Simple ways to cook wild turkey

I admire wild game chefs and I eat their food with great delight. But sometime simple is the way to go at our house.

Accompany the meal with a good wine or beer and you might even get raves.

The wild turkeys I bagged in the spring season that just ended were separated into legs and thighs and breast fillets. The legs and thighs were slow-cooked with a stewing-hen recipe my wife got out of the Joy of Cooking until the meat nearly fell off the bone. I vacuum packed portions of delicious shredded meat that our family uses in a variety of dishes from soups to curries over rice or potatoes.

The breast fillets are frozen and used mostly for kabobs on the grill or stir fries.

Bart George, wildlife biologist for the Kalispel Tribe, shared the following recipe that’s an easy and delicious way to deal with longbeard breasts. “I’m sick of hearing people gripe about the taste/toughness of wild turkey meat,” he said. Here’s his solution.

Turkey Pinwheel

1. Fillet breast from carcass and trim away any fat and “non-meat stuff.” Remove or scarify the thin membrane on the outside to make the meat more tender.

2. Pound-tenderize the breast until it spreads out and flattens to a rectangle 1/2 to 3/4 inch thick.

3. Season with pepper and garlic. DO NOT SALT IT NOW or it will dry the meat.

4. Put whatever you like on the flattened meat. For example, try shaved almonds, spinach, morel mushrooms and maybe some Parmesan cheese.

5. Roll the breast and pin it with toothpicks

6. In a covered dish, bake the turkey all the way through. For a normal sized pinwheel it takes roughly 40 minutes at 360 degrees. Then uncover and broil to color-crisp the outside.

7. Let it settle for a few minutes before cutting.