Cooking a Heritage Turkey
Saturday, November 1, 2008 at 08:37PM If you read Tim's last post, then you read about how one of our Naragansett turkeys was processed and consumed early. We're not sure what is going on, but so far it has happened 4 times. Maybe it's because the turkeys are getting older and they are beginning to establish dominance in preparation for breeding, but all of a sudden they will gang up and bully one. One time this happened while we were at the farmer's market and came home to find a large Narragansett dead. Next time, we found the poor victim in time and secluded him until he was healed. This third time, the turkey was far too injured to recover, so we conducted an emergency processing so that his life would not be wasted. Yesterday it happened again! This turkey is doing just fine, but we separated him from the rest of the flock just to make sure his strengths are up and that they don't continue to pick on him. At this point, Thanksgiving cannot come soon enough! This is certainly not something that any turkey raising book prepared us for.
Anyway, despite this tragic event, we were happy that turkey number 3 was able to become our dinner. We were very excited to try the heritage turkey and anxious to see what weights they would dress out at. This was one of our larger Narragansetts and he dressed out at 14.5 lbs. They have a few more weeks to grow so we are hoping that our biggest turkeys will be around 16-18 lbs. After processing, the turkeys must sit in the fridge for a few days. This helps the meat to tenderize. Monday came and I thought Tim was going to cook the turkey, but he was sick. 5pm rolled around and he wasn't looking at all like he was about to cook dinner, but then I saw him get the turkey. I thought, "Is he crazy? Turkeys take hours to cook. I'm not going to want to eat at 9pm!" But I didn't say anything, I just went out to do chores. At 6:30 I came back in and the turkey was on the counter fully cooked and resting! I couldn't believe it! Thinking he was magic, I said, "What did you do?"
Here's the process he took: http://www.localharvest.org/features/heritage-turkey-recipes.jsp
Commercial turkeys have been bred to grow quickly and to pack meat on at the breast. This comes with a cost. For one, they dry out when cooking since white meat cooks faster than dark meat, thus the recommendation of cooking slow and low. Heritage turkeys have a layer of fat under their skin so you can cook them at a high temp and they won't dry out. Wow, was this evident when Tim sliced into the breast meat and juice came pouring out! I actually took a piece of the skin to eat, which I normally like, but even though this looked crispy and delicious, it was the only part of the turkey that I didn't like because of the fat still on it. Here's some info on why heritage turkeys need to be cooked differently: http://www.localharvest.org/features/cooking-turkeys.jsp and the definition of what a heritage turkey is: http://www.localharvest.org/features/heritage-turkeys.jsp
Ok, so it's juicy, but I expected it to be tough. I mean, I see how much these turkeys run around and I figured this would be reflected in the firmness of the meat, but it wasn't! This was actually the most tender turkey I have ever had. The meat fell off the bone and broke apart with a fork. And the taste...well I can't even explain it. This turkey had flavor!! It was wonderfully full of turkiness! I'm not usually a turkey person and fill my plate with sides for Thankgiving dinner rather than turkey, but I can honestly say that this eating experience changed my opinion. I'm already looking forward to Thanksgiving when we can do this again!
And a 14.5 lb. turkey had enough meat to last us many, many meals. After dinner that night we cut off the breast and thigh meat. There was plenty of breast meat to slice up and have sandwiches all week. The dark meat easily served another 2 meals for each of us and we still had the turkey legs for dinner the next night. The legs were a little funny because there are many strings of sinew to manuever around, but well worth it for the delicious meat you get. Then we put the carcass in a big pot with some carrots, celery, and onioins. We simmered it on low heat overnight.
Ok, this is where it really got good! The smells of the turkey stock cooking actually woke me up at 4am! In my semi-conscious state I woke up and thought that I was back in my childhood home and it was Thanksgiving!! The smell of turkey filled the entire house and I was brought back to the days where my mom would get up at an obscenely early hour to start the turkey. By the time I woke up the house would smell like turkey dinner. It was a wonderful feeling! When I woke up later in the morning the turkey had cooked down and the pot was half full of a rich brown stock. I poured it through a sieve and then picked through the remains to get out a ton of turkey meat. There was plenty of stock to freeze and enough meat to make a huge pot of soup.
