The Heritage Turkey Thread

[RealNC]

Frozen?

Have you guys ever eaten *fresh* turkey?

[Casual Observer]

Frozen?

Have you guys ever eaten *fresh* turkey?

Oh, this was legally fresh. The store just froze it for a few days to facilitate shipping. Doesn't fit the legal definition of frozen versus fresh for poultry (fresh can't be chilled below 26 degrees in California).

[pinback]

BARELY legal.

[Casual Observer]

happy ending

BARELY legal

Now we're really getting somewhere.

[Casual Observer]

So we had frozen half of the meat and also the carcass. So this weekend we defrosted the meat, cooked up some fresh turkey broth for gravy (then soup later) and had a second glorious turkey day this last weekend and leftovers on Sunday. The broth is going to be soup starting tomorrow so we'll have another few meals from that. We easily got 10 days of meals out of this turkey which brings the Heritage Turkey's total cost per day of meals to less than $16 per day. Well worth the investment.

[AArdvark]

[Casual Observer]

Bump. Pics and reviews of this year's Heritage turkey to follow once I have a chance this weekend. Spoiler: yum!!

[Jizaboz]

Blow it out your ass

[Casual Observer]

Blow it out your ass

ok, i guess nevermind then.

[AArdvark]

Now wait, the rest of us are interested. Don't listen to the naysayers.

THE
FORGE AHEAD
AARDVARK

[pinback]

Grandpa got a $2 turkey and did it up right, and it was the best I've had in years. This all sounds like a bunch of "state-of-mind" jibber-jabber to me.

[Casual Observer]

Grandpa got a $2 turkey and did it up right, and it was the best I've had in years. This all sounds like a bunch of "state-of-mind" jibber-jabber to me.

Blow it out your ass

Suck it, haters. I know Pinback can afford to splurge on the single most important part of Thanksgiving dinner so not sure why he's jealous but sorry if Jizz can't afford more than the lost leader turkey deal from his local A&P. Why are you people content to "do up" a water injected hormone filled factory bird as a centerpiece for a once a year holiday?

This year we went with a farm in Kansas that ships these guys fresh overnight to various specialty stores in the Bay Area. I picked this big guy up from The Local Butcher shop in Berkeley, also giving me an occasion to get myself a cartridge at a nearby dispensary for the big eating day.


Let's review what's good about a Heritage turkey. First, "heritage" simply means that these farmers are keeping alive varieties of livestock that used to be common but wouldn't exist without active management of the breed, that's it (heritage pigs are another example). Other than that it's just a good quality free range all natural turkey with mine happening to be a gargantuan 23 pounds.

What's great about this turkey is it's physique, he's all breast meat.


This was the longest turkey i've ever cooked. I had to replace my roasting pan for the first time in over 15 years (it was time anyway) and the biggest one I could find in the area was a steel oval 17 by 13 inch. Still a tight fit.

Now some thermometer advice, don't buy this one: WiHoo Digital Meat Thermometer

I thought it was going to be cool to have a wireless thermometer tell me exactly when to take out the turkey but this thing can't keep a bluetooth connection through an oven door, rendering it completely useless. My old cheap wired oven thermometer's wire broke so i'm back to the old fashioned, opening the door and sticking in the thermometer.


So building off last year's results, we decided to do even more to augment the natural flavor of the bird. Remember from earlier in the thread that this variety of turkey has somewhat more of a "gamier" flavor in that the white meat tastes more like normal dark meat and the dark meat almost reminds me of a more tender duck meat. We never dry out our turkeys. One reason is that we don't stuff the turkey with dried bread that will become "stuffing", we prefer to make dressing separately and save the turkey that drying action. Instead, we put in things that will add water and flavor to the bird.

We stuffed this fucker with oranges, lemons, a grapefruit, rosemary, thyme, onion, shallot, and put butter and citrus peels underneath the skin. These turkeys have an immense amount of fat over the breast meat, almost 1" at some points so we did take out some of that fat on part of the breast (wife's insistence).



I know lots of people cook the bird with the top off the entire time for crisp, we trade extra crisp for moisture. We cook up to 140 degrees with a cover (basting a couple of times) and then up to 160 with the top off (couple more bastes). Put on top of stove and it rises to 165 before starting to cool. Lots of broth for gravy and tons of meat for just a couple of us. Using this broth and a pot of broth created by boiling the neck/bag of stuff, we'll be making dressing (first time drying my own bread cubes) and gravy. Freeze the carcass for soup. Again freezing half of the meat for dinner in a few weeks after we're not sick of turkey anymore.

[Flack]

I wanted to verify those claims so I just googled "14 inches of white meat."

Does anyone know how to completely clean the cache from a Google search?

(Also, that turkey looks great.)

[Jizaboz]

Honestly my 21 pound "fresh" Butterball turkey from Walmart I got for a bit more than 20$ looked better than that but I was too busy eating it to bother with pictures. I don't bother with all that hippy citrus hippy shit either. Just butter, salt, pepper, celery, onion, apple and "poultry seasoning". Throw it in a cooking bag with some broth for 3 hours and done. Don't give a shit if it is filled with saltwater in the package.. it tasted juicy and awesome.

But hey man if you've got money to burn on stupid shit like this more power to you. I do not and even if I did I had to replace my water heater 2 weeks ago.

[Casual Observer]

But hey man if you've got money to burn on stupid shit like this more power to you.

The bay area seems to have some kind of distortion field when it comes to the value of money. Once you start to think it's normal to pay $15 for a lunch salad and $30+ for an average dish in a restaurant then a few hundred bucks for thanksgiving doesn't seem outrageous.

[The Happiness Engine]

Man, sorry you guys are Poors. Please continue to think that spongy saltwater is food. CO, great report.

[Casual Observer]

Bump.

This year's Heritage Turkey shipped today from it's store in Fresno. It'll be here by Wednesday for a good night of brining (weird that brining comes up as misspelled but I think that's right). I'll be posting photos as this progresses. I don't care if people want to grouse about how regular turkeys aught to be good enough.

Also, any Bobs Burger fans out there? Bob loves his Heritage Turkey in yesterday's episode. Sorry I don't have permissions to inline videos, maybe someone more important like Vark can:

[AArdvark]

[Tdarcos]

Grandpa got a $2 turkey… best I've had in years.

Blow it out your ass

sorry if Jizz can't afford more than the lost leader turkey deal from his local A&P.

It had better be a loss-leader - or maybe your term "lost leader" was more appropriate - if he's bought a turkey old enough to be from A&P. They went defunct in 2015.

We stuffed this fucker

Turkeys are so large they have become incapable of sexual reproduction. Breeders have to artificially inseminate them. what do they use? A turkey baster!

with oranges, lemons, a grapefruit, rosemary, thyme,

What, are you out of parsley and sage? The only time I've ever heard these spices mentioned is in the song: "Are you going to Scarborough Fair? Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme." What do they do, anyway?

[Casual Observer]

Sage goes in the stuffing which we don't put in the Turkey because why put dry bread in something you want to keep moist.