Jason Schramm with the guidence of Chef Jim McDuffee (of Joseph Leonard)compiled a 3 bird creation for Thanksgiving, (Christian Johnston)
Turducken or not turducken? For most people, that’s not even really a question.
A dish on the fringes of acceptable dining, its main purpose always seemed to be its novelty — better the punch line of a greeting card than something you’d ever actually eat. But for me, an obsessive foodie who works in radio to pay the grocery bill, loving food is trying new food, and I wanted to see if I could love a turducken.
If this is the first you’ve heard of said dish, the crash course is straightforward enough. You stuff a turkey with a duck, stuff that duck with a chicken and stuff the whole thing into the oven: Tur-Duck-En. You think you’re looking at a regular roasted turkey, but when you cut into it, two other birds appear to everyone’s delight.
But somewhere between deciding to make it and having to make it, I realized I’d have to serve it to guests and that they, at least the polite ones, would have to eat it. Thankfully, The Post provided me with a real-life, professional chef — Jim McDuffee of West Village spot Joseph Leonard — to come to my apartment and help.
I called him the day before our planned attempt while I waited on a Williamsburg subway platform with a box of meat from the Meat Hook. The butcher had supplied me with all three birds (a 12-pound turkey, a 5-pound duck and a 3-pound chicken), a boning knife, needle and string, and I was calling Jim to share a small, though relevant, detail I had thoughtlessly omitted up until that point: My fiancée can’t eat bread, so I couldn’t make the Wonder Bread stuffing I imagined a turducken demanded. I asked if we could do this without stuffing. All bird. Jim said absolutely.
The Culinary Institute-trained chef arrived at 1 p.m. the following day, and we went through motions rather akin to a blind date — except ours centered on 20 pounds of poultry and game we’d have to debone. (In hindsight, there is a not-so-subtle caution in the first step of many turducken recipes: Ask your butcher to debone the birds.)
I stared at the chicken with a trepidation I last felt when I was 8, perched for the first time on a high dive. I eventually dove in, but took a very long time to butcher the bird, while Jim dispatched the duck and the turkey.
There is a wide gap between a pretty confident home chef and a pro who lives and breathes and sweats cooking. Still, Jim was a reassuring, guiding voice in the kitchen, and never once made me feel bad about anything, instead pointing out the truth about his experience — that he had been doing this for half his life — as opposed to lingering on mine and the fact that I’d made the chicken look like a fleshy map of Michigan.
Once the birds were boneless, the process actually became a lot easier, which is ideal for Thanksgiving when you have family in-fighting to focus on. Starting with the chicken, we seasoned with salt, pepper, rosemary and sage before rolling the whole thing tightly. Then we flipped it over so the seam was facing down. From there, we seasoned the duck the same way and rolled it around the log of chicken, seam face down again. Then we did the same thing with the turkey. At this point, if you don’t have a friend in the kitchen, you will wish you did because 20 pounds of meat is a hefty amount to be doing such gymnastics with. Plus, you now have to tie the whole thing up. Together, we strung it tight with butcher’s twine and stitched the ends shut with the needle from the Meat Hook, leaving us with somewhat of an attractive meat-roll-up that we seasoned once more before throwing it into a 350-degree oven.
Three hours later, we had a trifecta of protein I was legitimately excited to eat, and was actually a cinch to carve (even after a drink or three).
Most people will agree that the best part of Thanksgiving is the leftovers. Hours after everyone has forgotten the aspiring Rockwell of a beautiful bird, you pick at a mess of turkey shrapnel and enjoy the holiday by the light of your fridge.
So days later, as I reheated a plate of Thanksgiving leftovers that I enjoyed well before most people will celebrate the holiday, I remembered something Chef Jim said to me as we started, at a point when I couldn’t get out of my own way: “We are going to make something that tastes really damn good.” And we did.