Illustrated Turducken Recipe

Step 16 Assembling the Turducken (Part III)

Now we sew up the turducken! The Prudhomme recipe recommends lifting the turducken into a 15x11-inch baking pan first. However our turducken is so large that we have to sew it up first before we can lift it into any cooking receptacle. Having extra hands is immensely helpful, especially to hold up the sides of the turkey while you are patching it together.

Make the stitches about 1 inch apart. And when you are done with one side of the turducken, turn it over and close up the openings on the other side. Tie the legs together, and place the whole thing breast side up in a large pan. Tuck in the turkey wings along the bottom as well. Make a final seasoning run on the exposed skin of the turkey.

Now find an even larger pan, at least 2-1/2 inches deep, and place the first pan in that. This second pan will catch any drippings that overflow the first pan while the turducken cooks.

Our turducken is so large that it took two people to gently nestle the turducken into its new home for the next 12+ hours. The oven wasn't deep enough to have the turducken axis pointed outwards. We had to take the turducken out and turn it 90 degrees after the last photo below was taken. Even then, there was only a couple inches clearance on each side. Until they make consumer ovens much bigger, we have obviously hit a technological barrier in the road to assembling even larger turduckens.