A final coating of olive oil, salt, and pepper, and Mr. Turducken is ready to go in the oven!
But not just yet. One tip we read was to stick a metal spoon into the middle of the turducken to better conduct heat to the inside. We didn't really have a spare spoon - and our oven wasn't big enough anyway - but the Snook had the brilliant idea to insert about half a dozen of our metal kebab skewers. He enjoyed this step way too much.
We used the bathroom scales to get a final weight for this sucker: just over ten kilos. That's about twenty-two pounds!
Mr. Turducken is in the oven! We'd read a lot of conflicting advice on what temperature to roast at, but in the end we went with 180°C (350°F). We figure everything can be cooked at that temperature.
It's time for the first basting! The first thing we noticed was that what little extra space there was in the pan was FULL of juice and fat. We ended up using the baster to remove a lot of it for addition to the stockpot (see next picture). We also noticed that the drumsticks were browning too fast, so we covered them with extra foil.
Remember the bones? We had about 3kg of them, so they all went into the stock pot along with about seven liters of water (and carrots and celery and all the traditional stuff). We also added the juices and fat we removed from the turkey pan while basting. Man, this stuff is gonna make some amazing risotto!
Still the first basting here. You can see the wooden skewer we used to tuck down the neck flap.
Time for the second basting. See all that lovely juice?
