Wow, in all the years I have been to Thanksgiving dinners, and cooked my own, I don’t think I have ever seen ANYONE who didn’t want the breast and preferred the leg!
Plus, I don’t know what the big deal is about cooking a turkey - simply brush slightly with oil or rub with butter, then put it on a roaster in a low temp oven, calculate the hours and leave it alone! No basting, no opening the oven to check on it, no nothing - just wait. Simplest food to make that there is!
I have not once had a turkey that didn’t come out perfectly*, and yes - even the white meat is moist and tender.
BTW, I read somewhere that the reason ovens in the USA are far larger than ovens everywhere else in the world is because of Thanksgiving! It seems every American, when shopping for an oven, says, “Yeah, my turkey would fit in there…” and thus they keep making these somewhat over-sized ovens for the US market that people only really need to be that large once a year.
*Well, there was that one year that I took out only one of the two enclosed bags in the cavity of the bird, but let’s forget that episode.
To get back to the original question, I really, really doubt that you will see whole turkeys with more than two legs offered at the local market in your lifetime. I would guess that it would take some really advanced engineering to convert a turkey from a critter with four standard limbs to a critter with six or more standard limbs. There’s the occasional turkey (or other animal) which has more than the standard number of limbs for its kind, but those are usually culled by the farmer, if domestic, or by the environment, if wild. Plus, with the political climate the way it is, genetic engineering of all sorts is looked at with a very wary eye. I mean, people won’t buy irradiated food! Do you think that they’re going to buy Four Legged Turkeys or Three Eyed Fish? I think that we don’t have the knowledge and technology to make such things on a consistent basis now, and I don’t think that we’re going to have that knowledge or technology for a long time to come. I am not a geneticist, I just know what sort of things people will accept.
I think your best bet is simply to buy extra turkey legs, as others have suggested. Also, I note that chicken leg quarters are frequently put on sale at my local supermarkets, often for a very low price indeed.
Turkeys are not bred so large they can’t walk. They are bred so large that they cannot reproduce naturally. Sexually mature male turkeys weigh upwards of 70 pounds, and while the females are built like brick shit-houses too, they aren’t quite burly enough for all that lovin’.
Feel free to add that little gem to your dinner conversation next week.
