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Turkey Finds Its Inner Duck (and Chicken)
By AMANDA HESSER
Published: November 20, 2002
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ONCE upon a time, possibly at a lodge in Wyoming, possibly at a butcher shop in Maurice, La., or maybe even at a plantation in South Carolina, an enterprising cook decided to take a boned chicken, a boned duck and a boned turkey, stuff them one inside the other like Russian dolls, and roast them. He called his masterpiece turducken.
In the years that followed its mysterious birth, turducken has become something of a Southern specialty, a holiday feast with a beguiling allure. There are some Cajun butchers, like Hebert's Specialty Meats, who have made it their signature, stuffing dozens of turduckens each week, and shipping them frozen around the nation. At Thanksgiving time, Hebert's production leaps to nearly 5,000 a week.
''I think it's like the deep-fried turkey that came to the fore a few years back,'' said John T. Edge, the director of the Southern Foodways Alliance in Oxford, Miss. ''It's a fairly exotic meal that has gone mainstream.''
''When I visited my father in Macon, Ga.,'' Mr. Edge added, ''he had a turducken that he bought cut rate from Sam's Club in his freezer.''
But since many people don't seem to mind dunking an entire turkey in boiling oil, it doesn't seem so ambitious to try stuffing a duck stuffed with a chicken into a turkey, rather than buying it prepared. It seemed straightforward from a cooking point of view, and the results were tantalizing.
A well-prepared turducken is a marvelous treat, a free-form poultry terrine layered with flavorful stuffing and moistened with duck fat. When it's assembled, it looks like a turkey and it roasts like a turkey, but when you go to carve it, you can slice through it like a loaf of bread. In each slice you get a little bit of everything: white meat from the breast, dark meat from the legs, duck, carrots, bits of sausage, bread, herbs, juices and chicken, too.
I called Paul Prudhomme, the Louisiana chef who has long proclaimed himself the inventor of the turducken. He insisted that to truly understand turducken, you need to bone all of the birds and prepare three stuffings, one for each layer of meat, and cook the whole for 12 hours. (And yet, purist though he is, Mr. Prudhomme would not reveal the name of the lodge in Wyoming where he says he came up with the dish, when exactly he created it, or even his age.)
Leaving aside the mystery of its birth, perhaps the more interesting question is why turducken hasn't caught on more north of the Mason-Dixon line, especially at Thanksgiving, when even the most rigid cooks toss aside restraint.
There are a few diehard fans, like John Madden, the colorful N.F.L. football analyst, who usually buys three to last him and his broadcast crew through the Thanksgiving Day game. ''The first one I ever had I was doing a game in New Orleans,'' Mr. Madden said. ''The P.R. guy for the Saints brought me one. And he brought it to the booth. It smelled and looked so good. I didn't have any plates or silverware or anything, and I just started eating it with my hands.''
Mr. Madden gets his turduckens from the Gourmet Butcher Block in New Orleans. Between each layer of bird is a different dressing. ''And when you get the whole combination -- the oyster dressing, the spicy dressing and the rest -- it's pretty doggone good,'' he said.
I thought about ordering a turducken, but had heard the mail-order ones were something like mail-order fruitcakes -- inconsistent at best. Or I could make one and see for myself what Mr. Madden was talking about.
At Hebert's (pronounced ay-BEARS), which has locations in Louisiana, Texas and Oklahoma, the butchers can bone a turkey in two and a half minutes and a chicken in a minute and five seconds. Still, Mr. Prudhomme's words notwithstanding, I am not a masochist. I have boned birds before. It's about as much fun as stripping paint. I called Staubitz, a butcher shop that's been in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn, since 1917.
''I'd like to know if you can bone a turkey, duck and chicken for me,'' I said.
''Say that again, nice and easy,'' John McFadden, the owner, said. So I did.
''I know we're a butcher but that's artwork.''
I pressed my case. I offered to pay extra.
