With the Open House behind us, Christmas Day - and 14 guests for dinner - loomed large. And fresh turducken - that weirdly wonderful combination of turkey, duck and chicken - was finally in my sight lines for the main course.
Fiesta Farms was the go-to place, as weirdly wonderful as turducken. A 9 lb. turducken seemed a reasonable amount for 14 people, even accounting for the three vegetarians. And who better to assemble it for us than Danny, the charming and enthusiastic butcher at Fiesta?
Here it is, pre-cook, in all its fleshy glory:
Umm, maybe we should have gone with the 7 lb....
Into the TurboChef...an extra pan to catch the drippings...
Let me digress a moment while the TurboChef does its magic.
Our uber-cool, custom red TurboChef makes me happy. The snappy look is by frog design, and while I roll my eyes at their description of the design process - frog sought the honest voice of the consumer audience - it worked. I don't know that it's my "honest voice” that responded to the appeal of the TurboChef. I just know that cooking a perfectly juicy roast chicken in less than 30 minutes can’t be beat. Or having deeply rosy rack of lamb done and cut into chops in less than 10.
So there was no question in my mind that our first turducken would need to be made at warp speed in the TurboChef.
Setting the oven for a turkey didn't seem quite right - the darn turducken looked more like a veal roast on steroids than a stuffed turkey. Hmm...veal roast...that seemed like a good setting to try. The temperature was right - 350F. The time sure sounded good - two hours. And the results?
Delectable!
To table, everyone...
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I will have to get myself one of those when we remodel. We had a lovely prime rib from Whole Foods for our Holiday dinner and we decided it would be our new tradition. It would be nice to have it cooked and ready in about 45 minutes. Your turducken looks yummy!
ReplyDeleteHow did you go about getting it from Fiesta Farms?
ReplyDeleteDId you just go up to the butcher counter and ask them to sew it up for you?
Hi Anon!
ReplyDeleteFiesta Farms is great - they take custom orders for all kinds of meats (turkeys, porchetta, pork loin roasts, duck etc). When we bought the turducken, we ordered it in advance but if I recall they didn't need much time to prep it. We were also able to "customise" it by adding stuffing with the ingredients of our choice.
Hope that helps!
Eliz