The story of John Madden's legendary turducken

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in November 2017 and updated following John Madden’s death in December 2021. 

There are countless NFL memories we’ll all have from Thanksgiving, but when you think of the late John Madden calling games on the holiday, you might associate him with one word: Turducken.

That’s the Frankenstein-like combination of duck, chicken and turkey that gives eaters a taste of each.

It was over two decades ago that Madden first tried the turducken, leading him to talk about it on the air and show it during many a Thanksgiving game, popularizing a dish that was familiar in Louisiana before thousands of turduckens were mailed around the world.

How did the turkey-duck-chicken make its way into Madden’s hands (literally)?

Let’s go farther back than 1997 for a second. First, you have to ask where the turducken originated from. The story isn’t completely clear.

Paul Prudhomme, the famous Louisiana chef who died in 2015, claims he invented it in the 1960s while working in Wyoming. Here’s part of the claim from a 1994 Times-Picayune article reprinted on NOLA.com:

The original Turducken was introduced here in the 1970s by chef Paul Prudhomme. He invented the concept a decade earlier in Sheridan, Wyo., while working on a restaurant buffet line carving meats. Everything looked pretty except the turkey, he said. So the inventive chef set out to create something smashing. He eventually ended up with three birds, each with its own dressing. After moving back to New Orleans, Prudhomme gave it its name, then copyrighted Turducken in 1986.

“It’s that wild imagination I have and the physical abuse I give myself to make it happen,” he said, explaining the creation. “One of the greatest pleasures of my life has been to be able to do things like the Turducken that make people happy. It’s a huge effort but once you taste it, it is literally the best.”

But there’s also a story that in 1985, a farmer came to Hebert’s Specialty Meats and asked for the shop to combine all three fowls.

And that’s where Glenn Mistich comes in. Mistich’s wife Leah is from the family that owned Hebert’s, and he opened his Gourmet Butcher Block in 1994, where he used some savvy knifework to debone the trio of birds, line them up with various types of stuffing in between and sew them together.

He told For The Win that before Madden popularized the turducken, he sold 250 of them a year.

Then, in 1997, he heard longtime radio personality Bob Delgiorno talking on-air about getting Madden to try the dish before the Hall of Famer was set to broadcast a Rams-Saints game from the Superdome. Delgiorno told For The Win that he had interviewed Madden a few times on his show and that Mistich used to advertise the turducken on the station.

“Bob got in touch and we went to Superdome,” Mistich recalled. “Madden grabbed a piece of it with his hands and fell in love with it.”

Madden — who declined an interview request from For The Win in 2017 — confirmed that was true to the New York Times in 2002.

“‘The P.R. 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.”

There’s also this anecdote to add to that moment via NOLA.com:

“I’m there eating this turducken with my fingers,” Madden recalled. “(Saints owner) Tom Benson comes in and I have all this stuff on my fingers and I’m doing that thing in my head where I’m wondering, ‘Do I shake his hand?’ ”

(For the record: Madden did shake Benson’s hand, sticky fingers and all, and he said the two haven’t spoken since.)

The next day, Mistich got a phone call he thought was a prank.

“I really loved it,” he remembered Madden saying. “Can you send one to me in California?”

Two weeks later, there was a FOX camera crew in his shop because Madden chose turducken to be the official “All-Madden Team” food. This year, he estimates he’ll sell between five and six thousand turduckens, two of which were shipped to Madden himself.

“Every year, he gets one for Thanksgiving and Christmas,” Mistich said.

“I’m very grateful,” Mistich added. “I can’t say enough about what he’s done for our business. He’s definitely put it on a national level. Turducken is even in the dictionary now.”