Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Food, Cooking, and Game Preparation Dead Turkey..now what?

Grandson just called proud as punch, he just killed a turkey...first one in our whole family...so we know nothing. I'd just as soon not rely on Youtube for a recipe. Help us out please.

Filet the breast

Skin it and make turkey rice soup.

Breast it out.
Cut breast in strips or nuggets.
Soak in buttermilk, preferably overnight.
Flour, egg, milk Tony's seasoning and fry golden brown.
Biscuits and gravy added bonus.

It's too late now, but you need a copy of Eileen's Upland Bird Cookery, which has a bunch of recipes (along with field-care tips) for various upland birds, including a bunch for turkeys. And we've taken and eaten every American subspecies, many times:
https://www.riflesandrecipes.com/product/upland-game-bird-recipes/

Simplest thing is to peel the skin back off the breast and fillet the meat off following the bone. I cut the.thigh meat off too.
Slice the breast across the grain into steaks.
Cook them like you want. it is good meat. Wild turkey breast is more like thigh meat on a tame turkey.

Great suggestions above. Keep the carcass to make stock.

^^^Can't go wrong with this ^^^

As Hogwild7 said (Slice the breast across the grain)



Just don't over cook. With the smaller strips or nuggets it cooks pretty quick.

If not nuggets, slice it thin, pound it flat, and find a schnitzel recipe that sounds good!

They, kid and parents, selected this plan...tonight is the test...thanks a bunch guys.

Cut it up and fry it. Best if you can cut or slice it against the grain. Nuggets good as well.
We shot alot of turkeys back in my florida hunting days from 1986-2016. We always made fried turkey fingers at turkey camp. Not many made it to the home freezer. We tried a lot of different ways to cook them. Frying was the best and easiest way we found to use wild turkeys.

In the bottom of a crockpot, crosshatch some celery and carrots. Add a sliced onion. Fillet the breast and cut into cutlets. Lay them on the veg along with the thighs. Add a can of cream of mushroom and a can of cream of chicken soup with 1/2 a can of water. Add a glug of white wine and some sliced mushrooms along with whatever spices/seasonings you prefer. Cook till the thigh meat falls off the bone. Serve over rice, noodles or mashed tators.

We make this at my deer camp every year and there's never any leftovers

Make stock with the drumsticks and carcass for turkey rice soup.

Friends of mine have always only removed the breast meat because they didn’t know how to cook the thighs and legs. I asked them to give me the legs and thighs so that I could show them how to cook them. Now they keep the entire bird.
Always brine wild turkey. It helps with flavor, tenderness and juiciness. The easiest way to cook the legs and thighs is to cook in a crockpot low and slow until the meat falls off the bones.
Last week I made bbq turkey sandwiches with the legs and thighs and turkey Parmesan with one of the breast. Turkeys have a lot of meat on them and they are delicious!

We normally cube up the breast meat, marinate in Italian Dressing (the cheapest you can find) overnight, drain, then coat in fried chicken coating and then deep fry.

Wild turkey is much leaner than a domestic bird and is usually much smaller, so it cooks relatively quickly and is easy to overcook. I find that you have to add some extra fat to it to keep it nice and juicy, but you don't want to overpower the natural flavor of the wild bird.

Salt and pepper the interior of the bird. Get a pound of sweet Italian sausage, a small onion, and a crisp apple. Stuff the bird with that. Then salt and pepper the exterior. Then drape a couple of strips of bacon over the bird. Get a bottle of relatively cheap sweet German wine (a Riesling works really well). Put about a quarter of the bottle into the bird and let it drip down into the pan underneath the bird. Roast the bird, basting it regularly with drippings from the pan and adding more wine as needed to refresh it. I usually cover the bird after the first 20 minutes to keep it from getting too dried out. Regular basting is essential.

When done, remove the stuffing and combine with the pan drippings in a food processor to make the gravy. Slurry everything up and add a roux, or just some mashed potatoes, to thicken up the gravy.

I always save the carcass to make a nice turkey soup later on.

^^ Very good!

I like doing turkey enchiladas. No extranoues prep needed.