Bone a chicken.
Stuff it into a deboned duck.
Squeeze it all into a deboned turkey.
Bake.
You’ve just created a turducken, the fowlest of fowl; a poultry monstrosity that has been winging its way north from Louisiana and has been spotted on the Canadian side of the 49th parallel.
“It turns out to be about 20 pounds of solid meat,” said Tim Gurgurdry, a turducken butcher with Charlie T’s Specialty Meats in western Louisiana.
“You’ve got to have a big family to eat it all.”
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A properly prepared turducken strives to provide rich slices that present all three birds’ meat in layers.
Turduckens are becoming one of Louisiana’s biggest poultry exports, their popularity exploding in the last three years. One processor has built a dedicated turducken plant, which produces more than 30,000 of the Trojan turkeys every year for customers across the United States.
Unfortunately for Canadians keen to try the cajun creation, most Louisiana turducken builders appear to see the 49th parallel as a frontier beyond which they will not venture.
None The Western Producer contacted are willing to ship north of the border.
But turducken recipes abound on the worldwide web. Not only are detailed deboning instructions available, but also elaborate recipes for the three layers of stuffing that wrap each fowl in the traditional cajun turducken.
It was thanks to the internet that Canada’s first live turducken sighting took place. Toronto food writer Kate Gammal heard about the unlikely creation on the net and decided to make one.
Although she was laughed at by her friends and scorned by butchers, she managed to construct, cook and serve one in early 1998.
It was a two-day process that involved 16 hours of oven cooking. Gammal said her turducken fed 30 people.
The appearance of the turducken north of the border delights the Canadian Turkey Marketing Agency. Gammal wrote about her turducken experience for the Toronto Star newspaper, and agency spokesperson Tracy Runions said this kind of publicity is just what the gobbler industry needs.
“We want to make turkey more front and centre,” said Runions. “We want people to go out and look for turkey in the grocery store.”
Generally turkeys only become objects of national attention at Thanksgiving and Christmas, but the turducken has lifted the turkey high in the public eye south of the border, and may increase its profile here.
The recent history of the turducken is hotly disputed. Many cajuns, including famous chef Paul Prudhomme, claim they invented the turducken.
Prudhomme said he first made a turducken in 1962.
Whatever its origins, the turducken has inflamed the hunger of tens of thousands of Americans, who are willing to pay hefty air freight bills to get one prepared by a qualified turducken butcher.
Internet accounts of amateur attempts to build a turducken often speak of the need to set aside a full day to bone the birds and make the stuffings.
But professionals are much fleeter of fowl.
Gurgurdry said he can bone and stuff a turducken “in about 10 minutes.”
The turducken has also inflamed the culinary imaginations of southerners. An Arkansas man is known to have ordered and eaten a pigturducken: a turducken stuffed in a pig.
While Louisiana can claim credit for the specific invention of the turducken, the concept appears in many cultures.
Internet turducken pages reveal the existence of the South African osturducken (an ostrich stuffed with a turkey stuffed with a duck stuffed with a chicken), and the Saudi Arabian whole stuffed camel, which is a camel stuffed with a lamb stuffed with 20 chickens stuffed with 60 eggs.
