18
MY
ROUSES
EVERYDAY
NOVEMBER | DECEMBER 2013
I
n brief, a turduchen is a deboned stuffed
chicken enveloped in a deboned stuff
duck enveloped in a deboned stuffed
turkey. But don’t be fooled. There is
nothing
brief about turduchen.
I’ve made turduchen from scratch twice
using a fourteen-page recipe from the
Acadiana-born chef Paul Prudhomme’s
cookbook,
Paul Prudhomme’s Louisiana
Kitchen
. The second go-round went more
smoothly, if only because I had gotten
more proficient with a poultry needle and
kitchen twine. Both times the process—
from ordering properly sized birds to the
final hour of resting — took three days. It’s
a job for the leisure class. Or the culinarily
maniacal. Or the professionals like the
butchers at Rouses.
I joke about the time investment, and while
I doubt I will ever make my own turduchen
again, the end result of three days’ work,
two gallons of stock, several sticks of butter,
thirty-five cups of dressing (you have
leftovers), and twelve hours of roasting was
indeed pretty sublime. The turduchen is a
self-baster, weeping pints of duck fat from
within. As long as you cook long and slow,
all three birds maintain a premium level of
moisture that’s challenging to
achieve in large roasted turkeys.
And counter-intuitive as it
may sound, the three different
dressings (andouille dressing for
the turkey, cornbread dressing
for the duck, and oyster dressing
for the chicken) somehow
tasted harmonious following a
half-day of cooking within the
tri-bird.
There’s debate regarding the
origin of turduchen. Sammy
Hebert of Hebert’s Specialty
Meats in Maurice is certain
that Hebert’s butchers made
Louisiana’s first turduchen
after a man walked into the
shop in 1984 with a freshly shot turkey and
duck. Hebert’s had long done a business
in deboned, stuffed chickens. It was the
hunter’s idea, says Sammy, to add one of
them to his spoils and give the three birds
the Russian nesting doll treatment. Sammy
himself claims to have coined the term
“turduchen,” a mash-up of the birds’ names.
And the rest is history —Hebert’s now sells
a few thousand turduchens annually.
The Cajun food writer and culinary
instructor Marcelle Bienvenu told me
a different turduchen inception story
a few years back. In her memory, Paul
Prudhomme invented the dish in the 1970s
while working at Commander’s Palace.
When I interviewed him about it, the chef
himself remembered that Frank Davis
named the concoction “turduchen” during
a live radio show broadcast from K-Paul’s
Louisiana Kitchen, Prudhomme’s French
Quarter restaurant.
Whatever the roots of the turduchen
formula, the practice of roasting animals
within other animals is ancient. Alexander
Dumas’
Le Grand Dictionnaire de Cuisine
,
published in the late 1800s, includes a
recipe for an anchovy in an olive in a turkey
in a pig. I would argue that more important
than historical origins to the Louisiana
turduchen is properly enjoying the fruits of
so much labor.
FROM DONALD ROUSE
A 14-16 pound turduchen needs
at least four hours at 375 degrees
(breast side down), and another hour
uncovered. You want to make sure
the internal temperature exceeds 165
degrees. Remember to let it cool for
at least 35-45 minutes before carving.
Enjoy Rouses turduchen for the holidays.
Holiday Turduchen Tip
Turduchen:
Birds of A Feather Taste Great Together
by
Sara Roahen +
photo by
J. Kenji Lopez-Alt
