Turducken Wellington
An Original Recipe by Lorraine Elliott/Not Quite Nigella
Preparation time: 30 minutes
Cooking time: 3 hours (depending on size of Turducken, cook for 40 minutes per 500g/1 pound)
- 1 Woolworths Gold handcrafted Turducken (mine was 2.2kgs)
- 2 tablespoons butter
- 1 tablespoon oil
- 2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
- 500g/1 lb. mushrooms
- 1 cup red wine
- 1 sprig thyme
- 2.5 sheets puff pastry
- Red and green food colouring
- 1 egg yolk
Step 1 - Preheat oven to 190C/374F. Remove the plastic top, cover with foil and roast as instructed (40 minutes for every 500g or 1 pound). Cool completely and cut away the string and netting. Reserve the pan drippings to make gravy-it tastes fantastic!
Step 2 - While the turducken is cooking, finely chop the mushrooms (I put them in a food processor). Heat the butter and oil in a frypan on medium heat and cook the garlic until fragrant. Add the mushrooms, red wine and thyme and cook until the mushrooms are soft and the liquid has evaporated. Cool.
Step 3 - Once the turducken and mushrooms have cooled (and you can do this all the night before), pat the mushrooms on top of the turducken like a coating. It should adhere fairly well but best to be gentle. Wrap the turducken in two pieces of puff pastry and brush with the egg yolk. Cut out some holly and leaves or whatever shapes you like. I used a ravioli cutter to score patterns but I don't know if this was strictly necessary. Stick the holly and leaves to the turducken and brush these with the egg yolk. Refrigerate for 30 minutes.
Step 4 - Preheat oven to 200C/400F. Bake the turducken in the oven for 20-25 minutes until the pastry is golden. Using paintbrushes, paint the holly leaves green and the berries red. The reason I paint them after this goes into the oven is because the pastry expands and the colours develop tiny little cracks. Allow the finished Turducken to stand for 10 minutes before slicing.