Wild turkey legs are often overlooked, but they can be just as delicious as the breast meat when prepared correctly. This guide will walk you through the process of prepping, cooking, and enjoying these flavorful cuts, ensuring you never waste another morsel of this magnificent bird.
Why You Should Cook Wild Turkey Legs
Many hunters discard the legs, believing they’re tough, stringy, and not worth the effort. However, this couldn’t be further from the truth The key to unlocking the deliciousness of wild turkey legs lies in understanding their unique composition and employing the right cooking techniques.
The legs are made of dark, rich red muscle, in contrast to the breast, which is mainly made of white muscle. This muscle has a lot of flavor, but it also has a lot more tendons and connective tissue. Cooking them quickly at high temperatures results in a tough, chewy texture.
However, low and slow cooking transforms these legs into culinary masterpieces. The meat becomes extremely tender and flavorful, falling off the bone as the connective tissue dissolves. This makes them ideal for a wide range of dishes, such as stews and soups, as well as pulled turkey sandwiches.
Butchering the Legs
Before you can cook them you need to remove the legs from the bird. Here’s a simple guide:
- Gather your tools: You’ll need a sharp knife and a cutting board.
- Locate the knee joint: Find where the feathers meet the scaly lower leg. This is the knee joint.
- Twist and separate: Give the joint a twist, and the leg will easily separate from the body.
- Skinning (optional): If you’re skinning the breast meat, continue peeling the skin down the legs. Use your knife to help in stubborn areas.
- Pop the thigh joint: Grab the carcass at the breastbone and push down on the leg and thigh. You’ll feel the thigh joint pop free.
- Release the meat: Run your knife along the top of the thigh bone to release the meat.
- Separate or store: You can leave the leg and thigh together or separate them at the joint for individual storage.
Cooking Methods for Wild Turkey Legs
Now that you have your legs prepped, let’s explore some delicious cooking methods:
1. Slow Cooking: The Set-and-Forget Method
This is a favorite for its simplicity. Add the legs to your slow cooker with some liquid (chicken or turkey broth) seasonings of your choice and let it work its magic for about 8 hours. The result? Tender, shreddable meat perfect for casseroles, tacos, enchiladas, or pulled turkey BBQ.
2. Simmering: The Base for Soups and Stews
To make a filling soup or substantial turkey and dumplings, place the legs in a big pot, add water or broth, and season to taste. Simmer for 3-4 hours until the meat is tender. After removing the legs and shredding the meat, add the soup ingredients of your choice back to the pot.
3. Braising: The Flavorful Option
For a rich and flavorful dish, try braising. Sear the legs in a Dutch oven over medium-high heat until browned. After adding flavorful veggies like celery, onions, and carrots, add your preferred liquid (stock or wine). Cover and cook in a 300-degree oven for 3-4 hours until tender.
4. Smoking: The Barbecue Delight
To add a smoky touch, rub your legs with your preferred BBQ rub and smoke them at 225 degrees over fruitwood blend or hickory chips. After two to three hours of smoking, cover with foil, liquid (such as beer or apple cider), and butter. Seal tightly and smoke for another 2-3 hours. In the end, take off the foil, put the smoker back in, drizzle some sauce on it, and cook for 30 minutes at 300 degrees, sprinkling some sauce on it every 10 minutes to get a glazed finish.
5. Grinding: The Burger and Sausage Solution
For a quick and versatile option, grind the raw legs with your favorite seasonings. This creates delicious turkey burgers or breakfast sausage. Simply remove the bones, trim excess connective tissue, grind the meat, and form patties or sausage links. Grill or fry to your liking.
Wild turkey legs offer a wealth of culinary possibilities. By understanding their unique characteristics and applying the right cooking techniques, you can transform them into mouthwatering dishes that will leave you wondering why you ever considered discarding them. So, the next time you harvest a wild turkey, don’t forget the legs – they’re a treasure trove of flavor waiting to be explored.
Your complete guide to prepping and cooking wild turkey legs and thighs, plus a bunch of awesome recipes
Theyre tough. Theyre stringy. The tendons are a pain. Theyre hard to skin. They dont have much meat on them. They arent worth the hassle.
Over the years, Ive heard hunters use these and every other excuse for not keeping wild turkey legs. The good news is, none of them are actually true.
If you cook a wild turkey leg or thigh the same way you cook breast meat, it will be as tough and chewy as that oatmeal pie you attempted to make three years prior when you were running out of food and miles from camp.
Like all gallinaceous game birds, wild turkeys use their legs a lot. Way more than an animal equipped with a fully functioning set of wings should, really. That rich, dark-red muscle meat is held together by connective tissue and hard tendons. The connective tissue ties into a tight ball that is too delicious for even a wolf to resist when they are cooked fast and hot.
But when you cook them for a long time at a low temperature and with a lot of moisture, the magic happens. That connective tissue melts away and the meat falls from the bones, leaving them clean and white. The results are tender, tasty, and perfect for all sorts of recipes.
