Archived Article By Tom Fitzmorris Originally published December 20, 2006 Click here for the current edition Turducken The idea of a turducken is intriguing. It's a chicken stuffed inside a duck, stuffed inside a turkey, with layers of various stuffings in the middle and in between. All the bones are removed to make this possible. You roast it in the oven until it's cooked through. After it cools, you slice it to reveal concentric circles of the different layers. Looks good. The turducken has a longer history than is widely assumed. It's been made for many years by the small butcher shops of the Cajun country. It was popularized in the 1980s by Chef Paul Prudhomme. But it goes back even farther than that. It's a very old idea in France, where it's usually done with much smaller birds and called a ballottine. In recent years, some cooks have taken the concept another step, and stuffed the aforementioned turducken assemblage into a baby pig. But why stop there? Why not a calf next? I say let's head in the other direction. Take the turducken and stuff a Cornish hen inside the chicken, a quail inside the hen, a finch inside the quail, and an olive inside the finch. After you cook that, I'll bet it will be the best olive you ever tasted. I think the whole idea is ridiculous, and here's why. The various layers in a turducken taste too much alike. Instead of contrast, there's a clash. It's like playing adjacent white and black keys together on a piano: the two fight each other. The same is true of the stuffings. It's a lot of work for a ho-hum flavor. I like all the parts, but I think they'd taste better by themselves. And then, there's those first four letters. Must we? If you must satisfy your curiosity, try it--lots of recipes are on the net. You can buy them at a number of stores and butcher shops, and you can mail-order a frozen, pre-cooked turducken. But don't say I didn't warn you. © 2006 Tom Fitzmorris. All rights reserved. news@nomenu.com