As you know, The Hired Hand did the deed so that we could have our turkey and eat it on too on Thanksgiving.
All went well, with that job.
We weighed Tommy Lee on Thursday wee morning and he topped my scale out so we had to pull out the bathroom scale. He was a whopping 30# dressed! What a big eyes you have my dear!!!
I chose the Bronze Broad Breasted Turkey because of the conversion rate of food to food. BTW it was excellent. Although having heritage birds of any kind is nice, sometimes it’s not practical. My friend said that she populated her county with heritage birds and they never had one left to eat. Another told me that the Bronze Broad Breasted was financially the way to go if you cared about who was going to be feasting…you or him!
It comes back to what my friend Nita has blogged about when raising Cornish X instead of heritage chickens. The idiot things people say about raising hybrids. They have enlarged hearts. Really? Tommy’s heart was perfect! Nothing bulging or odd about it. Their legs break from the size….Really? Tommy’s legs were strong. He was raised on pasture and a soy free 19% ration which gave him some beefy thighs! AND I had to endure the bloggers who haven’t raised a child let alone a bird and most hadn’t even eaten a pastured bird before yet they are experts on how to cook one. High heat and fast. Low heat and slow. They were out there a dime a dozen on Thanksgiving Eve! Putting out information that you can’t just cook them like a regular bird…..REALLY????
Maybe it’s my age, but I’m really growing intolerant of such stupidity. They haven’t hardly been out of diapers themselves very long and yet, they have this platform to tell the world how to do just about everything because they read it online somewhere!!!!! Yeah, I do think it’s my age. Because just about everywhere I go now, everyone is younger than myself. That my friend is a sign of aging.
Ok….enough ranting….
I finally found someone with thighs bigger than mine!!!!
He didn’t have massive legs….but those thighs! Well they were mighty big! I think he did morning squats!
Here’s where our story got interesting…….we had a slight Thanksgiving mishap.
Tommy Lee didn’t quite fit in my roaster that my cousin Mark gave me for my wedding gift 30 yrs ago. The same one I’ve used for 30 yrs to cook my Thanksgiving Turkey. In fact I asked him for another and he said they didn’t make them that BIG!
So, I found a lasagna pan at the grocery a few days before Thanksgiving. The Hired Hand and I put that pan on top of a cookie sheet and put them in the oven at 6AM on Thursday.
At 12 noon, I asked The Hired Hand to pull him out so I could see if he was done and take the foil off for him to brown……..
AND THIS IS WHERE IT ALL WENT SOUTH….WAY SOUTH!!!!
The pan buckled.
The 350* juices spilled on my Beloved.
He was on fire.
He stripped down as fast as he could.
The Farmer’s Daughter was in shock because she thought she saw her father in his birthday suit. Not quite. Skivvies.
He was screaming.
He ran to the cold shower.
He was crying.
I was crying.
He started to blister right away. He had 2nd degree burns. I have a pretty good first aid bag and had some burn pads. We put them on until The Farmer’s Daughter could run to the nearest Walgreens and get 5 more boxes and lots of gauze. He refused to go to the ER on Thanksgiving. And so I used my doctoring skills….of course that I learned online!!!
After several hours we finally sat down to eat. The Hired Hand is a very serious fellow……and while we were eating he said, “I think Tommy Lee was getting back at me for cutting off his head!” So this my friends was our Thanksgiving presentation.
see where it caved??? talk about stupid! I felt awful.
We did salvage some of the broth. But probably half of it went in the floor and on my beloved. Little Lady was licking the cabinets and floor for days!!! She kept barking, “Encore Encore!!!!
Tommy was very lean….unlike all those bloggers who say that hybrid birds are FAT!
Both of my kids now love brussel sprouts! I braised them with onion and then once I could turn my attention back to the stove I put some of Tommy’s broth is and finished them with carrot!!!! YUM was all I heard!
The hit was the Sweet Potato Rolls. My Tender Hearted son loves Martin Potato Rolls. And when he says things like, “Mom these taste just like Martin’s….so they are really good!” Well, then I know I’ve gone and done it! I altered it a bit and used butter and 3/4 C sweet potato since that what I had cooked. And they made monster rolls! That look delish!
Apple pie is a legal food for me that I made with a lard pie crust….I could of just eaten the crust!!! YUM
So there you have it. The revenge of the Thanksgiving Turkey!
We ended up in Urgent Care Saturday early around 8AM. They sent us to Johns Hopkins Bayview Burn Center. After spending 7 hrs of our day taking care of The Hired Hand, we were finally home with good news that he was going to heal well. We have to follow up on Thursday, because the criteria to even be admitted to the burn center is hands and feet! They don’t normally heal well.
IF you can keep a secret we are giving this to The Hired Hand for Christmas! YES, I do think our next turkey will fit. I plan to start a month later. I think then we’ll all be able to laugh….although the burn doctor was really great and had us laughing before we left.
This post is part of the monday morning Barn Hop!
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Oh my gosh, I am so sorry about your husband. Must have hurt bad.
Your turkey looks great though and I hope your TG day was good too.
Yep Debbie!!!
So sorry to hear about your husband. Hope he heals really fast. As to the bird, I saw a show on tv once about cooking home raised heritage chickens and they went to great lengths to explain how you have to cook them so very different since they are skinny and don’t have a lot of bulk to them (I think it was low heat and slow). So, since I was thinking of buying locally raised I asked my sister who raises her own and she said “um, nooooo. I cook them no different”. She thought the people on the show were a little loony. I was wondering if heritage/home raised were so different then how did they do it years ago when they didn’t seem to fuss so much.
Paula, I remember being asked several times or commenting several times on FB about cooking pastured natural turkeys. Sorry yours didn’t work out this time. I stand by my original comments….I cook it like any other bird! It has NEVER turned out poorly. I preheat the oven for a cook long time at 450*F. I only salt and pepper it because of all our allergies, etc. But I do that quite liberally! Inside and out. Then I cover the turkey well with foil or the lid to seal in the juices. I pop it in the oven and immediately turn the heat down to 350*. Leave it alone until it falls apart. A 20# bird usually takes 4 hrs and this 30# bird took 6. By the looks of him he may of been done at 5.5 hr but we didn’t check. I take the foil or lid off for the last bit to brown him, but thank goodness Tommy was brown…cause there wasn’t any going back for more!!!! BTW The Hired Hand is my husband of 30 yrs….people ask him if he’s the farmer and he emphatically says “NO” , “I’m just the hired hand!”.
He was beautiful! Poor HH though
He certainly has a great sense of humor, although I guess he probably has had to perfect that skill over the last few decades 
Our Broad Breasted turkeys dressed out at about a pound for week of age, so plan accordingly when you order your poults.
Oh my gosh! Yep, I’d say Tommy Lee got you back. I hope your hubby heals up well and quickly. It looks like you had a wonderful Thanksgiving, nonetheless.
How horrible about your husband (?, friend? LOL). Burns really hurt, especially on the hands and upper arms.
I asked you on facebook last week how you were planning to cook your turkey, high and fast or low and slow. I don’t know what happened to the post, it disappeared. Unfortunately, we did the high heat and ended up with cooked breast and raw thigh. I put it all back in, breast down and finished cooking it and it was fine.
Honestly, I had two stocks, one with a store bought turkey that my mom had bought and then the stock with our pasture turkey. You should see the difference. Pasture turkey stock is dark golden and thick, store turkey stock is pale yellow and not gelatinous at all.
I believe we’ll raise turkeys again next year.