Trouble with turkeys

Spatchcock is a new word to me, but it’s been around for a long time.  Research indicates it originated in Ireland in the 18^th century and is a variation on the phrase “dispatching a cock.”  The cock is a bird.  In culinary terms, spatchcock simply means to split a bird open and lay it flat for cooking.  It’s supposed to make it cook quick and even.  Have you ever tried to split a turkey in half?  It ain’t easy.  I watched my wife and a 350-pound man wrestle with a turkey until they finally succeeded in removing the big bird’s spine by carving, sawing, pulling and sweating.  They spent nearly an hour working with the slick and unruly hunk of poultry.

Our friend, Margie Kendall of Montgomery, north of Houston, had a hard time spatchcocking a turkey.  “I got on Google and watched how to do it,” she says.  “I bought some heavy duty and very sharp kitchen shears to cut through the ribs connected to the spine so it could be removed for making a delicious broth.  It all looked so easy on the video.

“I could NOT cut the spine out with those expensive shears!   Finally, I got out my big old ugly butcher knife and sawed and SAWED with all my might until I got the spine free, although the rest of the bird was sort of bruised looking by then.  No matter.  Just Yay!  I put the spine and neck bone into a pot to make broth for gravy.

“Next, I was to break the breastbone to flatten the body.  I have done that to many a chicken.  Only that turkey breastbone would NOT break.   I worked up a sweat with my hair hanging down, and that breastbone stayed secure in that bird.  There was only one thing to do: go primitive.

“I spread newspapers on the floor and put the turkey on it, breast up. I put a board over that bird and stood on the board.  Nothing.  So I gripped the counter edge and jumped up and down on it like a maniac, throwing in some shrieks and epithets the bird did not hear because STILL the sucker would not crack.

“I had bought a cooking sack that had holes in it so it wouldn’t explode.  I put a little flour in it, shook it until the inside of the bag was pretty well powdered.  I got ready to put the turkey inside the bag; not knowing it was a two-person job.   I struggled and struggled to get the big bird inside the flimsy plastic bag but the bag would not stay open.   I tried to stand the bird up and slip the bag over it, but the bird kept falling down.  I had been fooling with this thing a long time.  The butter that had congealed on the cold bird started falling off in chunks all over me, my clothes, the sink, the counter, the outside of the bag, everywhere.  When I finally managed to shove the messy bird into the bag by holding one of its legs it was all twisty, one leg up and one down.  The breast, fully intact, was hiding somewhere.  To add a final insult, the breast didn’t brown maybe because all the butter fell off or because it was under a leg.  But after all that it tasted fine.

“It could have been worse.  The bag could have exploded.”