Turducken

Was surfing the net when I came across this interesting Thanksgiving dish. Went to Wikipedia to find out more...

A turducken ("TURkey-DUck-chiCKEN") is a de-boned turkey stuffed with a de-boned duck, which itself is stuffed with a small de-boned chicken. The cavity of the chicken and the rest of the gaps are filled with, at the very least, a highly seasoned breadcrumb mixture or sausage meat, although some versions have a different stuffing for each bird. Some recipes call for the turkey to be stuffed with a chicken which is then stuffed with a duckling. It is also called a chuckey.

The result is a relatively solid, albeit layered, piece of poultry, suitable for slow cooking by braising, roasting, grilling, or barbecuing. The turducken is not suitable for deep frying Cajun style (to deep fry poultry, the body cavity must be hollow to cook evenly). Turducken fans say that it is complex and usually quite agreeable in texture and flavor, as the juices of the turkey and chicken baste the duck, and the more robust duck bastes the turkey and chicken.

I was even more amazed when I read bout the variations of this dish:

In addition to the aforementioned chuckey, some enthusiasts have taken it a step further, and come up with the turduckencorpheail. This is a standard turducken, which is then stuffed with a cornish game hen, which is then stuffed with a pheasant, and finally stuffed with a quail. The turduckencorpheail is not for the faint of heart; it is an extremely time consuming endeavor, as birds of the proper size must first be obtained, and then prepared.

Chef Paul Prudhomme brought renewed popularity to the Osturduckencorpheail with his own Osturduckencorpheail recipe. There is a similar dish in South Africa called the Osturducken, an ostrich stuffed with turkey stuffed with duck stuffed with chicken.

A further variant is the gurducken, where the external bird is a goose, rather than a turkey.

In the UK the Turducken is commonly known as a three-bird roast. English chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall expanded this into a ten-bird roast (a turgoduckmaguikenantidgeonck - turkey, goose, duck, mallard, guineafowl, chicken, pheasant, partridge, pigeon, woodcock).

The largest recorded nested bird roast is 17 birds, attributed to a royal feast in France in the 19th Century: a bustergophechideckneaealckideverwingailusharkolanine - bustard stuffed with a turkey, a goose, a pheasant, a chicken, a duck, a guinea fowl, a teal, a woodcock, a partridge, a plover, a lapwing, a quail, a thrush, a lark, an ortolan and a passerine. Since passerine is a generic term, it is not known exactly what kind of bird was used as the smallest in the actual roast, although a pied flycatcher has been suggested. The recipe notes that the final bird is small enough that it can be stuffed with a single olive; it also suggests that, unlike modern multi-bird roasts, there was no stuffing or other packing placed in between the birds.

Omigod how on earth do you even pronounce that? Needless to say, all these dishes are great big cholesterol bombs. *drool*

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turducken