Thanksgiving '09

Over the years for our Thanksgiving dinner we have mostly favored the traditional oven baked turkey with dressing. Some years though, when living at Cribbage Flat in Battle Ground, Washington we occasionally deep fried turkeys, injecting a different marinade on each side of the breast plate. Our favorites were Cajun and herb/butter flavor. This year we decided to bake a Tur-Duc-Hen. The local Market Street gourmet store here in Allen sells a frozen one, complete with Creole pork cornbread/Cajun rice stuffing. Donna wasn’t so excited about it, but both Wade & I wanted to at least try it once. Shown here are the before, fresh out-of-the-box, the ‘hot’, fresh out-of-the-oven, and the split open result. The one we purchased was a 15 lb. Creole Style Tur-Duc-Hen advertised as: A boneless Chicken and a boneless Duck stuffed in a partially deboned Turkey. We baked per the instructions for 4 ½ hours. It was perfectly done. As instructed, we cut it down the center and exposed the two halves. We scooped out the Creole Pork and Cornbread Dressing, and then sliced the meat in ½” pieces. We also had the traditional turkey legs and wings for dark meat. And our review! Donna and Michelle were not too big on even trying the duck meat, but they did, Wade ate the duck, but he passed on a 2nd helping. And what did Shawn and I think? We both thought it was purty darn good, and ate let’ sjust say, we ate more than one helping! It was certainly different from the traditional turkey. The duck was not over-powering or greasy tasting and the chicken & turkey were both moist. The rice dressing was good, but not as much Cajun flavor as I had hoped. And the cost? . . . . . it was $69.00. It was worth trying for the money, but not worth eating year in and year out. More of a novelty that ya’ll should try sometime! We’ll probably do it again sometime! If you’re interested in reading more about this particular Tur-Duc-Hen, visit: www.tonychachere.com