Friday, September 25, 2009

Turkey Killin'

Ever wonder how an engineer butchers a turkey? Well, I was on vacation most of last week so I thought it would be a good time to butcher the already over-grown turkeys. The biggest problem with butchering birds is plucking. We've used a feather plucker before, but don't personally own one. The one we used in the past belonged to friends who live in the Angola area (which is too far to drive to butcher two turkeys). I thought I'd try a method I'd heard about "through the grapevine". Worked great!

First things first...separate the head from the body. No pictures of the massacre, although we did have quite the time keeping the huge birds from slipping out of the cinch we had them hanging upside down in.

Next...drain the blood.


Next...separate the skin from the neck. Insert a water hose. Pinch off the neck hole and turn on the water hose. NOTE: Make sure the hose is in between the skin and the neck; if you put the hose in the neck cavity, you have a whole new mess on your hands. WARNING: Don't play the video if your at all squirmy. It's not graphic but it does show me man-handling a dead, headless turkey.



The water fills up the turkey (actually separates the skin from the turkey) and, as you see, will burst the skin like an over-filled water balloon. Worked nice. Plus, running cold water over the turkey's freshly murdered flesh helps to cool the meat quicker.

Next...cut off the feet and wings. Ross (our oldest son; 14yo) did a nice job of this.


Move on to removing the skin. We've butchered and skinned chickens before without the water method. Terrible to skin. A feathery mess! The water, although making the bird a little more slippery, keeps the loose feathers more manageable.



Finally, you gut and rinse (Brookelyn [our oldest daughter; 12yo] did a great job). We finished up by wrapping in cellophane and bagging in a clean garbage bag before introducing them to the chickens in the freezer. Actually, we only put one into the freezer. The male we put into the fridge. We knew we were going to eat him over the weekend. And let me tell you, there's nothing like a fresh turkey. And the crazy thing was over 18lbs to-boot! We put him in our big roaster and the lid wouldn't even come close to fitting on. I rolled him onto his side and lid still wouldn't go. We ended up layering the top of the roaster with aluminum foil and setting the lid on top of that. What a meal.

And as for the vacation...didn't seem like a vacation. Had a great time, but Eshell ran me ragged. Two or three trips to Ohio. One to Lagrange. The zoo. Hiking. Read about it at our family journal blog.

1 comment:

Knapp Family said...

Nice job,Farmer Troy! He was tasty:)