Turducken Recipe

Thanksgiving is approaching rapidly, and what’s a better way to impress your family than cooking a turducken? For those of you unaware of what turducken is, it is a chicken, inside of a duck, inside of a turkey. This type of cooking is called engastration, a recipe method in which one animal is stuffed inside the gastric passage of another. Here is what you’ll need to create this fantastic dish!

Ingredients:

1 (3 pound) whole chicken, boned

salt and pepper to taste

Creole seasoning to taste

1 (4 pound) duck, boned

1 (16 pound) turkey, boned

3 cups prepared sausage and oyster dressing

Directions:

Step 1: Preheat your oven to 375 degrees F. Lay the boned chicken skin-side down on a platter and season liberally with salt, pepper and Creole seasoning. Lay the boned duck skin-side down on top of the chicken and season with salt, pepper, and Creole seasoning. Cover and refrigerate.

Step 2: Place the boned turkey skin-side down on a flat surface. Cover with a layer of cold Sausage and Oyster Dressing and push the dressing into the leg and wing cavities so they will look as if they still have bones in them.

Step 3: Lay the duck on top of the turkey skin-side down and cover it with a layer of cold dressing. Then put the chicken on top of the duck skin-side down and cover it with a layer of cold dressing as well.

Step 4: With the help of an assistant, bring the edges of the turkey skin up and fasten them together with toothpicks. Use the kitchen string to lace around the toothpicks to help hold the stuffed turkey together. Carefully place the turducken, breast up, in a large roasting pan.

Step 5: Roast covered for four hours or until the turducken is golden brown. Continue to roast uncovered for one hour or until a meat thermometer inserted through the thigh registers 180 degrees F. and a thermometer inserted through the stuffing registers 165 degrees F. Check the turducken every few hours to baste and remove excess liquid. There will be enough pan juices for a gallon of gravy. Carve and serve your delicious turducken!

Now that you know how to cook a traditional turducken, you can experiment with different stuffing and glazes for your turkey. One example of an experiment with turducken is with Epic Meal Time, a Youtube channel with vlogs of different recipes. They were they able to put a Cornish hen inside of a quail, inside of a chicken, inside of a duck, inside of a turkey, inside of a pig, which was very creative, to say the least. To compliment the dish they garnished it with Wendy’s Baconators. The possibilities are endless when it comes to cooking with this method, but this featured recipes will get you started with the basics.