Making a turducken at home is tempting, but the actual process of stuffing a chicken inside a duck inside a turkey is a little daunting/confusing/unappetizing. Austin Fausett wants to help: The Trummer’s on Main chef hopes to demystify the holiday Frankenfood with a cooking demo on Monday, December 22, and two special turducken dinners.
The roast at Trummer’s isn’t your traditional avian clown-car with two deboned birds packed inside a third. Fausett took some inspiration from the turducken’s 19th-century forefather, the rôti sans pareil, or “roast without equal.” While you won’t find a “tiny warbler stuffed in a bunting, inserted in a lark, squeezed in a thrush, thrown in a quail,” and so forth, Fausett’s preparation is more classically French than the average poultry-bomb. The dish consists of a heritage turkey breast roulade filled with chicken thighs and duck foie gras mousse, garnished with fried chicken skins, truffled polenta, and hen of the woods mushrooms. So yes, still plenty decadent.
Those who want to try their hand at the three-bird-roll can sign up for the Monday-evening class, taught demo-style, where Fausett shows guests how to debone a turkey and make the dish over glasses of wine ($46 per person). The restaurant will serve turducken during dinner that evening, as well as on December 23.
Anna Spiegel covers the dining and drinking scene in her native DC. Prior to joining Washingtonian in 2010, she attended the French Culinary Institute and Columbia University’s MFA program in New York, and held various cooking and writing positions in NYC and in St. John, US Virgin Islands.
