Want something slightly exotic for Thanksgiving, but not too exotic? Time is tunning out, but there is an interesting alternative to a simple ham or turkey, and I’m not talking about tofurkey.
It’s turducken– a turkey stuffed with a duck, stuffed with a chicken.
Although it also sounds like a Pokemon name.
ASH: Turducken! I choose you!!
TURDUCKEN: Turducken!!!
Stuffed Camel goes one step further- it’s a whole camel, stuffed with a whole lamb, stuffed with 20 whole chickens, each stuffed with 3 eggs. This from a book called International Cuisine (California Home Economics Teachers, 1983 (ISBN 0-89626-051-8)), but it’s also copied on the web all over the place.
I know the idea is the flavors transfer, but come on people… I am very skeptical that the eggs are going to have a camel flavor.
It actually seems to me that turducken is cheating a little bit- all the recipes I have seen involve cooking the components and then assembling them… which doesn’t really let the flavors mingle together at all.
Example: a mirepoix of chopped celery, onion, and carrot can be made into a bed on which to cook meat, for example pork. In some recipes, the vegetables are thrown away after cooking, because their flavor has already infused into the meat. The budget-conscious chefs I know who do this instead take the vegetables and make a low-cal snack with them- the vegetables are now slightly pork-flavored, but still low in fat.
But the point of that recipe is the flavor transfer. How much turkey flavor is in the chicken in the center of a turducken? I dunno.
And in the South, when you have a huge party, you take a pig and stuff it with a turducken… and roast it outdoors on a spit.
I think Tofurducken is an idea whose time has come.