Sunday, November 25, 2007
Tur-duck-duck-goose!
| After sleeping off my Turkey induced hangover, I am alive and well. Just in time to recap my turducken adventure. My Thanksgiving adventures with complete Corned Ham coverage will follow later this week. When last we left left our friendly Turducken it had just been tossed into the oven for a slow roast. The preperation of the Turducken was quite easy as it had already been assembled and frozen. All I had to do was thaw it, cut open the package and shove it in the oven. Two hours later, the down side of this prepared turducken began to show.  This net was not string. It was some sort of elastic net. My first thought was how does the elastic survive in the oven for 2 hours without melting or breaking down. I still do not have an answer for that. I wasn't allowed to ponder it too long. In removing the netting from the turducken, the elastic provided a nice "slingshot" effect, throwing hot crusty season poultry shrapnel all over my kitchen. Floor, ceiling, wall, shirt, countertop. On many occasions I have had a meal (usually wings or ribs) where I felt I needed a bath after the meal. This was the first one I felt I needed a bath after serving the meal! Once the netting was removed it was time for the magical moment of carving the turducken. Traditional turducken carving is to cut it down the middle to expose all three layers.  The turkey is easily identified as the largest chunks of meat with a slightly gray color. I can only assume the darkest meat is duck, as duck meat tends to be very dark in color. The problem is, from what I can tell, the duck meat is INSIDE the remaining meat, which must be chicken. While digging thru this mound of meat, I was never able to positivly ID any of the "sausage stuffing" advertised on the box. Sadly we may need a special holiday episode of CSI to help with this one. You may also notice a lot of red on the outside and inside of the turducken. Apparently the fake-cajuns who make these turduckens feel that as long as you coat everything with cayenne pepper then it is suddenly "cajun." So they put pepper on every layer of the turducken leading to an overspiced hardly edible chunk of meat. I'm no sissy when it comes to hot food. I love hot wings as much as the next guy, but I also am smart enough to know you don't turn up a bottle of Texas Pete when you're feeling a bit thirsty. one nice thing about the turducken was that there were plenty of drippings for making gravy. This is due to the extra juicy duck. However once you've had your fill of duck fat gravy you probably don't want to see what happens with the rest of the duck fat. Sitting on the counter, not in the fridge, the duck fat still managed to form a jello consistency block in my gravy seperator while I was eating my dinner. It also required HOT water and my heavy duty cleaning chemicals to get off my counter top. Duck fat is powerful stuff! Perhaps there's some sort of military application for this sticky, fatty, and yet so tasty substance?   |
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