Turkey One (an organic, big-breasted Whole Foods variety) is braising
away. My wife had spicy braised pulled turkey a couple years ago at
a work function, and I've had fun working with the recipe since then.
This year I simplified it a bit, and if the flavor so far is any
indicator, this will become my standard recipe.
One Turkey
Fresh Ground Pepper
Kosher Salt
Garlic
Chipotles in Adobo
Beer
Cut the backbone out of the turkey using a cleaver (a rubber mallet
can be helpful here). Reserve backbone for stock. Separate wings and
legs using a boning knife, cutting through the joints. Lay remainder
breast side down on a chopping block, exposing the back of the breast
plate. Take a heavy whack at the breast plate with a cleaver to break
it cleanly.
Lay the breast pieces in a Dutch Oven (or similarly heavy cast iron
lidded pot). Rub liberally with pepper, salt, garlic and diced
chipotles. Repeat this step with the wings, then the legs. Cover
meat 2/3 of the way with whatever beer is in your refrigerator. The
order of the layering is important here. The breasts, which are more
prone to drying out, will benefit the most from the braising liquid
and should be on bottom.
Heat the oven to 225, and place the Dutch Oven on the middle rack.
Cook the turkey until it falls off the bone and is easily pulled.
Remove the turkey from its braising liquids and let stand for at least
a half hour. Pull the turkey from the bone with a fork, shredding it
with two forks if desired. Move the pulled turkey into a sauce pot,
and transfer enough skimmed braising liquid to the sauce pot to come
within an inch of the top of the shredded turkey.
This spicy pulled turkey makes awesome sandwiches, especially on
butter toasted rye with a thick smear of a good mustard. It is also
awesome just by the fork full.
Turkey Two brined for 24 hours and is currently air drying in the
refrigerator. It is an "American Bronze" heritage breed from Peaceful
Pastures in Tennessee. It will be oven roasted. This will be the
first heritage turkey that I sink my teeth into. Hopefully all of
that running around that it did during its life will have worked some
intra-muscular fat into its meat!
Turkey Three (hey, that's me!) managed to get another Gadgets
installation out for a client yesterday. I'll have a registration
gadget done next week, after which I'll open up gadgets.xml-comma.org
to the world.
-- Douglas Hunter
