Beyond the Turducken: Brooklyn’s 7 Best Things Stuffed Inside of Other Things
This is so much better than turducken.
photo via Momofuku Milk Bar
Turducken is, for the most part, a culinary punch line [Ed. note: As is turkey.]—who amongst us harbors an actual yearning to dine on chicken stuffed inside of duck stuffed inside of turkey, or has any intention of welcoming the chimeric, triple-breasted beast to their Thanksgiving table? But while you’d be hard pressed to find turducken served anywhere in Brooklyn (not even as a stunt), that doesn’t mean you won’t find other dishes adhering to its very basic premise—cramming unlikely things into the cavities of other, unsuspecting things.
Momofuku Milk Bar’s Thanksgiving Croissant: As season-specific as Mallomars, Christina Tosi’s Thanksgiving dinner in a pastry (generally available until a few days after the holiday) is as compelling a reason as any to get excited about turkey, especially when it’s well obscured by cranberry sauce and gravy, and swaddled inside of celery salt-speckled dough.
360 Smith Street, Carroll Gardens
Burnside’s Juicy Lucy: The pride of Minneapolis, you’ll find this oozy, inside-out invention (featuring a liquefied slice of American cheese, secreted in the middle of a mid-rare, eight-ounce burger), at Williamsburg’s Midwestern-themed Burnside.
506 Grand Street, Williamsburg
Longbow Pub and Pantry’s Scotch Egg: For a double dose of protein, you can always look to that brilliant British invention, the scotch egg. Invented in the Middle Ages by farmers, as a way of taking a days worth of nourishment out into the fields, the on-the-go gutbombs consist of hard-boiled eggs cosseted in sausage meat, rolled in a layer of breadcrumbs, and deep-fried.
7316 3rd Avenue, Bay Ridge
Café Luluc’s Croque Madame: This bistro staple is basically a ham and cheese sandwich tucked inside of French toast, further encased in a burnished shelter of broiled, gruyere-spiked béchamel, and crested with a yielding, sunny side up egg.
214 Smith Street, Carroll Gardens
Korzo’s Fried Burger: Doing the Juicy Lucy two or three better, the signature burgers at Korzo are topped with everything from apple-smoked bacon, emmentaller cheese and pickles to slow-braised pork neck, juniper berries and sauerkraut, then completely entombed in deep-fried Hungarian pastry.
667 5th Avenue, Park Slope
Big Mozz’s Mozzarella Bombs: You won’t need a side of sauce to accompany the fresh cheese orbs at this upstart Smorgasburg stand. Deposited on skewers, bite-sized balls are injected to order with your filling of choice, from herbaceous basil pesto to fiery chipotle harissa.
bigmozz.com
Café Kiev’s Chicken Kiev: Leave it to the dependably decadent Russians to roll boneless, pounded chicken breasts around stout sticks of ice-cold garlic butter, dunking the caloric packages in a topcoat of whipped eggs and breadcrumbs, then sealing them in hot oil.
1739 W 7th Street, Gravesend
