Brett's Turducken Adventure

My experience was that creating a turducken is an immense amount of work, and the resulting dish is somewhat disappointing. For starters, the recipes I referenced called for huge amounts of Meat Magic, and that was too much Magic for my taste buds. A second problem was the bird skin. One article I had read described how the duck and chicken skins would "melt" into the meats, making for moist and flavorful poulty. My experience is that "melt" is the wrong verb. I think "vulcanize" is more appropriate. So standard eating proceduce for a slice of my turducken began with fishing out the layers of rubbery skin.

You can find a gallery of pictures from my turducken experience here.

As I write this in 2006, it has been almost three years since the events I'm describing, so my memory is a bit rusty. Thus, instead of a detailed blow-by-blow, I'll just list a few random observations and experiences.

• Deboning the birds is a lot of work. My mother-in-law helped out by deboning the chicken and duck for me, but I did the turkey myself. Having never deboned a bird before, and in fact being mostly ignorant of bird anatomy, I found the process very difficult. It's important that the turkey skin remain in one piece to wrap up the final monstrosity, so I had to proceed very cautiously, learning as I went. As I recall, I spent a couple hours on this step.
• Go easy on the Magic Seasoning. The recipe I followed called for multiple bottles of the stuff (Poultry Magic, Seafood Magic, etc), but I think I would have liked the final product more had it tasted more of meat and less of Magic.
• Buy a turkey lacing kit. I initially sealed up my turducken with wooden skewers, but that was hard work and looked like it was about to burst. So my wife made an emergency trip to the supermarket, where she found some neat Turkey Lacing Kits. Each kit consisted of six or so sharpened metal skewers plus some string. They worked wonderfully. One nice feature of the lacing kit approach is that you can insert the metal skewers and then tighten up the laces to pull the near-bursting turducken closed.
• Start early. I devoted a big chunk of the day before T-Day to preparation, and in fact even did some prep the day before that, yet I was still working non-stop with my wife until about 3am. There's just plain a huge amount of work.
• I used an oven thermometer to make sure the oven temperature was exactly what the recipe requested, yet I ended up having to cook it for an extra 2-3 hours (I forget exactly how much) because the inside just wasn't getting done. In my case it wasn't an option to start baking the bird earlier than I did, since it simply wasn't ready yet.
• This is a cajun recipe, which means it's spicey. One of the three stuffing mixtures in mine was quite spicey, and several guests found it excessive. I grew up on turkey dinners that were totally free of any spicey flavors, so it wasn't a different experience for me. Luckily, with three different stuffings inside the turducken, if you don't like one flavor you still have two other choices.

• Consider ordering a pre-assembed turducken.
• If you really want to make your own, consider having a Turducken Prep Party 1-2 days before T-day. Invite over some friends, split into groups, and given each group a task. Obvious tasks include preparing each of the three birds, and preparing each of the three stuffing mixtures. Provide lots of beer.
• Take pictures and/or video, because you probably won't do it again.