''Nope,'' Mr. McFadden said. ''Can't do it. They do it in Louisiana. They don't do it here in New York.''
I called another butcher, who said you need special equipment to bone poultry. A sharp knife? Another said he wouldn't do it because it was ''a royal pain in the neck.''
Several more calls, though, yielded a handful of butchers who were happy to do the work (mostly for a price, about $10 extra), and I ordered the birds -- a 3-pound chicken, 4- to 5-pound duck and 10- to 12-pound turkey. These proportions would allow each bird to fit snugly into the next without over-stretching the turkey.
A few days later at Lobel's Prime Meats, on Madison Avenue in Manhattan, Stanley Lobel began slicing into a duck, carefully removing the backbone, and then shaving the meat from the rib cage. It was beautiful to watch as the bones emerged and all that was left was a floppy duck ''suit.'' Mr. Lobel has been a butcher for 55 years. It took him 15 minutes to bone the duck. Get a butcher to bone the birds.
Mr. Lobel, who has made turducken, and even a capon in a capon, suggested cutting the duck and chicken into four pieces, so you can spread them out over the turkey, allowing the meat to be dispersed more evenly. He kept the wings of the turkey intact, and butterflied the drumsticks in the duck and chicken.
Recipes other than Mr. Prudhomme's for what follows are scarce. But it is not difficult to find in the annals of culinary history examples of birds stuffed into birds. There is a reference in the diaries of John B. Grimball from 1832 for a Charleston preserve of fowl. It consisted of a dove stuffed into a quail, a quail into a guinea hen, a hen into a duck, a duck into a capon, a capon into a goose, and the goose into a peacock or a turkey. The whole thing was then roasted and cut into ''transverse sections.'' It makes turducken seem like the lazy way out.
Barbara Wheaton, a food historian, said that in the 14th century, peacocks were boned and roasted and re-stuffed into their feathered skin. In his Encyclopedia of Practical Gastronomy, published at the turn of the last century, Henri Babinski, who used the pseudonym Ali-Bab, gives instructions for stuffing boned ortolans into truffles.
''In the Republic of Georgia,'' Darra Goldstein, a professor of Russian at Williams College and the editor of Gastronomica, a journal of food and culture, wrote in ''The Georgian Feast'' (University of California Press), ''there's a very old feast dish that calls for a huge ox roasted on a spit, stuffed successively with a calf, a lamb, a turkey, a goose, a duck, and finally a young chicken, and seasoned throughout with spices. The art lay in ensuring that each type of meat was perfectly roasted.''
Mr. Edge said, ''If this was going on in Charleston in the 19th century, it is likely that some other enterprising cooks in places around the South were preparing this dish previous to Paul Prudhomme's so-called invention of the turducken.''
''It strikes me as a dish invented by men in a hunt camp,'' he added, ''men who have a snootful, who say, 'What would happen if we took this bird and put it in this bird?' ''
But then again, the Cajuns like to make chaudin, the stomach of a pig stuffed with sausage and peppers, stuffed calves tongue and stuffed pork chops. ''Witness the Hebert stuffed fowl list,'' Calvin Trillin, the New Yorker writer, who has a turducken in his freezer, wrote via e-mail, ''and the fact that Cajuns get needles from veterinarians to inject the secret spices into turkeys that are about to be deep fried.''
Nevertheless, the codified definition of a turducken, and the name itself, is most likely 20th century in origin. But with no details available, its creator remains elusive. ''Of course, now everyone's on the bandwagon,'' said Conrad Comeaux, a tax assessor and home cook in Lafayette, La.
Mr. Comeaux once smoked turducken for an hour or so on the grill before roasting it. It turned out well. ''Good enough to make you go home and slap your mama,'' Mr. Comeaux added, using a local expression.
Although smoking turducken on my deck in Brooklyn was unlikely to happen, I would roast it in my oven. Turducken, it turns out, is not unlike preparing a turkey with stuffing, and not unlike cooking a rolled and tied butterflied leg of lamb. So that is just how I approached preparing it.
