Thursday morning I was glad I had deboned the birds earlier. I spent some time just making three types of stuffing and using all six burners at once in the process.
It took a while to remove the skin from the duck and chicken as well and I was feeling under the gun to get the stuffed bird roasting by 11:30AM at the latest. We got everything done just in time with the turducken stuffed with sausage stuffing, mushroom stuffing and shrimp and cornbread dressing.
The challenges began after the birds were layered. I used a reusable silicone trussing "thread" to close up the turducken. I discovered I should have put a thinner layer of dressing between each bird as it was difficult to cinch closed. Ultimately the task was completed.
The next problem was that many of the directions called for roasting the bird at 190 or 200F for about 12 hours. That would place us eating after midnight. I suppose I could have started the dressings at 2AM but that wasn't going to happen. Besides, the FDA seems to believe this is not the safest way to cook turducken and I can understand their point. So I resorted to the Glad oven bag method that my family used when I was growing up. According to package directions as stuffed 20 pound bird should take about 4 1/2 hours at 350.
The final problem was that I didn't want to let the turducken sit soaking in it's own juices. I usually make a bed of large cut mirpoix when I roast but I didn't think that it would give enough clearance. So we placed a roasting rack inside the bag and struggled to get the turducken to sit adequately on top. Here the disadvantages of the turkey being deboned emerged. There was certainly a lack of structure so if you are going to attempt this I recommend being prepared for thed difficulty of moving the turkey. In retrospect a cheese cloth sling may have helped (if anyone tries using a cheese cloth sling I'd love to know if that helped or if it just made the whole process more complicated).
With the birds in the oven, in the bag, on the rack I moved on to the roasted garlic and asiago mashed potatoes, asparaus filo wraps, cranberry sorbet, and other assorted sides and forgot about the turducken for the next few hours. Around 4PM we decided to check the temp and punched a thermometer right through the bag. The temp was around 150 and I decided that with carryover cooking we'd be fine. Half an hour later I started peeling the plastic bag off the top of the turkey and wishing I had remembered to butter the top yet convincing myself it would have stuck anyway. When the bag was finally off and the skin was mostly salvaged I called Sam over to help move the turducken to a serving platter. Once again I am thinking that a cheese cloth sling would have been a good idea. If a cheese cloth sling is used to transfer the turducken to roast it, leave it in place so you can just lift the bird onto the serving platter.
Then the rush began to get all the other sides on the table and to finally eat before we had all had too much beer to make room for dinner.
Although I believe that stuffing birds may have come out the inspiration any cook might feel (there's a space, let's fill it up with good stuff), my father-in-law suggested that stuffing birds began as a means to help the meat go further so that stuffing one bird inside the other misses the point. We did end up eating less than half the turducken and that was with 12 adults and three children. We could have fed at least another dozen people.
The final verdict: Three perfectly cooked nested birds with yummy
dressings. The gravy from the turducken drippigns was wonderful! The
birds themselves were moist and seasoned. On the other hand it was
certainly the most complicated Thanksgiving turkey I've ever done and
had a number of challenges. If you are easily frustrated in the kitchen
it might not be the best method to attempt. It took help from Sam in
maneurvering the turducken and even in holding it closed to truss it.
In the end it was satisfying to serve all three layers of bird and
three layers of stuffing.
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