So does a heritage turkey live up to all the hype? In my opinion...YES! To all of you who have placed a deposit for your heritage turkey, you are in for a real treat! I hope your eating experience mirrors mine. And to those of you who won't be able to enjoy a heritage turkey this year, I am very sorry. I don't mean to make you jealous, but I never knew turkey could be this good. I wish you luck in finding a heritage turkey next year!
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Reader Comments (7)
Hi Tim and Liz,
I found your website while I was sick in bed this weekend and read through the entire thing ! I'm so glad to have found it...my husband and I have been preparing for a year to leave suburban life and become grass farmers, raising heritage meat and vegetables. Since we are both Occupational Therapists and he has his MBA, believe me, we get a lot of stares when we tell people our plan to become stewards of the land.
I have LOVE how in-depth you are about what you are doing...your post on the fence was eye opening.
Can you tell me how you figured out how much land you would need ?
Thank you ! Jennifer
Hi Jennifer,
I hope you are feeling better! The amount of land you need depends on how much you want to do with it. We actually started looking for land just to create a buffer around ourselves because we felt the "country" was disappearing and we wanted a place for our dogs to run! We looked at a few 10 acre plots. Then we thought, if we are going to get land, we thought we'd really like to have animals for ourselves, so this lead to looking at 20-40 acre plots. It quickly snowballed into wanting to join the local food movement as a producer rather than a customer, so we looked at larger parcels. When we found this 72 acres we fell in love with the land, not necessarily knowing what we would do with it. As we have been farming this past year, we are figuring out what the land can hold and more importantly what the land needs. It takes a certain number of animals to restore these pastures, graze it properly, add the right amount of organic matter back to the soil, etc. And we are also finding what species the land requires - ex. we need sheep to help graze what the cows won't eat. The land is what governs what we do on the farm and at what scale we do it. This is not something we could have known ahead of time. If we had fallen onto a 200 acre tract, then our farm would be of a scale to fit that amount of land. Good luck achieving your dream...farming has changed us in more ways than we could have imagined and we wouldn't change it for the world!
Thanks for sharing lovely and important information. These information is very beautiful.
Lot's of contradictions about cooking the Heritage Turkey high heat 425-450 vs. 350. I am fine trying the high heat method and followed the link. But, no one tells you how many minutes per pound to allow at that temperature, or how long to cook the bird. I am fine using the thermometer to ensure the right temp., but how far out do I start to cook is the big question that I would like an answer to. Thanks.
Pete,
I don't know how many minutes per pound. We just roast until the thigh temperature reaches 140F-150F. We use a thermometer similar to this one so we can read the temperature as it's cooking, without having to open the oven. If memory serves, last year our 14 pound turkey cooked in just over an hour and a half.
Love the articles, but have one question in regards to this one... seems to me that with an abundace of turks on the farm... why dont you eat it more often than just Thanksgiving? Yes, Thanksgiving day is the tradition, but obviously this meal can be made at any time, therefore you can enjoy when you wish. Also, there can be "Thanksgiving" at any time of the year. To be thankful of ALL things the Lord has blessed us with should not be done solely once a year. We should be thankful every day (not saying that we need to eat a turkey dinner daily :) ).
Growing up on a turkey farm (raising the broad-breasted frankenbirds)... the intelligence and instincts of the Narragansett was a pleasant surprise.
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We've been raising Narragansetts here in Northwest Wyoming for 5 years now... slowly building-up our breeding flock with a focus on the larger, faster growing birds. Our breeders now number 30 hens and 6 toms... all from 1 to 4 years of age. They are pasture birds, with roosts and shelters only... no fancy houses or buildings.
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We've lost a few to injury and predators, but none to weather or disease. (Even in 20 below blizzards, many of them prefer roosting on top of the shelter, as opposed to inside it.)
They get 30 percent protein starter for the first month, then 28 percent protein until big enough to butcher.
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This spring, we set-up our incubators and hatcher and will see our first hatch in about 10 days... with 20 poults staggered every 10 days after that. A few of the broody hens are allowed to sit theire own nest, but the hatch rate for the "natural" method has been a disappointing 15 to 20 percent... with the majority of the eggs simply rotting.
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Our marketing strategy will be to place the birds in a select few butcher shops that specialize in organic or range-raised meats. The shop will take orders and at holiday time, we'll take the birds to be processed and deliver them fresh for pickup by the consumer.
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Collecting far more eggs than we can incubate... our family enjoys turkey eggs for breakfast. Nothing can come close to that thick, bright orange yolk that just refuses to run.