How John Madden made Louisiana's oddball turducken a Thanksgiving football tradition

Turduckens, football and holidays go together like, well, a turkey stuffed with a chicken stuffed with a duck.

Whether or not you let a turducken near your own holiday table, tales of this three-part poultry power play are bound to come up around holiday football games.

The credit goes to John Madden, who as a broadcaster made the turducken a trope of his holiday game day shows. In the process he gave the Cajun butcher shop specialty its wings, lifting it to an edible oddity of national repute, instead of just a regional one.

Madden called his last pro football Thanksgiving game years ago, and he died in 2021 at age 85. Even through his retirement years, however, one local butcher, made sure he still got his holiday turduckens.

Glenn Mistich, who with his wife Leah runs Gourmet Butcher Block in Gretna, sent turduckens Madden's way for Thanksgiving and Christmas all that time, as an expression of gratitude for all he did for the shop.

Many butchers, groceries and food brands produce turduckens, but the ones from this shop have their own connection to the holiday football tradition.

From its address along a busy stretch of Belle Chasse Highway, Gourmet Butcher Block ships turduckens all over the country, Mistich said. The ones it long dispatched to the Madden residence in Pleasanton, California, however, were special.

For John Madden himself, Gourmet Butcher Block made a pair of turduckens with six turkey legs. The feat, accomplished with some butcher string and plenty of old-fashioned butcher skill, was a tribute to the customized turduckens Madden used when he awarded turkey legs to select players of the game, his "All-Madden team" (in a Thanksgiving riff on the usual game ball awards).

Don’t ask for your own six-legger, though. It’s a personalized touch carried on only for Madden, in thanks for getting the turducken ball rolling.

The laborious process would leave two turkeys with no legs for each custom turducken produced and, Mistich said, "no one wants one without legs."  

To be sure, some people don't want a turducken at all. The three-meat combination has its detractors. But making Madden a fan was a game changer for its prospects. 

As Mistich tells it, Madden first heard about the turducken in 1997 while in town to call a Saints-Rams game. Credit goes to Bob Delgiorno, a now-retired broadcaster for WWL Radio. With help from the Saints public relations staff, a turducken from Gourmet Butcher Block made its way into the Superdome, up to the press box and under Madden’s nose.

In a 2002 interview with the New York Times, Madden himself gave his take on his turducken first encounter.

"The first one I ever had I was doing a game in New Orleans," Madden told the Times. "The PR guy for the Saints brought me one. And he brought it to the booth. It smelled and looked so good. I didn't have any plates or silverware or anything, and I just started eating it with my hands."

In that interview, he had special praise for the dressing that separates the three types of bird.

"And when you get the whole combination — the oyster dressing, the spicy dressing and the rest — it's pretty doggone good," he said.

Madden made the turducken a holiday tradition in his broadcast booth wherever the NFL schedule took him, and the Louisiana specialty gained national stature. At Gourmet Butcher Block, the volume of holiday orders went from the hundreds to the thousands, and to this day the annual preparations begin in the early fall.