You know that person. They’re
making a big deal out of serving a heritage turkey for Christmas dinner, and
you have no idea what they’re talking about. I mean, you’re not completely
ignorant — you know it’s a kind of special turkey grown by farmers who
care about those special things. Right? And you suspect your friend might just
be showing off because that turkey also sounds like it’s probably expensive.
I talked to Belmont
Butchery’s Tanya Cauthen to find out what makes these birds so desirable.
“The simple thing is flavor,”
she says. “With a conventional bird, the meat itself is insipid — the
flavor has been bred out of it — and it’s been pumped full of water and
flavor enhancers.”
Heritage breeds are older
varieties of turkeys with great names — Midget White, Bourbon Red or
Narragansett, for instance — that have been ignored by the industrial
poultry industry because they don’t grow fast enough to turn a profit. Almost all conventional turkeys these days are
Broad Breasted Whites. They can grow from an egg to saleable size
in about three months. A heritage breed, in contrast, takes five to six months
to get up to size.
Cauthen cautions against
fixating only on heritage breeds. The most important thing, she says, is the
way the bird is raised. “You want a turkey that was reared outside, on grass,
with access to bugs and worms.” A turkey raised indoors on generic turkey feed
isn’t going to develop the depth of flavor that a pastured bird has.
But price is still a consideration.
A locally raised heritage breed can run you up to $7 per pound at Belmont
Butchery. At Ellwood Thompson’s Local Market, you’ll find humanely raised
turkeys from Pennsylvania’s Koch’s Turkeys at $2.99 per pound. And a
Butterball? They’re available for the low, low price of $1.59 per pound at
Kroger.
Part of the price
differential comes from the way the birds are produced. A farmer raising
turkeys the traditional way in a pasture on a small farm is producing far fewer
turkeys than a big, industrial farm. Volume isn’t working in his favor.
But once the sticker shock
wears off, you can’t dismiss the way a pastured bird tastes.
“You taste it and go,
‘Oh! This is what a turkey is supposed to taste like,'” says Cauthen. “It has a
much bigger flavor.”
Belmont Butchery (limited supply and today is the last
day for special orders),
15 N. Belmont Ave.,
422-8519,
Ellwood Thompson’s
Local Market,
4 N. Thompson St.,
359-7525,
Kroger,
various locations,
