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When I saw that Pecatonica Valley Farms were taking orders for turkeys I decided to pick up a couple for Thanksgiving. I don’t know if they’re organic, but I do know they’re locally raised.
I picked them up (all 27 combined pounds of them) on Saturday and sat them in the fridge hoping they’d be thawed by Wednesday. As of 30 minutes ago as we popped them in their salty bath, they still had frozen bits.
I had to run cold water in Turkey number #1 to fish out the neck, heart and liver. Turkey #2 was much more frozen and took a bit more water to get the neck to loosen up. Once I pried the neck out I started feeling around for the other bits. The heart came out easily, but the liver was stuck. I accidentally put my finger through the liver and it made a squishy popping noise. eeew. I then stuck my hand back in and felt around for liver bits. I found way more than liver still frozen inside the body cavity.
I found what appears to be the rest of the internal organs minus the digestive tract including kidneys and not lungs, but “avian air sacs.” The 9th grade biology student in me wants to take a closer look at them and identify all the internal organs, the chef in me wants to make gravy from whatever is useful and edible, and squeamish me wants to throw the whole lot out.
Whatever happens, we have to remember to excavate Turkey 1 tomorrow to ensure we’re not roasting internal organs in the body cavity because as Alton Brown would say, that would not be Good Eats.