Post by Big Yogi via Wikipedia

You may have heard about it, you may have seen John Madden award it to the players of the Thanksgiving Bowl, you may have seen it on Bizarre Foods on the food network (that show is crazy), you may have even tasted it yourself. Either way it is becoming one of the most popular new dishes for Thanksgiving in homes all over the country. What is it? It is the deliciousness that is the TURDUCKEN, a Cajun-creole dish made famous in the South and now making it’s way across the country.

GET STUCK

A Turducken is a dish consisting of a partially de-boned turkey stuffed with a de-boned duck, which itself is stuffed with a small de-boned chicken. Each bird is stuffed with a highly seasoned breadcrumb mixture or sausage meat, although some versions have a different stuffing for each bird. The result is a relatively solid, layered, piece of tastebud pleasing poultry, suitable for cooking by braising, roasting, grilling, or barbecuing. The turducken is not suitable for deep frying Cajun style (you know we like to deep fry everything now and deep frying turkeys is also popular but to deep fry poultry, the body cavity must be hollow to cook evenly and this bird definitely isn’t hollow).

Here is the history of the dish. Some people credit Cajun-creole fusion chef Paul Prudhomme with creating the Turducken as part of the festival Duvall Days in Duvall, Wa in 1983. However, no one has ever verified this claim. The November 2005 issue of National Geographic magazine in an article by Calvin Trillin traced the American origins of the dish to Maurice, Louisiana, and “Hebert’s Specialty Meats”, which has been commercially producing turduckens since 1985, when a local farmer whose name is unknown, brought in his own birds and asked Hebert’s to prepare them in the style that is now famous in the South. The company prepares around 5,000 turduckens per week around Thanksgiving time. They share a friendly rivalry with Paul Prudhomme.

Turducken is now being served in place of the traditional roasted turkey at the Thanksgiving meal. Turduckens can be prepared at home by anybody as long as you know how to remove the bones from poultry, and instructions can be found on the Internet or in various cookbooks. If you don’t want to waste time preparing Turducken you can find them in some of your local Butcher or Meat shop. Columbus’ own Carfagnas has Turduckens but they go fast. You can also order them online or even by mail order.

If you want to try something different this Thanksgiving try this Cajun-creole classic and if you like email us here at the flypaper and tell your friends we put you on to something delicious and you love the FLYPAPER for that. If not oh well I’m going to get one right now and I’ll enjoy it to myself. Check out this video of John Madden giving away his traditional Turducken feast and have a HAPPY THANKSGIVING.