A byootaful Life

Actually, Christmas 2009 was meant to be the year of the turducken but I left it too late to order one – by the time I called on the Tuesday before Christmas, the butcher informed me that the cut-off for orders was at 1pm that very day and as I had called a little after 2pm, I had missed my chance. I was pretty devastated, since we’d been very keen to try one (and freak my parents out). So there was no turducken last year, but now I’m sort of glad we didn’t have it because this year, with a bunch of our Aussie friends in Canada, we celebrated Christmas day with a massive turducken.

Behold:

A turducken, for those who might not know, is a deboned chicken… stuffed inside a deboned duck… stuffed inside a  deboned turkey. Sounds delicious, right? There’s also stuffing inside to fill the gaps – this one had three different stuffings, one for each bird.  It’s just like three different roast dinners in one meaty package! As you can see from the picture above, this one was a pretty big beast – it was about 12kgs (about 26lbs) and would feed approximately 30 people. There were eleven of us there, so the hosts were prepared for plenty of turducken toasted sandwiches for the next few days.

Our friends got up at 6am on Christmas day to put the turducken in the oven. It was going to take about twelve hours to cook, so they needed an early start. They seasoned it with some olive oil, salt and pepper and some herbs before wrapping it in alfoil and popping it into the oven. They basted it as it cooked and then removed the foil for the last little bit to let it brown on top. And oh my goodness, here is the finished result:

Sorry for the bad quality photo, it was hastily snapped on Phill’s iPhone as camera flashes went off everywhere. The turducken smelled amazing and looked perfect! It was allowed to rest for about thirty minutes while the gravy was prepared. I’m pretty sure they used drippings from the pan, mixed with gravy powder. The side dishes were prepared by friends – we brought potato bake and nibblies, there was also a really tasty pumpkin and spinach salad, potato salad (with sultanas and apple), roast potato and sweet potato, and a selection of breads.

And then everything was ready and the moment of truth was here… time to carve the turducken!

The image above is a still from a video we took – unfortunately I’m having some problems uploading the video, but you can still make out the layers of the meat, interspaced with stuffing. The turducken had been cut in half, then the two halves pulled away from each other to show the insides. Yum!

The turducken was really delicious! You could taste the difference in the meats and they were all really moist and tender. The stuffing was tasty too. It’s a bit messy when it’s carved because, well there’s nothing holding the meat together. I believe some butchers use “meat glue” to hold it together but this one was glue-less. It was all okay though, because once it was on your plate and smothered in gravy, who cares if it’s in one pretty piece or not?

The only downside was that there was quite a lot of soggy skin in amongst the meat, because the chicken and duck hadn’t been skinned before being stuffed inside each other and of course, the skin couldn’t crisp up if it was inside. I’m not a huge fan of the soggy skin taste or texture, so I left those bits to one side. I’m not sure if you’d have much luck stuffing the birds if they were skinless – I guess because it’s been deboned it needs that skin to hold it all together, otherwise you’re just left with a pile of meat.

All in all, the turducken was a big success and we went home nursing extremely full tummies.

What did you have for Christmas dinner? Did you go the traditional turkey or something completely different? Whatever you had, I hope it was delicious!