Christmas 2015 Capon Stuffed with Duck, Sausage, Cherries

After watching Jacques Pepin's video of deboning a chicken ("it should take no more than one minute", hah!) we knew we wanted to do a ballotine -- a bird stuffed in a bigger bird. So for Xmas 2015, we asked M&P to pick up a capon (a castrated chicken, a very large bird) and a duck. We deboned the capon per Pepin's technique, and did likewise for the duck even though we didn't need to.

The deboning took at least 2 hours as the muscles and tendons of capons and ducks were much more developed than chickens, but we were practicing our technique. We separated the meat from the duck skin, and cooked up a log of pork sausage for the center. We laid out the sausage and duck meat on the opened deboned capon, then sprinkled with dried cherries.

We then rolled it up tight, ensuring the skin covered as much as we could, trussed it up tight and let it rest uncovered in the fridge overnight to ensure the skin was thoroughly dry to improve crispness.

The next day, we put it on an open rack over a shallow pan; it started breast side down since the white meat would tolerate less heat. We cooked it as low as the oven would go -- 170F; we were hoping to achieve an effect like we'd get with sous vide cooking: evenly cooked all the way through, avoiding drying out the exterior before the dense dark-meat ducky interior was thoroughly cooked. We had a temperature probe embedded in the center and watched it rise about 10F every half hour, and -- sure enough -- it rose from fridge temperature (maybe 35F) at noon to our target of about 165F at the designated dinner time of 6:00PM.

A blast under the broiler gave it a beautiful burnished look.

Then we cut off the strings and carved it for serving. Since it was cooked long and low (like sous vide) there was no need to rest it like conventional cooking. The meat held together well (even without transglutaminase, aka "meat glue") and maintained its shape.

Ed, Marge, Scott, Irene, Pat and I enjoyed it with roasted potatoes and green beans, and a gravy Irene elaborated from a stock she made from the bones. 

One disappointment we didn't expect was that capon skin is much thicker than chicken, so although it browned attractively, it was much too tough to chew through. This is definitely something we'd do again but I think we need a more domesticated bird to get the crisp skin.