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Picture this: A matryoshka doll of bird meat – a turducken.
A thanksgiving dish consisting of a boneless turkey, a boneless duck and a boneless chicken cooked together between layers of dressing.
This celebrated dish was brought to prominence by NFL legend John Madden, football coach and commentator, in 1996 during a game between the New Orleans Saints and St. Louis Rams at the Louisiana Superdome. He made it a focal point of his holiday game day shows, incidentally bringing Gourmet Butcher Block to national stature.
In an interview with the New York Times, Madden said, “The first one I ever had I was doing a game in New Orleans. The PR guy for the Saints brought me one. And he brought it to the booth. It smelled and looked so good. I didn’t have any plates or silverware or anything, and I just started eating it with my hands.”
Even his final public words on the dish were: “You can’t beat a good turducken.”
But apart from Louisiana, Europe also has a lengthy history of stuffing one bird in another. The French have Quail à la Talleyrand, which is essentially a quail in a chicken in a turkey! And the English have their gooducken with goose, duck and chicken.
Gordon Ramsey, British celebrity chef and restaurateur, recently went to meet Glenn Mistich of Gourmet Butcher Block, to make the infamous dish for a special episode of Thanksgiving on Fox NFL and was left blown away by it. He said, “Oh my goodness, it is like magic. Now I know why John went crazy for this.”
Tom Brady, an NFL player and broadcaster also ate turducken on live TV this Thursday. Brady and his partner Kevin Burkhardt split up the turkey legs to keep Madden’s Thanksgiving tradition alive.
“That’s good!” Brady said after a bite, although viewers are not convinced he liked it. Some made jokes about him spitting it out after the camera panned away from him. But Brady even joked about abandoning the broadcast to continue eating.
Brady 100% spit this out as soon as the camera cut away https://t.co/vIvAgDIlHE
— Zach Regelin (@ZRegelin) November 29, 2024
After almost 30 years of turducken’s debut on NFL Thanksgiving broadcasts, the legacy continues.
