07/12/2021 / 2 Comments
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A magnificent alternative to your standard Christmas or Thanksgiving Roast. Three Bird Roast, also known as Turducken.
Estimated reading time: 4 minutes
Table of contents
- What is Turducken?
- How to cook a 3-Bird Roast
- Deboning your Turkey (or Duck or Goose!)
- What Stuffing for Three Bird Roast?
- How to serve Three Bird Roast
- More Christmas Recipes
What is Turducken?
TURDUCKEN – that would be TURkey, DUCK and chickEN. This is how the whole idea of a three bird roast came about. However, over the years, this has grown to include any number and type of poultry or game.
So you don’t have to stick with turkey, duck and chicken. But you can still call it turducken.
A 3-bird roast usually entails having a larger bird stuffed with a smaller bird, which is then stuffed with a couple of breasts of the third bird, with stuffing between all layers.
However, the combination of birds varies according to the cook, the number of diners and availability. Not to mention size of oven! The variations or combination is completely up to you.
Over the years, we’ve done many permutations, these are just some examples:
- turkey, duck, chicken (therealTurducken)
- duck, chicken, pheasant breasts (today’s recipe)
- duck, chicken, partridge breasts
- turkey, chicken, duck breasts
How to cook a 3-Bird Roast
First you want to determine the number of mouths you need to feed. A roast totalling 3 kg would feed around 8-10 people. We cook it in exactly the same way we would a standard bird, varying the time slightly, depending on the total weight of the bird, after stuffing.
There are various schools of thought here, some like to do an initial blast in the oven, some like an even medium-high temperature all the way through and then there’s the low and long group!I’m somewhere between 1 and 2!
Deboning your Turkey (or Duck or Goose!)
It’s not my thing.
So if like me, you are not handy at deboning, get your butcher to bone the birds you’ll be using, tellinghim how many people you’d like to feed. Remember to get him to save the bones for that gravy you’ll be making from scratch!
After all, we don’t want to ruin a great Christmas meal with a boxed or bought gravy, now do we? See ourEasy Make Ahead Gravy recipe here.
What Stuffing for Three Bird Roast?
You can pretty much please yourself here. Use one type of stuffing throughout or change it up for different flavours. And just because you can!
In the recipe here, we’ve got duck, chicken and pheasant breasts, as well as 2 different types of stuffing.
I used the very traditionalSage, Onion and Sausagement Stuffingas well as a variation of that:Spicy Chorizo Stuffing.You can use any sausages for the chorizo stuffing, as we add chilli to the mix too. But you do what you want to do.
How to serve Three Bird Roast
You would serve a three bird roast in the exact same way you would serve any Christmas roast, whatever bird (or non bird) that may be.
So think all the trimmings, like:
- roast potatoes
- brussels sprouts
- gravy
- cranberry sauce
- any other vegetables
And that’s all there is to it. Shall we get our aprons on?
If you like the recipe, don’t forget to leave me a comment and that all important, 5-star rating!Thank you!
And if you make the recipe, share it on any platform and tag me @azlinbloor, and hashtag it #linsfood
Lin xx
More Christmas Recipes
Three Bird Roast Recipe (aka Royal Roast, Turducken)
Turducken, Royal Roast or Three Bird Roast, is a magnificent alternative to your standard Christmas or Thanksgiving Roast. A bird, in a bird, in a bird!
4.97 from 135 votes
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Course: Main Course
Cuisine: British/American
Keyword: christmas, turkey
Prep Time: 45 minutes minutes
Cook Time: 2 hours hours 30 minutes minutes
Total Time: 3 hours hours 15 minutes minutes
Servings: 10 (8-10)
Calories: 979kcal
Author: Azlin Bloor
Ingredients
- 1 large duck
- 1 medium chicken
- 2 pheasant breasts
- 1 portion stuffing of your choice or use 2 types, but half the amount
- 1 celery sliced thickly
- 2 carrots sliced thickly
- 1 celery sliced thickly
- 1 onion quartered
- 4 cloves garlic
- handful of fresh herbs – I used thyme rosemary and sage
- salt and pepper
Tool
- butcher’s needle thread
- scissors
Instructions
Heat the oven to 200˚C/Fan 180˚C/400˚F. Rinse and pat dry all the birds. Place the duck flat on your work surface, skin side down. Rub a pinch of salt all over and sprinkle some freshly ground black pepper.
Spread the first stuffing all over, stopping short of going all the way to the edge.
Place the chicken, skin side down, on the duck. Do the same with the salt and pepper. Make sure that there is about an inch of spare duck all around the chicken. You will need that extra to wrap it all up. If not, don’t be afraid, get a pair of scissors, and trim that chicken. Use the chicken trimmings in the gravy, or freeze them to cook another day.
Same again, spread the second stuffing all over.
Finally the 2 pheasant breasts. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. No need for stuffing.
Now comes the fun (messy!) part. Roll the duck up very slowly, make sure to displace as little stuffing as possible. But don’t worry too much about it – it’s going to be messy!
Using the butcher’s thread, start stitchingthe chicken at bottom end. You could do a total of about 4-5 single dead knots across the bird (or more for a turkey). Or you could just literally, sew the 2 ends from the bottom to the top. I did 4 single knots here. Leave a bit of thread hanging and make sure you stitch about 2cm (just under an inch) away from the edge, to prevent tearing when the meat is cooking.
When you get to the neck end, fold the flap in and stitch across tightly, or secure with a co*cktail stick or two. I left it open, in this case, as you might make out from the picture.
Now it’s time to cook it. Weigh your stuffed royal roast, so you know how long to cook it for. The time here are for a 3kg roast.
Get a large roasting dish, lightly greased with olive oil.Scatter all the chopped up vegetables in it, followed by some salt and pepper.
Place the royal roast on the vegetables andsprinkle with salt and pepper. Cover tightly with foil and place in the oven for an hour. This timing is for a 3kg (6 3/5 lb) roast.
Baste the roast, lower the oven temperature to 180˚C/Fan 160˚C/350˚F and cook for 2 more hours, basting occasionally.
After 2 hours, remove the foil, baste and cook for another 30 minutes to brown it. At the end of this time, the birds should be done but if you want to make absolutely sure, insert a meat thermometer, the temperature should read at least 70˚C (160˚F). Roast for an additional 15 minutes for every 500g (1.1lb) more of the total weight you have.
Take it out of the oven, cover with foil and place a tea towel over it and let rest like that for at least 30 minutes while you finish the spuds off! This resting will give you a moist roast.
Slice your multibird roast and serve with all the trimmings.
Fancy a Three Fish Roast?
Click here or on the image below. You're going to love it!
Notes
Total time does not include 30 minutes of resting after cooking.
Nutrition
Serving: 8 | Calories: 979kcal | Carbohydrates: 3g | Protein: 85g | Fat: 67g | Saturated Fat: 21g | Trans Fat: 1g | Cholesterol: 309mg | Sodium: 227mg | Potassium: 1048mg | Fiber: 1g | Sugar: 1g | Vitamin A: 2793IU | Vitamin C: 20mg | Calcium: 61mg | Iron: 6mg
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