Thread: Frankenfish for Dinner!

Don’t Try This at Home: The $250 Recipe for Fish Turducken

An Australian chef says he created a delicious seafood-only replica of the famous turkey-chicken-duck feast. We tested his claim.
By Kate Krader (Bloomberg)



Not all fish turduckens will look like this. Photographer: Rob Palmer

When a fishmonger who’s been in the business for 20 years tells you he’s never seen a recipe like this before, your reaction is mixed. On the one hand you might think this dish is the equivalent of a golden ticket, one that will change everything. Think no-knead bread or boiling scrambled eggs.

On the other hand, a more sober response is to consider whether the recipe is worth attempting, especially if it entails cooking a couple hundred dollars’ worth of top-quality fish.

The Whole Fish Cookbook (September 2019; Hardie Grant Books) by Josh Niland.

Meet the Hot Smoked Fish Turducken, an attention-getting dish in The Whole Fish Cookbook (September 2019; Hardie Grant Books) from Josh Niland, an Australian chef and seafood booster. The upcoming book highlights unconventional ways to consider a subject Niland is passionate about. One of the chef’s chief principles is to treat fish like meat: Urging readers to try dry-aging some varieties to heighten the flavor, he also devotes a chapter on seafood offal that promotes skewers of hearts and spleen, as well as fried fish skin and, even more unorthodox, eye chips.

Niland, who heads Saint Peter restaurant and Fish Butchery in Sydney and was named Chef of the Year in 2018 by GQ, has provided some truly insightful tips into fish preparation. He gives readers detailed instructions on fish butchering; even if you’ve seen a hundred fillet how-tos, these are marvelously thorough. And his “fish-as-meat” schtick sticks: Among the 60-plus recipes are swordfish bacon and kingfish cured pastrami-style. It’s the kind of gorgeous book you want to curl up with and learn from.



Ocean trout, brined overnight.
Photographer: María José Valero Dosal/Bloomberg

The most intriguing recipe in the book, however, is Niland’s fish turducken, a dish that pays homage to the original Thanksgiving fantasia—chicken stuffed inside duck stuffed inside turkey. His version features yellowfin tuna loin, wrapped in a cod fillet, wrapped in an enormous tail-on ocean trout fillet. Each piece of fish is brined ahead of time, and then the whole concoction is smoked for a couple of hours. It can be served chilled or hot with the enveloping ocean trout skin crisped before “carving.”

In the book, Niland promises that the “deboning of the fish is the only fiddly part of this recipe.” With all due respect to a chef who spends his life working with seafood, a recipe that comprises more than 9 pounds of fish that need to be aligned in a specific way, then trussed to secure that alignment with no small amount of kitchen twine, and then smoked, has more than one challenging step. Not to mention, unlike Niland’s fillet how-tos, it comes with the kind of minimal instructions familiar to anyone who’s ever ordered furniture from Ikea.


Trussing a not-picture-perfect fish turducken.
Photographer: María José Valero Dosal/Bloomberg

In this case, the recipe calls for the three very distinct fish to be brined in salt water “overnight,” which means very different things to different people. Then the recipe instructs you to arrange the tuna on the cod (we used hake, a recommended alternative) on the ocean trout and to truss the fish together, “ensuring that each fish remains in position and the bellies of the fish join up creating a seamless finish.”

The recipe doesn’t provide rough dimensions for the fish fillet, so a tester is not prepared if the salmon trout doesn’t fully enclose the 2-pound piece of tuna. (Important note: Our ocean trout was not tail- and head-on; to score one would have entailed buying an 8-plus-pound fish and doubling the recipe, which would have meant almost 20 pounds of fish turducken to deal with, before and after.) Likewise, hints on how to truss a fish turducken are missing, as is the tip that you need a friend who isn’t afraid to smell fishy and hold the whole thing together while you tie it up. A third friend, to hand over kitchen twine and scissors, is even better.


Let the fish turducken smoking begin.
Photographer: María José Valero Dosal/Bloomberg

To cook the fish turducken, readers are told that “an oven can be used set to the lowest temperature,” which isn’t very helpful—though the following instruction, “make sure the kitchen is well ventilated,” is key. The fish is then smoked for two hours, or until its internal temperature reaches 104F. Tester’s note: An 7-inch-tall package of three fish has more than one internal temperature. While it’s cooking, a not-perfectly enclosed package will drip juices. Exposed pieces of tuna will turn an unappetizing beige. As visual tests go, the assorted fillets look either overcooked or undercooked, but as with Goldilocks, nothing appears “just right.”

Finally, following an overnight chill, comes the service. Cutting through the solid mass of seafood, there’s no photogenic slice to brag about on social media; the three fish stick together but not in a compelling way. They offer distinct flavor experiences: nicely smoky ocean trout; too salty, mushy hake; and tough chunks of tuna. The recipe costs about $250 and no small amount of manpower to produce, and, as promised, it’s definitely a showstopper. Guests will gawk and tell you that, truly, they’ve never seen anything like it. Then they’ll reach for the tomahawk steaks that are also on the table.


Not what we bargained for: House-made fish turducken.
Photographer: María José Valero Dosal/Bloomberg

We checked with Niland to find out what went wrong. “Reading that the fish you cooked was without a head or a tail is to me one of the reasons why this dish hasn’t come together as it is pictured,” he responded in an email. “Yes aesthetically it looks better but that aside, the head shields the fillet from direct exposure to heat as does the tail.”

Another testing misstep was that the brining should last 8 to 12 hours, according to Niland. (Ours sat for closer to 15 admittedly a long “overnight.”) He acknowledges that providing a specific oven temperature would be helpful but notes, correctly, that what’s key is the internal temperature. Niland also points out that “all the recipes in this book I cooked personally for the shoot itself so any images of fish in the book of cooking degrees and aesthetic all represent the actual final outcome.” So the gorgeous dish pictured at top is achievable, at least for a professional.