I wanted the flavors of the meats to be clear and distinguished, so I developed a stuffing that would complement them, rather than three stuffings muddling the mass. You want the stuffing to be full flavored and sturdy; it should fill the dips and cavities where the bones once were, without making the bird bulky. And if you fill the turkey too full, it will split open when cooking.
I saut?ed cubed pancetta and sausage. With the duck and chicken giblets, I cooked onion, celery, carrot, garlic and aniseed, deglazed the pan with brandy and added tarragon and thyme. Then I folded this together with cubes of dry country bread.
Assembling a turducken is simple. You lay the turkey skin side down (if your butcher hasn't butterflied the bird, slice through the skin where the backbone was and open up the bird so it lays flat), season it with salt and pepper and spread it with some of the stuffing. Make sure to tuck some stuffing into the drumsticks. Then lay the duck in the same manner on top of the turkey and repeat. The same goes for the chicken.
Then you have a choice: you can sew up the bird using a carpet or upholstery needle and butchers' twine, or thread through each side of the bird with thin skewers and then lace the skewers with twine. I recommend sewing, and enlisting someone to help. Begin at the tail end, folding up the tail skin and pulling the sides of the bird, close to the wings, back together. Stitch the bird from side to side about an inch from each edge, pulling to tighten. Continue sewing up to the neck end, then tie off the string.
Flip the bird. You could roast the turducken as is, but its amoebic shape might frighten your guests. I recommend trussing the turducken, as you would a chicken, which will help outline the drumsticks and reform the birds into one plump turducken.
Then it's smooth sailing. You put it in a roasting pan, cover it with foil and bake it at 250 degrees. Turducken needs to be roasted at a low temperature so the outer layer of turkey doesn't dry out before the chicken in the middle is cooked. The best method I found was to cook it until cooking juices formed in the pan, then baste it every half hour. You will need a cooking thermometer, because that is the only way to know what's going on inside the turducken.
When it reaches 130 degrees, you remove the foil and increase the oven heat. The outside will get brown, and basting will allow the mix of juices to moisten the entire turducken.
When the turducken is done, you set it on the platter, collect the cooking juices -- which are rich and concentrated, like a demiglace -- in a gravy boat and march both to the table. Give someone who's never encountered a turducken the honor of taking a long thin knife and slicing.
''It's about as formidable as a meatloaf,'' Mr. Trillin said. ''It makes everyone into a grand holiday carver. It gives them tremendous confidence. You just slice it.''
Mr. Edge said, ''I wonder how far away we are from turducken being available in Dubuque?'' I think you will agree, after you taste it, that we are getting closer and closer.
TURDUCKEN
Time: About 6 hours, plus overnight chilling
1/2 pound pancetta, sliced 1/4-inch thick, then cut into 1/2-inch squares
3/4 pound sweet Italian sausage seasoned with fennel
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 cup chopped onions, plus onion halves for pan
1 cup chopped carrots, plus carrot halves for pan
1 1/2 cups chopped celery
2 cloves garlic, mashed
1 teaspoon aniseed
1 3- to 3 1/2-pound chicken, boned, giblets and wings reserved
1 4- to 5-pound duck, boned, giblets and wings reserved
Sea salt
Freshly ground black pepper
1/4 cup brandy
1 tablespoon chopped thyme
3 tablespoons chopped tarragon
2 cups dry baguette in 1/2-inch cubes
1 10- to 12-pound turkey, boned.
1. The day before serving, cook pancetta in large saut? pan over low heat until fat is rendered and pancetta is browned. Drain on paper towels. Remove sausage from casing, break into small pieces and add to pan. Cook sausage until no longer pink. Drain on paper towels.
