Thanksgiving Turducken-2011

For the second successive Thanksgiving dinner, the Waisanen family constructed a Turducken; a roasted meat dish of a boned turkey (wings and legs with bones in), boned duck, and boned chicken, separated by three types of stuffing. This year, we have a 20 lb turkey, 6 lb duck, and 3 lb chicken. As before, we followed (generally), the How to Make Turducken Recipe by Peggy Trowbridge Filippone on About.com. Like last year, we boned the birds Wednesday night, roasted the bones with celery, onion, and carrot, and soaked them overnight in a saltwater/brown sugar brine acidified with apple cider vinegar. This year, we removed the fatty breast skin from the chicken and the majority of the breast skin from the duck; we don't need the fat in the dressing and we now have duck fat for other uses (e.g., new potatoes pan-browned in duck fat). Dressings were: Turkey: celery and chestnut bread dressing Duck: cornbread dressing (based on the cornbread recipe in About.com, partially caramelized onion, sweated garlic, dash of wine, herbs (sage, thyme, marjoram, oregano, pepper), and stock. After reserving 1 c. for the chicken, added 1/4 c. cranberry sauce. Chicken: 2/3 cornbread dressing and 1/3 bread dressing. Side dishes: Sliced beets in balsamic vinegar