Turkey, duck, chicken. This is how a turducken is generally described, so why shouldn’t it also be constructed this way too?

I mean literally. Why shouldn’t the three birds be lined up end-to-end like words in a sentence?

Since making this creation, just about everyone who sees it has given me many reasons why these birds should not be joined in this way, but to the nay-sayers all I have to say is that it was very tasty, I might do it again.

How to make a Turduckenpede

I am going to be upfront and say it – I have never actually seen The Human Centipede, so I can’t say making this is as easy as looking to Tom Six for inspiration, but I have seen the South Park Parody and remembered the phrase “sewn end to end to create one continuous digestive tract” and used that as inspiration.

With that brief, making the Turduckenpede just involves procuring three similarly sized birds (thankfully Aldi had a tiny turkey and Coles had a giant duck), removing their carcases, getting some butchers twine + a needle and going to work.

Of course, in the quest for deliciousness, that wasn’t all there was to this. Each bird was individually stuffed with stuffing to compliment its flavour: sage and cranberry for turkey, orange for duck, and lemon and thyme for the chicken.

Logistical Challenges

The theme of this meat monstrosity was definitely logistical challenges because, as it turns out, a long piece of meat is pretty inconvenient to store and cook.

Storing the thing involved emptying a pretty big part of the fridge but wasn’t an insurmountable task.

The biggest and most important logistical challenge to overcome is how the hell do you cook this thing? There is no way this would fit in an oven. A spit roast would make a lot of sense but would overcook the duck before the turkey is done. This leaves one obvious technique: sous vide.

Sous vide is perfect for the is recipe as at allows for low temperature cooking (for all meats to cook at their own rate without being overdone) and the use of a strange-shaped vessel as all you need is something that can hold water. A quick trip to Bunnings for their largest planter box (that was returned a few days later for a full refund), some insulation and a plastic liner and we were ready to cook.

There were a few disadvantages of cooking this thing sous vide, however, the biggest one being that once it was sealed up, it looked a bit too much like a body bag for most people. Another was that it floated meaning we had to use rocks to weigh it down which did not help the whole the whole feeling of being a few steps away from being serial killer.

The final logistical challenge was the cooking time. As the cooking temp was very low (66C) for maximum juiciness, this needed at least four hours to cook, and because Christmas was hosted 45 minutes away just executing the plan was a logistical challenge of its own. I’ll spare you the details, but my Christmas morning ended up with an early alarm and quite a bit of driving.

The Final Product

Sous vide cooking always leaves you with a delicious grey blob of meat so to make it more appetising you need to finish it off somehow. Steak lovers use cast iron pans but, again, the length of this thing makes that impossible, so we had to blow torch it.

Overall, this thing turned out absolutely delicious and far exceeded everyone’s expectations - the whole family went back for seconds and thirds. I think something about cooking sous vide for so long and the juices mixing together made this a truly unforgettable and delicious experience.