After experiencing deep-friend turkey last year, the Snook and I decided that in 2005 we needed to tackle an even greater poultry challenge: making a turducken. I posted an AskMeFi request for advice that yielded some good tips and links (including this thorough and entertaining article which formed the basis of our recipe). Thus in mid-November I stopped by our local butcher to ask about ordering boned poultry. I hesitantly explained what we were going to make while they all just stared at me incredulous. Finally one guy stepped forward and admitted he’d heard about this “turducken” business before. We ended up ordering a 2kg chicken, 2.5kg duck, and 8kg turkey from them and they agreed to do all the tricky boning work. On the day before the party I picked up two giant parcels: one full of meat, and the other full of bones…

Here’s the Snook unwrapping the bag of meat. We had a slight communications problem regarding the duck and the chicken – in addition to boning them, they’d cut them in two! – but Mr. Turkey himself looked beautiful.

Mr. Snook, however, decided that Mr. Turkey needed to have the first bit of his thigh bones removed, as the butcher had left them in. So here he is using a pointy knife to scrape the meat away from the bone.

Still boning. He also removed the first bit of the wing.

Dr. Amy Jones thinks all her Christmasses have come at once!

Here’s the turkey being spread with the cornbread stuffing we made two nights before. We were wary of overstuffing and causing the turducken to split so we tried to go easy with this stuff. (In fact, we opted to only use two of our three stuffings inside the bird and serve the sausage and smoked oyster stuffing on the side.)

Next the duck was laid out and we began spreading the second stuffing: chicken with chestnuts and truffle.

Here’s the completed duck layer. We also grated fresh truffle (courtesy of our friend Toast) on top of the stuffing.

Lastly comes the chicken layer, again spread with the truffle stuffing…

I’m afraid I don’t have a very good picture of us closing the turducken, mostly because it required four hands (and the cat can’t work the camera). We sorta folded the duck and chicken layers into a roll and then pulled the turkey sides up around it. I held it smooshed together while the Snook inserted a steel skewer like a giant pin to hold it all together.

I couldn’t resist getting down at eye level to get a shot up Mr. Turducken’s bum. You can see the lovely melange of meat and stuffing inside!

We used an embroidery needle and some cotton twine to sew up the seam. Isn’t the Snook’s blanket stitch exquisite?

We stopped before stitching him up completely so we could stuff in some more cornbread. Then the Snook sewed up the bum opening.

The next step is to flip him over and get him in the pan. Again, I don’t have a good shot of this because all four hands were needed. We’d assembled Mr. Turducken on a cookie sheet so we placed the roasting pan on top and then flipped the whole structure. He only just fit in the pan…

A few more pieces of cotton twine were used to truss the body and tie the legs together. The snug fit of the pan also helped him hold his shape, I think. Doesn’t he look good? If you’ve ever wondered what $150 worth of poultry looks like, this is it.

We’d read that putting slices of truffle under a turkey’s skin is good, so that’s what the Snook is doing here.

And here’s a truffle stuck in one of the thighs.

A final coating of olive oil, salt, and pepper, and Mr. Turducken is ready to go in the oven!

But not just yet. One tip we read was to stick a metal spoon into the middle of the turducken to better conduct heat to the inside. We didn’t really have a spare spoon – and our oven wasn’t big enough anyway – but the Snook had the brilliant idea to insert about half a dozen of our metal kebab skewers. He enjoyed this step way too much.

We used the bathroom scales to get a final weight for this sucker: just over ten kilos. That’s about twenty-two pounds!

Mr. Turducken is in the oven! We’d read a lot of conflicting advice on what temperature to roast at, but in the end we went with 180°C (350°F). We figure everything can be cooked at that temperature.

It’s time for the first basting! The first thing we noticed was that what little extra space there was in the pan was FULL of juice and fat. We ended up using the baster to remove a lot of it for addition to the stockpot (see next picture). We also noticed that the drumsticks were browning too fast, so we covered them with extra foil.

Remember the bones? We had about 3kg of them, so they all went into the stock pot along with about seven liters of water (and carrots and celery and all the traditional stuff). We also added the juices and fat we removed from the turkey pan while basting. Man, this stuff is gonna make some amazing risotto!

Still the first basting here. You can see the wooden skewer we used to tuck down the neck flap.

Time for the second basting. See all that lovely juice?

That is seriously more than 50% fat.

Mmm, lovely bouquet!

Third basting. This is probably about five hours in. This is when we checked the temperature and realized that it was cooking way faster than we’d anticipated, so we turned down the oven and put it back in for a couple more hours.

At seven elapsed roasting hours, Mr. Turducken is DONE!

Time for side dishes. I made Aunt Deb’s sweet corn casserole. Yes, that is a CUP of melted butter on top.

Guests begin arriving. Here’s the Snook and Toast (our truffle benefactor) playing with one of Helen‘s Blythe dolls.

Here are Mrs. Morris and Bridget watching as Rob challenges Joseph, the reigning backgammon champion. I was thrilled to be able to have the Macy’s Day Parade and the Dallas-Denver football game on in the background (courtesy of the Snook and bittorrent).

“The Appetizer Pig,” as designed and constructed by Snookums and Helen. This was a big hit.

It’s time for the big unveiling. People were actually really excited to see this beast! Drumroll, please…

Ta-da!

We pose for a picture before the Snook carves into the middle of the turducken.

Flashbulbs are goin’ off all over the place…

It’s so weird to watch someone cut right down into a turkey like a loaf of bread.

Guests are still arriving and the table is filling up. Everyone was asked to bring their signature dish so we ended up with everything from pasta to nachos along with more traditional Thanksgiving fare. There was so much food!

Time to hit the buffet! Amy, Helen, Leanne, and Joanne fill their plates.

In the kitchen, an impromptu Netdecisions reunion is held as the Snook and I catch up with the Dove (aka Philip).

We had two different kinds of sweet potatoes, sweet corn, my casserole, salad, stuffing, stuffed pasta, gnocchi, green beans, pickled cauliflower, potato salad… A little bit of everything!

I am so unflatteringly full.

Miss Fee toasts the photographer.

Amy joins the Clean Plate Club…

… but Rob looks like he’s going to ralph!

Kenya and Sal are having a great time. (They’ve just moved back to Sydney from Brisbane so they should feature in our photos a lot more often now!) Kenya’s nachos were a definite crowd-pleaser.

Food and beer. Eventually the novelty of the parade wore off and I popped in the “Best of Triumph, the Insult Comic Dog” DVD, which most of the Australians had never seen. Needless to say, it was a huge hit.

We ran out of chairs! The final tally was 21 guests (counting ourselves). After seconds and thirds, everyone went back for banana pudding, pumpkin pie, strawberries, and baclava. A sweet end to the evening…

And at long last, the money shot… The demolished turducken. You can still clearly see the meat and stuffing strata though. Even with twenty people, we’ll see be eating the leftovers for days!