2. Pour off fat in pan. Add oil, along with chopped onion, carrot and celery and garlic and aniseed. Cook over medium heat for 2 minutes. Add chicken and duck giblets, and season with salt and pepper. Cook until giblets are almost cooked through. Raise heat to high and pour in brandy. Reduce until almost gone, then shut off heat and stir in thyme and tarragon. Remove giblets from pan and chop. In a large bowl, fold together pancetta, sausage, vegetables, giblets and bread cubes. Taste and adjust seasoning. Let cool and chill overnight.
3. The next morning, lay turkey out on counter, skin side down. Season with salt and pepper. Spread 1/3 of stuffing over its surface, pressing some into each drumstick to make it plump again. Trim about 2/3 of fat from duck, leaving some fat on breast. Butterfly duck drumsticks. Lay duck pieces on top of turkey in their corresponding parts. Season with salt and pepper. Spread 1/3 of stuffing on duck. Lay chicken on top, again skin side down and corresponding in arrangement to turkey. Season with salt and pepper, and spread with remaining stuffing.
4. Heat oven to 250 degrees. Thread a carpet or upholstery needle with 2 feet of thin twine. Beginning at tail end, begin pulling sides of turkey together, reforming its body, stitching every inch or so. Have someone hold bird while you stitch. Do not sew turducken together too tightly or it will split open when cooking.
5.Turn bird over; with a 3-foot piece of twine, truss it as you would a chicken, wrapping the twine around tips of drumsticks, then crisscrossing it and going down around base of drumsticks. Crisscross twine under bird, then bring it up sides and crisscross it on top, wrapping it down and around wings, crisscrossing it on back side, and up again, tying it over breast.
6. Season roasting pan with salt and pepper. Place turducken in pan breast side up, and season it. Place chicken and duck wings, along with some halved onions or carrots, in pan.
7. Cover pan with aluminum foil and bake. After 2 hours, begin checking bird every 30 minutes or so, and basting when juices form. Turn pan every now and then so it cooks evenly. When a thermometer inserted in turducken reads 130 degrees (probably about 4 or 5 hours), remove aluminum foil and turn up heat to 375 degrees. Baste every 15 minutes or so, until turducken reaches 165 degrees at its thickest point. Remove from oven and let cool for 10 minutes or so. With sturdy spatulas, lift onto platter. Cover turducken with foil, and let sit another 15 to 20 minutes. Meanwhile, strain pan juices and spoon off fat.
8. Using a bread knife or carving knife, slice turducken like a loaf of bread. Serve, passing cooking juices.
Yield: 12 servings.
Butchers in New York Who Will Bone the Birds
HERE are New York butchers who will bone turkey, duck and chicken.
LOBEL'S PRIME MEATS -- 1096 Madison Avenue (82nd Street); (212) 737-1371 or (800) 556-2357. Order at least two days in advance.
CITARELLA -- 2135 Broadway (75th Street); 1313 Third Avenue (75th Street); 1250 Sixth Avenue (49th Street); (212) 332-1599 or (866) 248-2735. The charge for boning is $10 per bird.
OPPENHEIMER PRIME MEATS -- 2606 Broadway (98th Street); (212) 662-0246. Robert Pence, the owner, requests orders a few days in advance.
FAIRWAY -- 2127 Broadway (74th Street), (212) 595-1888; 2328 12th Avenue (132nd Street), (212) 234-3883. The butchers will bone the poultry at the meat counter, free of charge.
HOLLAND COURT MEAT & FISH MARKET -- 1423 Lexington Avenue (93rd Street); (212) 289-8330. Boning is about $5 for each bird. Order a few days in advance.
VINCENT'S MEAT MARKET -- 2374 Arthur Avenue (186th Street), the Bronx; (718) 295-9048. Order one week in advance. The price for boning is incorporated into the price per pound of the poultry.
JEFFERSON MARKET -- 450 Sixth Avenue (11th Street); (212) 533-3377. Boning costs $8 extra per bird. Call three days in advance to order, and ask for Johnny Fox or the meat department manager.
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