A New Thanksgiving Tradition
My endeavor began two years ago, I was listening to the radio and one of the DJ’s was talking about a recipe that I had vaguely heard about before; the turducken. That was the moment that this idea was first planted in my head. My cooking ability had been growing in skill and increasing in variety.
The basic premise for a turducken is first removing the bones from a duck, a chicken, and a turkey. Then add stuffing in between each layer of birds. You then proceed to cook for a period of about nine hours. I began to ask different people I knew if they had ever tried a turducken. Not much luck was found in that question. Most people had never heard of one let alone tried one. In fact, a few people laughed at me and thought I was joking. My boss at the time told me he had tried it when he was growing up in Louisiana, I guess that is where the recipe originated. He said he was not very impressed. I heard from a few other people that it was just “okay”. After hearing that some people liked it and some people didn’t I was determined to attempt this culinary challenge.
I decided to practice by de-boning a chicken and stuffing it with brown rice and broccoli. The process was challenging but doable. The result was fantastic. There was only a couple of days left until Thanksgiving, so with my family’s support we gathered the ingredients needed to accomplish our unfamiliar task.
It was the eve of Thanksgiving; I hurried home from work to begin removing the bones from the variety of birds that awaited me at home. I cleared off the counter, slipped on my thin surgeon-like gloves and took hold of my newly purchased poultry knife. With a large cookie sheet laid on the counter top I placed the cold, naked turkey breast side down and began the time intensive procedure. I later found out that the process of removing the bones only takes minutes for an individual skilled in such activities, but for a novice such as myself, the...