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We had a Heritage turkey yesterday and I wasn't too impressed. We brined it so it was flavorful and moist but there wasn't a lot of meat, we barely had 1 slice each for a 15 pounder, 9 people.. The leg and wing bones seemed to be larger, I guess that's where a lot of the weight was. I've never seem such large tendons!
It was also very tough and even though the meat was cooked (we even measured it with 2 different thermometers), it still ooozed pink and it was hard to unjoint.
Thanks for sharing your review of that particular bird. I actually was noticing a number of articles trying to encourage people to purchase these. We buy at Whole Foods and although I don't do the shopping, I assume their birds are without hormones, and antibiotics at the least. Sorry to hear it wasn't a better experience.
As a rule, we raise our own turkeys and raise heritage birds. This year we could not get ahold of any poults; someone in our area bought all of them up and took all of the appointments for processing. We had several disappointed people who wanted the heritage bird. We tend to raise Blue Slate turkeys, they are stunningly beautiful and the best tasting turkeys we've ever had.
You must turn the temp down 25 degrees to cook a heritage or fresh turkey. You must cut your time down as well. I think taking almost as much as 45 minutes to 1 hr off of the cooking time. There will still be pink around the bone, but this has more to do with the marrow from the bone than it does not being done. As long as your meat is cooked and not pink in the center, you are good to go.
Dragonfly, We had 8 adults and 4 little ones with a 21 lb turkey yesterday and barely had enough turkey. I usually plan a turkey twice the lbs as people I will have...everyone wants turkey leftovers. We have very little for leftovers this time around :(
I am not a fan of brining; I tried it one year, spent a lot on the ingredients to do it, was so excited to try it and it didn't have any flavor and was pretty dried out. It was one of our own turkeys :( I was really disappointed.
The turkey we had yesterday was cooked in a big roaster on top of the counter. It was incredibly moist and tasty. A lot has to do with the stuffing you use (or don't). I make one with our own sausage, cranberries, apples, walnuts, chicken broth, butter, sage, poultry seasoning, onions, celery, and I get the stuffing from Pepperidge Farm (sorry, somethings I just don't want to do, ha, ha). But my favorite hint, I learned this a long, long, long time ago, is to place bacon strips over the top of the turkey and the legs, wings. It will brown incredible and the flavor will be sooooo good. And the fat from the bacon will juice up your turkey. The turkey just fell apart and was ready 2 hrs before anticipated. We just kept it on extremely low until time for everything else.
BTW, my daughter cooked Thanksgiving this year (the first time in over 30 years that I didn't). She did a darn good job and I am real proud of her...she used all of my recipes, so I guess now she'll have a standing tradition of using the same as I did.
We did not have a free-range turkey, but I have to admit it was right tasty.
My mother does Thanksgiving and she is so into lean non-fat light meat and not dark meat, etc., that she will often buy an extra breast with no legs just for all the light meat lovers. (I like dark meat!) I've never had a brined bird but I've heard of them. I rarely cook meat, actually. Thanks, Darius, for a really interesting article!
