Turducken

Seriously considering making turducken for Thanksgiving, but have a few questions. The birds will be completely deboned, including legs and wings.

I'm concerned about the duck fat inside the birds. Should I pierce the skin and render the fat/crisp the skin (with the meat attached) before laying it on top of the turkey? Or try and remove as much fat as possible, pierce and lay it on top?

I want to do three different sausage stuffings. Philly has some great sausage so here are some thoughts.


Cajun Andouille - Beef and pork blend, smoke with hot peppers and lots of garlic
Cajun Boudin - Pork with hot pepper, rice and onion, a Cajun Classic
Cambridge Pork - English style with dijon mustard and spices
Chorizos Verdi - Half pork, half vegetables and fresh herbs
French Garlic - Pork with mild garlic flavor, French classic
French Summer - Pork with apples, white wine and spices
Herbed Pork - Pork and Herbs de Provence
Karnotaleticous - lamb and pork, Greek style, onion and spices
Lamb Merguez - French Moroccan - very spicy with a punch of pepper
Lugano - Pork with spinach, pine nuts and light spices - Northern Italian
Sicilian - Pork with Marsala and Provolone in thin casings


Game
Duck - Duck with raisins, almonds, port wine and spices
Pheasant - Pheasant with cognac, nuts and fresh herbs
Boar - Boar with lingonberry and cranberry, sweet, tart and delicious
Rabbit - Rabbit with brandy and Dijon mustard
Venison - Venison with sumac, ginseng, goldenseal with spices and nuts

There are dozens more.

Any other tips/recommendations?

if i were you, i would stuff one of the birds with either a cornbread/rice/bread crumb stuffing. cornbread stuffing is my personal preference. the stuffing absorbs the juices from the birds as the turducken is cooking and the finished product is amazing.

definitely get the andouile sausage if you can. infact, andouile cornbread dressing is probably the most popular stuffing for turduckens here. you can find a paul proudhomme recipe for andouile dressing pretty easliy if you google it. ive used his recipes as guides in the past and theyre pretty spot on(except the stuff he started doing when he was on his diet craze). a boudin would be good also in addition to the cornbread dressing. can you get good boudin in Philly?

Mano, I've never done a turducken but I'm not intimidated by it either. Make Ballontines quite a bit. Sounds like you've got a lot going on with all those flavors. Those sausages sound amazing one I did not see on the list is chourico/linguica. Its a Portuguese sausage that is based on smoked pimedon. Wonderful falvor with poultry and i bet it would marry nicely with the corn bread stuffing too. would be my preference over more common place Andoulli (no offense labor).

Here's some I made earlier this year




http://lpoli.50webs.com/index_files/Chorizo-Portuguese.pdf

leave the fat on the duck, it will self baste and leave everything nice and juicy and flavorful. this is a few days a year you shouldn't worry too much about fat.