I admit: Never in a million years could I put the “butch” in “butcher.”
But there is something more authentic, potentially fulfilling and maybe even fun about going full Pilgrim and throwing yourself into Thanksgiving preparations in one of the most old-school ways possible. Who needs a Butterball when you can actually have a ball by prepping your holiday bird from scratch?
Still, when I agreed to a one-on-one turkey-butchering demonstration by the Thanksgiving-forward foodies at Leland Eating and Drinking House in Brooklyn — I was unexpectedly served a heaping side of horror.
“We have an apron for you, and wear non-slip shoes or sneakers of some sort,” the restaurant’s rep warned me in an email.
What in the blood-splattered depths of Freddy Krueger’s “A Nightmare on Elm Street” was I getting myself into?
Sure, I love to cook, but I’d never attempted serious surgery on a carcass before; slathering butter on a freshly unwrapped, intact Cornish hen and tossing it into a 400-degree oven was the sum total of any expertise I might have.
And while I do come from a family of hunters — cousins in my native Pennsylvania have bagged many a turkey and buck before giving them a final kitchen send-off — I’d never volunteered to pick up a shotgun and join them as they went traipsing through the woods in search of dinner.
I think they were smart enough not to invite me, too. That primal pastime would be way too much for a city boy like me, who normally wears seven rings scattered across his two hands and only dons an apron to avoid the splash of simmering pasta sauce.
I’m also a klutz who has cut through the tip of his left thumb three times — two requiring stitches — while dicing onions and peppers. And I tried not to take it as an omen that I broke a drinking glass at work just four hours before my scheduled turkey tutorial.
Yet I wanted to earn at least a little butchering cred — and maybe even inspire others to give it a self-satisfying shot — rather than just boasting about basting a bird.
And, really: How off-putting — and dangerous — could it possibly be?
When I arrived at the Prospect Heights eatery and ventured to the basement bakery-cum-butcher station, where I was surrounded by trays of fresh-baked bread and containers of sugar and flour, I quickly realized — with much relief — I wouldn’t be dealing with a fresh-from-the-farm turkey with feathers, gnarly talons, snood (the bizarre nose overhang) and wattle still intact. That’s left to farms and processing plants with workers who are paid to handle the most grisly slaughtering scenarios.
Let us give thanks!
Instead, my patient teacher — restaurant partner and chef Delfin Jaranilla — presented me with a nearly 16-pound, plucked and cleaned Bronze turkey (let’s affectionately name him Tom), raised by Frank Reese at Good Shepherd Poultry Ranch in Kansas and provided by the famed Heritage Foods.
But after tying on my apron and donning a camouflaged cap to match one worn by my instructor, I also worried it wouldn’t be a simple slice-and-dice situation.
“This is a little daunting,” I said while gazing at my blessedly headless Tom, to which Jaranilla assured me, “Well, you’ll go slow. It’s easy to teach you a couple of really important lessons about poultry.”
Keep in mind, this operation wasn’t going to resemble that classic, Norman Rockwell portrait of a whole, cooked turkey being served tableside by grandpa in a suit and tie and grandma in a frilly apron, ready to slice it up for an overly enthusiastic family.
Instead, we would be preparing Tom in a turketta style — similar to the Italian pork-roasting technique known as porchetta, in which the meat is removed, flattened and then rolled into a log shape, with dark meat on the outside and fast-cooking light meat on the inside.
I was first tasked with snipping Tom’s tied legs and then used my right hand to remove the neck, which was stored inside its cavity, surrounded by an avalanche of ice that quickly froze my fingers, making extraction less nimble.
Worse, the bony, angled structure that I eventually yanked from the poor bird’s butt was disturbingly shaped like the creature that burst from John Hurt’s chest in the movie “Alien.”
In space, no one can hear you scream — but in a kitchen, other chefs may hear you shriek.
Before we got into full-on culinary carnage, courtesy of my exceptionally sharp Victorinox brand knife, Jaranilla offered a smart safety tip about holding one: Position your hand a little higher so that you can place your thumb against the base of the blade, not on the handle itself, for better control. (It works — try it.)
After posing for a photo with our “weapons” — Jaranilla’s cheeky term, not mine — it was time to remove meat from bone, which I had expected to be a more forceful, fervent process.
“Using gravity is a big part of it, and making sure your tools are sharp,” Jaranilla said.
It was a helpful reminder that I’m clumsy and should steer my fingers far clear of the blade.
“Number one is you take shortcuts. Never take big, sweeping cuts,” I was instructed. “You’re going to take small, little precise cuts to find out where the joints give way.”
The deboning technique involved removing the wings, then carefully slicing close to the breastbone and ribs to separate that meat before moving on to the legs and thighs.
The process was slow, meticulous and only minimally bloody — to my relief.
Plus, no lie: It made me appreciate the precision that surgeons need in an operating room.
Granted, we weren’t dealing with life and death here; sorry, Tom, but your fate was sealed by others several states away. However, properly cutting through turkey flesh isn’t a haphazard operation either, I found.
It takes effort, focus and patience — as opposed to the slapdash enthusiasm of a horror-film serial killer.
Surprisingly, Tom’s surgery lasted an hour and a half — the restaurant’s skilled kitchen staff can get it done much quicker than that, of course — yet the process went by in a blur, leaving one metal tray filled with discarded parts and my wooden butcher block holding the all-important, thinly-sliced meat I’d extracted.
And all of my fingers were blessedly intact.
In the end, I sprinkled and massaged the meat with a seasoning of salt, pepper, Italian spices, and paprika, then rolled it into a tight log, tied it with six pieces of twine, and moved it to a metal tray for roasting.
The roll technique is one that the restaurant swears by. For Thanksgiving, Leland prepares and serves about 16 turkeys at the restaurant, with the ability to feed about 250 people, so it is a time-saver.
“You’re basically going from a four-hour roast when you’re doing it whole to a 45-minute roast,” Jaranilla said.
“It’s a lot of front-loaded work like this in the beginning. But the reward later is when you are basically done cooking it, after we’ve rolled it up, roasted it properly — you don’t have to carve around any bones.”
Plus, there will be fewer fights over breast versus thigh.
“You don’t have to worry about, ‘OK, who’s going to get this part, who’s going to get that part?’ Every part of this bird is going to have a little bit of breast and a little bit of dark meat,” Jaranilla said.
The final product, I can attest, was juicy and delicious. And while it may not have the gravitas of a Rockwellian turkey — it frankly resembled a sleeping bag that was left too close to a campfire — at least it wasn’t nearly as scary to prep as I’d feared.
Freddy Krueger would be disappointed — but I definitely was not.
Leland Eating and Drinking House is hosting its first-ever turkey-butchering class and five-course tasting dinner for 16 people at 6 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 12. Cost: $125. Details at LelandBrooklyn.com.
The restaurant will also offer sessions in pig butchering (Dec. 3) and duck butchering (Dec. 17).
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