Alternative Turk

shannerdrake

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Joined
Feb 14, 2017
Messages
999
Location
Indiana
I’ve cooked and eaten a lot of turkey over the years. My go to has always been brined and smoked breast meat and good intentions on the legs.

This year I found myself with 6 birds in the freezer (long story) and I finally had a chunk of time to defrost and do something with them. I ended up on sausage (for the legs) and some of the breast and jerky for the rest of the breast.

It ended up being a bigger project than thought. What I thought would take a couple hours took six and I was tired of turkeys by the end of the day. But the end results were good. 18lb of mild sausage, 18lb of spicy sausage, and 5lb jerky.

Honestly it’s been my favorite sausage and jerky I’ve made. The sausage is 25% pork butt. You could leave it out but I think it rounds it out and the sausage holds together. The recipe for sausage is based on Meateater’s breakfast sausage recipe. The jerky is based on Hank Shawn’s chipotle jerky recipe. I also make a sweet heat dry rub and dust one side of half the jerky with it before dehydrating.

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I’ve cooked and eaten a lot of turkey over the years. My go to has always been brined and smoked breast meat and good intentions on the legs.

This year I found myself with 6 birds in the freezer (long story) and I finally had a chunk of time to defrost and do something with them. I ended up on sausage (for the legs) and some of the breast and jerky for the rest of the breast.

It ended up being a bigger project than thought. What I thought would take a couple hours took six and I was tired of turkeys by the end of the day. But the end results were good. 18lb of mild sausage, 18lb of spicy sausage, and 5lb jerky.

Honestly it’s been my favorite sausage and jerky I’ve made. The sausage is 25% pork butt. You could leave it out but I think it rounds it out and the sausage holds together. The recipe for sausage is based on Meateater’s breakfast sausage recipe. The jerky is based on Hank Shawn’s chipotle jerky recipe. I also make a sweet heat dry rub and dust one side of half the jerky with it before dehydrating.

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I’d like to try Sheboygan style brats with some of my turkey sometime.
 
That would be great! I’ve seen folks make brats with rabbit meat.

I need to break down and get a sausage stuffer. Any recommendations?
 
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