Like many carnivores, my husband viewed turducken as the holy grail of Thanksgiving meats. The chicken-stuffed-into-a-duck-stuffed-into-a-turkey appealed to his American “more is more” mentality. I mean if one animal is tasty, just imagine how delicious two would be! And three? Forget about it!

Five years ago we tried it, and while “disaster” is a strong word, let’s just say that it didn’t live up to our meaty expectations. I still remember that Thanksgiving eve, bleary-eyed and exhausted from hours of prepping, stuffing, and trying to wrestle the boneless flaps of bird and dressing inside one another. I tried (unsuccessfully) to hold in the meat and dressing while my husband (ineffectively) laced it all up. The birds might as well have been alive for all the effort it took to tie them together. We realized—and with 10 people coming to dinner the next day, a little too late—that turducken was beyond our home-cook skill set.

I’d blocked that turducken Thanksgiving from my memory until a few days ago, when I caught word of a Turducken Breakdown Class & Dinner being offered by the Rocky Mountain Institute of Meat and Jessup Farm. Suddenly I was, once again, enticed by the idea of serving up a meat trifecta at my dinner table.

But is this really something that nonprofessionals can do at home? I mean, my first experience wasn’t exactly a success. Jason Nauert, owner of and head instructor at the RMIM says that all it takes is “a good place to learn the basics before jumping in.”

At Nauert’s November 22 class at the Farmhouse at Jessup Farm in Fort Collins, he’ll teach students how to de-bone a whole turkey, duck, and chicken and then how to wrap them all up to look like a turkey again (as opposed to the mutant poultry hybrid my husband and I ended up with).

“The idea of being able to take three different poultry animals and stuff two of them into one another is mind boggling,” Nauert says. But with his help, he believes that anyone—myself included—can make their turducken aspirations a delicious reality.

The class culminates in a four-course dinner—featuring turducken, of course—put on by the Farmhouse’s Joel Navejas and recipes to take home. Game on, turducken.

$110, Sunday, November 22, 4 p.m., the Farmhouse at Jessup Farm, 1957 Jessup Drive, Fort Collins

Allyson Reedy
Allyson Reedy
Allyson Reedy is a freelance writer and ice cream fanatic living in Broomfield.