In the recipes below, turkey legs and thighs can be substituted for one another because they have similar flavors and textures and are typically removed from the bird whole. But before you can cook them, you have to get them off the bird. Check out the links below for some of our favorite recipes.
Start with a sharp knife. Cut around the knee joint where the feathers meet the scaly lower leg. Give the joint a twist and you will be able to separate the two. If youre skinning the breast meat, just continue peeling the skin down the legs. Most of it should come off your foot like a sock, but you might need to use your knife to push it in a few spots. Grab the middle of the carcass at the breastbone with one hand, then press down on the leg and thigh with the other. You should feel the thigh joint pop free from the backbone. To release the meat, simply run your knife along the bone at the top of the thigh.
Using your knife, you can either cut the leg and thigh at the joint or leave them whole for storage. I usually freeze both the sets of legs and thighs in one package to feed my family of five, but you can freeze them separately if you don’t usually need that much meat in one meal.
A pair of legs and thighs can yield about the same amount of meat as a breast. The legs and thighs of a recently deceased Kentucky longbeard weighed only a few ounces less than the bird’s breast, despite the fact that losing weight is inevitable when removing bones. Preserving the thighs and legs increases the quantity of wild turkey dinners you can have and reduces waste.
This is my favorite way to cook wild turkey legs and thighs, mainly because its a set-and-forget method. To your Weston Realtree or other slow cooker, add the legs and thighs, a small amount of liquid (like chicken or turkey broth), and seasonings per the recipe.
Set your slow cooker and walk away. Within approximately eight hours, you’ll have tender, shreddable meat that’s ideal for pulled wild turkey BBQ, enchiladas, casseroles, and tacos.
By adding the appropriate seasonings to the slow cooker along with the turkey, you can enhance the flavor of the meat as it cooks. Try soy sauce, oyster sauce, garlic, and your favorite BBQ rub on pulled turkey sandwiches for Asian-inspired recipes. Or chili powder, cumin and peppers for Mexican-style dishes.
If you plan to make soup or turkey and dumplings, add the legs to a large stock pot, cover with enough stock or water, season, and bring to a boil. Turkey should be cooked over a simmering heat for three to four hours, or until the meat is tender. Once you take the legs out of the pot and let them cool down enough to handle, shred the meat from the bone using forks or your fingers.
Return the boned-out meat to the pot and add your soup ingredients to continue cooking. Vegetables, potatoes, rice and barley all work well with turkey.
Make some of these dumplings and toss them in the pot when you’re feeling a little more hearty. The broth will thicken to a rich gravy as the dumplings cook. A big bowl of wild turkey and dumplings makes a meal everyone will love.
Meat is simply browned by sear-frying it over high heat and braising it slowly in a flavorful liquid (like wine or stock). A Dutch oven is the perfect vessel for braising. Braising works best when you break down the leg and thigh sections for more surface area to brown.
Start the pot over medium-high heat on the stove. Add a few tablespoons of vegetable or olive oil. Season the turkey with salt and pepper, then fry it in hot oil for a few minutes on each side, or until the skin is golden. Remove the turkey from the pot and add aromatic vegetables like onion, carrots, and celery. After adding the cooking liquid and giving the mixture a good stir with a wooden or plastic spoon, scrape up any stuck-on particles from the bottom of the pot.
Return the turkey to the pot and cover it with a tight-fitting lid. After transferring the pot to an oven set to 300°, cook the turkey for four to six hours, or until it is soft.
Want to smoke the legs and thighs? Start by seasoning your turkey well with your favorite BBQ rub. Place them on the smoker with the temperature set to 225 degrees over hickory chips or a mixture of hickory and fruit wood, like apple, peach, or cherry.
Smoke the turkey on the open grate for 2 to 3 hours. Next, use heavy-duty aluminum foil to wrap your turkey. Once you’ve added butter and a liquid (like beer or apple cider), tightly seal the foil and put it back in the smoker for another two to three hours. The turkey should then be removed from the foil, returned to the open smoker, and covered with your favorite sauce. Raise the temperature to 300 degrees and cook for 30 minutes, brushing every ten minutes or so with a glaze-setting solution.
This is the lone method where you dont have to cook the turkey slowly. Wild turkey legs and thighs are perfect for boning out and grinding with your favorite seasonings for grilled turkey burgers or turkey morning sausage.
Starting with the raw turkey legs and thighs, use a sharp filet knife to cut the meat off of the bones. Remove as much of the tendon and connective tissue as possible. Add BBQ seasoning to the deboned meat and run it through a meat grinder on the medium plate. Chill the ground meat and run it through the grinder again. Form the ground turkey into patties and grill or fry to your liking. Dress and serve like your favorite beef burger.
For breakfast sausage, follow the same process, but substitute sausage seasonings (salt, pepper, red pepper, and sage) into the mixture. Fry up and serve alongside eggs for a hearty camp or home breakfast.
Wild turkey legs dont get the respect they deserve. When prepared with an appropriate cooking technique, they are just as delicious as breast meat. Try one of these techniques and give cutting off the legs of your next turkey an extra five minutes or so. Once you realize just how good the legs can be, youll never leave them behind again.