One thing that Hubs has always wanted to do is take on the culinary masterpiece known as Turducken. For those of you who are somewhat less familiar with this delightful dish, it's a chicken stuffed inside a duck stuffed inside a turkey. Yes, it's ba-na-nas. A little cray-cray even. And thanks to
Whole Foods, you too can take classes in learning the art that is Turducken.
We arrived at the Roosevelt Whole Foods location, excited about our Turducken adventure. Now, I highly recommend the Whole Foods cooking classes. We have taken a class at Sur la Table previously, which wasn't nearly as interactive, which I feel is imparative if you're taking a cooking class. Whole Foods is the shiz-nit. And they give you wine, and highly encourage the consumption of it throughout the class, which automatically qualifies you as Tres Cool in my book.
But I am getting off track. The class was being taught by this guy:
This guy is
Gabriel Claycamp and he is kind of awesome. After my years in the food service industry, I've met many a saucy, sassy-pants cook/chef, and he is definitely all of those things. Katie likey. This guy knows his way around a piece of meat for sure. After a quicky demo on how to remove the bones from our various poultry friends, we were set loose to try for ourselves.
I'll spare you the details, but I will say that this is definitely not something to try at home if this is your first time cutting open an animal. On a scale of 1 to 10, this has an ick factor of about a 15. You get raw meat under your nails, all up your arms... it's gross. Yet strangely fun. Perhaps it was all the wine I drank, or maybe it's the satisfaction that you get from cutting out the bones of a bird, leaving all of the skin and meat intact, but I had a blast.
Anyhoo... once you're done deboning your creatures, it's time to assemble your new friend. Take your chicken, season with salt and pepper, fill with a layer of stuffing, fold over and set aside. Do the same thing with Mr. Duck, laying Mr. Chicken inside of him, folding over, and set aside. You then stuff Mr. Turkey, put Mr. Duck/Chicken inside, and now you're ready to seal him up and cook him. Tie him up with kitchen twine, or you can apparently seal him up with
Caul, which will make a nice seal around your bird and keep all the delicious juices inside.
At this point in the class, they did a drawing for the five Turkduckens that the class had assembled. We did not win, making us both Very Sad Pandas. However, we noticed that one of the couples that "won" didn't want their Turkducken. Being Very Sneaky, we decided to hang around the class and wait until everyone left, when we then hijacked the Turkducken and took it home.
Score!
But what does one do with a 3 lb chicken stuffed inside of an 8 lb duck stuffed inside of a 10 lb turkey?
You call up your friends and host Turducken Thanksgiving, that's what.
*First, cook your new friend Turducken in the oven at 200 degrees for 8 hours, or until the internal temp reaches 155 degrees. He is then ready to enjoy, and is really juicy and tasty*
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| Yummy yummy Turducken...sorry about the blurry picture :( |
Turducken Thanksgiving was a great success! However, I personally think that it all kind of tasted like turkey. It was a lot of work, and we probably won't ever do this again, but it was definitely fun and a great excuse to have both Date Night and a fun get together with friends.
