Turducken #4

Here is our done Turducken I am bummed because I forgot to take a picture of it being cut open. The inside looks like a lasagna. It can be a little difficult to serve but if you use a big spatula or even a cake server it works great! We were able to serve almost 20 people and have about 2 days of left overs.

Turducken #3

While Mike was deboning the birds I was making the stuffing. I took a recipe I found online and changed some things about it. But here is the gist of what and how it is done.

Take about 1/2 C or 1 stick of butter and melt it in a large skillet over high heat. Add about 3 cups of diced onions and 1-1/2 cups celery also diced. Saute until the onions are dark brown but not burned, it takes about 10-15 minutes. Make sure you stir it though so they don't burn. I then added 1lb of turkey sausage (I would have added 2lbs, but we only had 1lb) to the skillet and cooked it about 5 minutes or until the sausage was browned. Next I added paprika (2 tbsp.) and minced garlic (3 tbsp.) and cook approximately 3 minutes over medium heat, stirring occasionally. Stir in 3 cups of stock and bring to simmer. Continue cooking until stock evaporates a bit and oil rises to top, about 10 minutes. Stir in 2-3 cups toasted bread crumbs and mix well. Add more bread crumbs if mixture is too moist or more chicken stock if you need it more moist. I think next time I'll actually make double this recipe as we had to be really careful as to how much stuffing we put in between the birds.

We turned the oven on to 225 degrees. Once we had all three birds deboned, we laid the turkey out flat on the chopping board. Mike then smeared butter and minced garlic all over the inside of the turkey. We also sprinkled some garlic salt and paprika. I quartered up an onion and then Mike put them in different spots on the turkey (like under flaps of the bird or in crevices to give it a little more flavor). Next we poured out some stuffing (if you divide your stuffing up first it helps a lot) onto the turkey and spread it out. Place the duck on the stuffing filled turkey and repeat with the butter, spices, stuffing and onion. Then place the chicken on the stuffing filled duck.

Now this is going to take 2 people minimally, lol. The turkey is very slippery. Have everything ready that you need to sew up the bird, yes I said sew. We found a great product at the grocery store that has metal skewer things that have a hook on 1 end. It comes with about 5 metal skewer things and some twine. I do wish we had had 2 of these packages it would have helped. First, close up the chicken, then the duck, and lastly the turkey. The second person needs to sew the opening closed while the first person is holding the turkey together.

Once the Turducken is sewed closed place it in a roasting pan, sewed side down. We then smeared the outside of the Turducken with butter and sprinkled it with garlic salt and paprika for coloring. We put a baking sheet on the bottom rack of the oven to catch any stray drippings.

We plopped the beast in the oven and let it cook for 2 hours. Then we basted it. Let it cook another hour and then baste it again. And then yet another hour and baste it again. We then made a foil tent to cover the birds and kicked the heat up to 275 degrees. Continue to baste the bird every hour or so. It took us about 8 hours to cook but we read that it can take up to 10 hours. Just make sure that you check the internal temperature of the bird, it needs to be at 165 degrees.

Turducken #3

The picture above is of the chicken being deboned and the picture on the left shows the duck being deboned .

Turducken #2

This is where the mess begins. Grab about 3 plates to put all the bones, giblets, extra fat and skin on, we saved these for our gravy. Here is the link we used to debone the turkey. Mike accidentally deboned the turkey upside down but it still worked :) http://homecooking.about.com/od/turkeyrecipes/ss/deboneturkeysbs.htm

Turducken #1

Here is Mike with our turkey. We actually saved over half of our grocery shoping so we could get a free turkey. Our store had a promo where if you buy $100 worth of groceries you would receive a free 15lb turkey and if the turkey weighed more (which ours was 18lbs) then you paid the price per pound which was only .99c. So for the whole turducken it was $23.

Many asked so here it is :)

I know many of you asked what in the world we were thinking at Thanksgiving. As many of you know Mike does something different with the turkey each year and this year was no exception. We poured over a bunch of different ideas but the one that kept coming back to us was the Turducken. I wanted to capture this memory as it was one full of laughter and exhaustion, lol. So I tried to take pictures all throughout the process and even kept a time log for this beast :) Let me know if you try this out and what you think. We thoroughly enjoyed our tasty endeavor. For your viewing pleasure (well the only yummy looking picture is when the bird was done) here are the recipes, directions, and pictures.