty good first effort. I'm not sure if I will make it again. It's a lot of work... but it's the most delicious poultry dish I've ever had.

* Can you imagine Gambit of the X-men eating turducken? Me neither.