Heritage Turkeys?
This year I'm obsessed with cooking a heritage turkey for Thanksgiving. They're the ancestral birds to the industrially-farmed turkeys we eat today. I'm not really a fan of those turkeys which to me are bland and dry. I know you can combat the dryness with either brining or buying a Kosher turkey. But really what I want to try is a heritage turkey. Maybe because I love food history and I wonder where has this bird gone and why is it so hard to come by? And ultimately, it must taste a lot better.
It's not easy locating a heritage turkey. I found a link online, but their map is not at all helpful. I also called Staubitz butcher and they told me they can special order a heritage turkey (16-20lbs) for $9.99 a pound. That's about $160-$200 for a turkey. I'm not too keen on that idea. I also heard the Park Slope Food Coop has them. I plan to find out this weekend.
Barring those two options, does anyone out there know where to get a heritage turkey either in Brooklyn, New York or online even? Any cooking tips would be welcome too.
posted by EFB at 2:30 PM
4 Comments:
I looked online and found a place based in Newark, NJ. But it's still expensive. I think short of raising it yourself, you'll pay a lot more for the heritage breeds. You can order online at www.dartagnan.com.
8:11 AM
okay, one more...Springfield Farm in Sparks, Maryland has them, but not sure how they ship. $4.75/lb. There have to be places in upstate New York and further northeast that raise them. If only you had a booklet of farms and what they offered and where they are located. Let me know what you find.
8:20 AM
I just checked out Dartagnan's web site. Guess they're just expensive. Here's another one I found http://heritagefoodsusa.com/. What's also interesting is that I came across a headline from the New York times saying "Suppliers Anxious Over Surplus of Heritage Turkeys." If there's a surplus why are they so expensive and so hard to find?
9:23 AM
email the reporter of the article and ask them to put you in tough with some kind of Heritage Turkey resource. They have to have gotten that story from somewhere. It's like some big secret or something. Let me know how you do.
12:15 PM
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