I’ve been on a bit of a turkey fest in the last few days. It all started because Son no.2 has taken on the Christmas lunch this year and is creating his own version of Christmas which I know will be delicious, (he’s even making hazelnut marzipan! as one of the components in the dessert) but I fear it will probably remain turkey less. I like a bit of turkey, I do. But there is no way I could even with the smallest turkey do justice to it. Let alone how expensive they seem to have become these days.., I could get quite a decent cut of beef for the same price.

So when I saw something on TikTok and went ‘oooh…’ I’ve been waiting for Turkey thighs and drumsticks to come into supermarkets ever since.

The first thing to try was deboning a thigh and stuffing it with sausage meat. And it was pretty easy to do. Less than five minutes to wield my freshly sharpened filleting knife, remembering to go back for the knee cap. I still have to purchase a proper boning knife, maybe next year. Then stuff it with sausage meat and tie it up with string. Not bad for a first attempt I think.

Keeping the bone to make a trivet with vegetables and then roasting it off and slicing.

It was good, very good. Enough for three or two very hungry men. Or several sandwiches in the week, which is what I seem to be doing with it, it goes amazingly well with a homemade chutney, you can feel Christmas is in the air. I’m promising myself a proper dinner with it tomorrow along with the gravy I’ve saved. And one was popped in the freezer, happy days.

And you would think that would be the end of my journey wouldn’t you, but no, you know what Mandy is like when she gets the bit between her teeth.

I found some turkey legs. Laughs out loud. So I bought a couple, well three… and four more thighs.. Well it’s a seasonal item and I was so happy to have found an idea that worked.

This morning I prepared the turkey leg for a roast.

That was a lot more work. Look at all the tendons I found. I am pretty sure I did find them all, but at one stage I just kept finding more and more. It must have taken a good fifteen minutes, maybe longer. So I thought well, this will be a good experimental roast, but we will do something different for the other two legs. I stuffed this leg with peaches and rosemary and a little salt.

It was a lot trickier to roll but it came out just about okay in the end.

So then I was left with these two wonderful turkey legs.

And I thought I would take them into the America’s where they use sweetness very often with turkey, well with all meats really.

I sprinkled them with soft brown sugar and a little sea salt, doused them with a spicy barbecue sauce, added Marsala wine and water, the rest of the tin of peaches and rosemary and thyme from the garden. Then covered them in foil and cooked them low and slow for a good three and a half hours, maybe longer, I lost track of time.

Until they were ready. The fat stuck on the foil on one of them, never mind.

Let them cool and then stripped the meat and very carefully removed the tendons. Removed all the woody herbs from the gravy and mushed the peaches about a bit and rejoined the meat to the pan.

It was totally delicious by this point. I bagged up five portions that weighed seven ounces each. Enough for me for a single dinner and a sandwich and there were quite a few delicious scraps for the dogs.

And while all this was cooking. I prepped four more thighs for the freezer. This time adding a tablespoon of cranberry sauce to the three sausages that went into each one. I felt that it would benefit with the additional treat of a touch of sweetness.

So that is me winter turkey ready. I have six mini roasts for two/three people and five ready made turkey suppers for one ready in my freezer.