Cthuken: An Octopus-Stuffed Bird with Crab Legs. Yum. | Chow Bella | Phoenix | Phoenix New Times | The Leading Independent News Source in Phoenix, Arizona
Navigation

Cthuken: An Octopus-Stuffed Bird with Crab Legs. Yum.

The Turduken is obsolete. Behold the Cthuken. pic.twitter.com/M5JZ9s5zig— Mana (@damana) December 16, 2013 Last week, the above tweet hit the Internet, courtesy of Damana Madden, a.k.a. @damana, and as you can imagine it didn't take long for the disturbing image of a Turducken-like creation to go viral. In fact, it's...
Share this:
Last week, the above tweet hit the Internet, courtesy of Damana Madden, a.k.a. @damana, and as you can imagine it didn't take long for the disturbing image of a Turducken-like creation to go viral. In fact, it's already inspired its own works of art.

With octopus legs protruding from a bird's body and gangly crab legs sticking out the sides, the Ctucken looks more like something out of a horror movie or maybe Japanese tentacle porn than something that appears on your holiday table.

So what exactly is it?

For answers, we turn to The Gothamist, which found out the tentacled delicacy comes from the mind of Rusty Eulberg, a database administrator from Lubbock, Texas. Eulberg told The Gothamist that the dish gets its name from horror writer H. P. Lovecraft -- specifically, Lovecraft's octopus-head creature the "Cthulhu." For those not familiar with the beast, it's "a monster of vaguely anthropoid outline, but with an octopus-like head whose face was a mass of feelers, a scaly, rubbery-looking body, prodigious claws on hind and fore feet, and long, narrow wings behind." In other words, terrifying.

Eulberg says he calls the creation a "Cthurkey" not a "Ctucken" (since it doesn't involve a duck) and that he got the idea because he and wife "wanted to do something unique for Christmas dinner with friends of ours. Jenny is a big fan of Cthulhu so we went and bought some crab legs and some octopus and bacon and cooked them all separate and slapped them together on a plate, and that was it."

Eulberg says the next year he made a "Cthicken," which is pretty much the same thing except with squid (instead of octopus) and a chicken. He also serves his horrific surf-and-turf eats on an old Nazi plate with a swastika on the bottom.

And you thought your family had a dysfunctional Christmas.

Follow Chow Bella on Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest.

KEEP NEW TIMES FREE... Since we started New Times, it has been defined as the free, independent voice of Phoenix, and we'd like to keep it that way. Your membership allows us to continue offering readers access to our incisive coverage of local news, food, and culture with no paywalls. You can support us by joining as a member for as little as $1.