Any brave chef looking for a challenge this Christmas might want to consider tackling the turducken, an ambitious and time-consuming dish combining the meat of a turkey, a duck and a chicken all deboned and rolled in between layers of delicious stuffing.
"It's a huge amount of work to do so you'd better really like the people you're bringing over for dinner," says Willie White, owner and head chef of the River House Grill in St. Albert.
White, who is a fan of turducken, says people should expect to set aside two to three hours to debone their birds.
"When you make a turducken, you take your whole turkey and you just want the breast meat, so you debone the whole turkey and you lay it out flat," he said.
"Then you debone the duck and then you lay it out flat and then you do the same thing with the chicken — you debone the leg and the breast of the chicken and you lay it out," he said.
With the three carcasses now ready to go, the next step involves seasoning the meat with herbs, salt and pepper. White recommends making a stuffing of breadcrumbs, apples, celery, onion and sundried cranberry to put in between the meat.
"Then you roll it up but you have to roll it very, very tight. Then you usually get some metal skewers or some wood skewers to tie it all together. It takes quite a bit of time to cook because you're cooking three whole birds. Turducken will take anywhere from eight to 10 hours to cook," White said.
For the rest of us, good old-fashioned turkey is probably the dish most featured on festive tables around this time of year. And for most of us, the "less is more" philosophy is the way to go when cooking a turkey.
Anne Marie Venne, whose grandparents came to St. Albert more than 100 years ago, said her grandmother always kept it simple for their Christmas meal and she continues to do the same.
"It was stuffed with just a plain bread stuffing, never any meat or anything in the stuff, just bread and onion stuffing. She stuffed it right into the bird, no putting it in casings or anything, just put it right into the bird and then cooked that way," Venne said.
Although she said her own children are keen to get more creative with their Christmas turkeys, Venne said she prefers to cook hers exactly as her grandmother did.
"It's just something that Grandma did and Mom did and I do," she said.
Summer turkeys
While most of us probably wouldn't think of carting a turkey on their camping trips, that's exactly what Marny Traverse and her family do every summer.
Traverse said their bird is wrapped in alternating layers of tin foil and wet newspaper (six pieces of newspaper for each layer) with a double layer of aluminium foil on the outside.
"The wet newspaper just insulates it so it doesn't burn. It's fabulous," she told the Gazette earlier this month.
The turkey is then placed over an open fire for about five hours and turned every 30 minutes.
Traverse said the turkey is especially nice with a maple glaze and apple stuffing.
"It's tender and juicy," she noted.
And if you're camping, she recommends having a package of gravy mix on hand.
Earlier this month, the Seniors' Christmas Luncheon at the St. Albert Alliance Church featured a 35-pound golden bird prepared by Dawne Fowler.
Fowler said she always washes and dries her turkey completely before dressing it in melted butter, salt and pepper. The turkey is then thrown into a 400-degree oven for an hour and a half, a process that browns and seals the meat.
The temperature is then reduced to 300 degrees and left in the oven overnight for roughly eight hours.
Regular vs. wild turkeys
Although he won't be serving turkey at his restaurant this Christmas, White has cooked a few birds in his lifetime and says there is a big difference between the regular turkeys that most of us buy in grocery stores and wild turkeys, which can be a little harder to find.
"Wild turkeys are totally different because wild turkeys fly. The breast meat on wild turkey is smaller and then the leg meat on a wild turkey is actually tougher, it can be a little bit chewier," White said.
Because the meat on a wild turkey tends to be drier than a regular turkey, White recommends soaking them for five to six hours in brine, a mix of salt water, sugar and Worchester sauce.
"Then you take it out, you pat it dry and because you've soaked it in the brine, it adds a little bit of moisture to the wild turkey," White said.
As a result of the difference in the amount of meat, a 15-pound wild turkey will feed half as many people as a regular turkey of the same weight.
The taste is also different.
"Wild turkey tastes really good because wild turkeys are out in the wild and they'll eat berries, they'll eat beech nuts, acorns, that sort of thing. It has a bit of a gamey flavour. It has a wild, fresh flavour," he said.
"A regular turkey tastes a lot like a chicken; it has a very light taste."
The rule of thumb for cooking a normal turkey is 20 minutes per pound roughly, but for a wild turkey, 15-16 minutes per pound will do, said White.
He recommends putting butter inside the turkey and seasoning it with salt and pepper.
"What I usually do with the outside is, you can either run butter or oil on it. But I always soak my turkey first, clean it out, make sure it's nice and clean and then season it with a little bit of rosemary so you've got a nice herb flavour," said White.
"Turkey is a simple meat so you have to keep it quite simple if you're roasting it and you have to think about what's actually going to complement it," he noted.
Regardless of the type or size of the turkey, basting it often is key to preventing the meat from drying.
"If you put it in the oven and forget about it for eight hours, chances are it might be dry but if you baste it, you're going to keep it nice and moist," said White.
Defrost early
If you're cooking a frozen turkey for Christmas, White suggests taking it out of the freezer on Dec. 22. To wash the bird, soak it in salt water for one to two hours and then completely dry it off before cooking.
"I would tell people if they've never cooked a wild turkey before and if they're experimenting to do it at home, not on Christmas Day," he said.
White said it's always good not to overcook a turkey.
"It's always good to let it rest for 30 minutes or 40 minutes once it comes out of the oven so the juices all settle and then you start carving it after that," he said.
"If it sits for an hour and it's wrapped in tin foil, it's still fine."
Anybody needing to debone their turkey prior to cooking it this Christmas can check out students at Paul Kane High School on YouTube doing just that here.
