Today I had to cook Thanksgiving dinner for the residents at the retirement home where I work. Despite 31 years in foodservice, most of which years have been spent as a cook, I’ve never actually cooked and carved a whole turkey before today (hey, we have “turkey roasts” for that, in most cases, and I usually eat Thanksgiving dinner at somebody else’s house). I had to carve up four 20-pound turkeys today.
Anyway, a handy instructional video showed me how to carve the turkeys. No problem. Except …
The meat on the legs/drumsticks was shot through with these skinny, bony things that looked and felt like the shafts of feathers. They ranged in length anywhere from 5 inches down to 1 inch. I ended up devoting a whole lot of time to painstakingly finding and removing these little shits from the meat. Like I said, I was cooking for the elderly, and I was scared to death I was going to miss one of these things and end up with some 90-year-old choking on it.
I’ve eaten plenty of chicken legs, and have never encountered something like this. WTF were those things? The instructional video I watched didn’t mention them.
You’ve ate chicken legs and never encountered the splinter? You’ll find them there, as well. Most videos on how to carve a bird would probably only mention disjointing the whole leg and offering it whole. Not exactly feasible in an institutional setting, since a whole leg would be too much for many, and a choking hazard. I believe the splinter is the bird’s fibula.
qualityleashdog: Turkeys & chickens have very different leg anatomy. Turkeys have several (~6) long cartilaginous structures that resemble the chicken’s spiky bony fibula. And yes, they’re a PITA to carve out.
There were a crapton of these things in each leg, not a single bone (aside from the main leg bone).
Yeah, the instructional video I watched showed the chef lopping off the legs and wings and setting them aside, before carving off the breasts and slicing them up.
Geez, today would have been a lot easier had my previous manager still been here. My current manager wasn’t even born yet when I started in this business (my boss is half my age), and he’s only been on the job for a month, so he left it to me to do this today. Because of my experience.
I’m just glad that I ended up getting to just plate the food in the kitchen, like normal, instead of having to carve the turkeys on a buffet line, in front of an “audience”, like I was expecting. If I’d encountered these things in a leg on a buffet line, I would have looked at the first leg, set it aside, and said, “Sorry, no leg meat.”
Exactly. I was honestly expecting the turkey leg to be basically like a chicken leg, but bigger.
Anatomically, I looked at the way these things shot right through the muscle, and wondered, “Are turkeys in constant pain when they walk? How does this even work?”
They’re the connection between the leg muscles and the bones. Chickens have one while turkeys have several. I’m a dark meat guy and always pick the thigh over the leg.
Those were tendons. You are right; there are a couple dozen in a turkey leg, and they’re annoying to remove. They are, however, necessary to attach those muscles to the bone.
There’s a bit of confusion here. Turkeys and chickens do have similar leg anatomy. Both have a thin pointed fibula bone that parallels the tibia. Both have tendons that connect the leg muscles to the bone. The difference is that the tendons in the turkey leg are calcified and have become bonelike, while those in the chicken remain fibrous. Turkey tendons are mineralized because turkeys are larger and heavier than chickens so the connections to the muscles need to be stronger.