The Butcher

I am an admitted food geek - I am fussy about my knives and take a lot of time keeping them very sharp and properly cared for, so I have watched Forged in Fire, a show on knife making for quite awhile - when I first saw it I thought it was a joke - who could watch an hour about making knives. I was hooked after one show!

History Channel has a new show, The Butcher, where the competitors break down whole animals with greater or lesser skill levels, as well as carving up oddball animals - snakes, alligators etc.

The latest episode has them doing something I have long thought of doing - the basic idea is Turducken but the idea is much older, from the medieval period. This episode requires the contestants to bone out a turkey, a duck, a chicken, a pheasant and a squab and to wrap them all up in the turkey carcass to cook.

FYI, the process is technically called engastration, which doesn't sound particularly appetizing t me. It means that every guest gets some turkey, but only the select few get a piece of every layer. I have even thought of doing something like that in miniature for my annual terrine event - maybe a ballotine with a quail stuffed with a hard boiled egg, inside a game hen.

Worth watching if you are cooking geek like me!

The first thought that sprang into my head when I heard about turducken was "what a great way to culture salmonella". Does the engastration recipe involve pouring boiling water over the meats before stuffing them into each other? I hope so.

-Paul W.

I agree that washing the skins with some sort of antiseptic would be a good plan, although the cooking period necessary to cook the assemblage all the way through would probably take care of that. Perhaps a quick lavage with straight vodka would suffice?

BTW, the final round of the show was butchering a Hawaiian Opah fish....

I agree that washing the skins with some sort of antiseptic would be a good plan, although the cooking period necessary to cook the assemblage all the way through would probably take care of that. Perhaps a quick lavage with straight vodka would suffice?

The long cooking period would certainly kill off any bacteria. My concern would be that before the center of the assemblage reaches that temperature, the bacteria will have had time to proliferate and leave their toxins behind, even if the cooking eventually kills them off. I like the idea of a lavage with vodka, the higher proof the better. Or maybe Everclear.

-Paul W.