The turkey leg, while a Thanksgiving Day trophy, is a minefield of sinew, bones, and tendons. The leg should cook up well, but attached to a bird and roasted, it is normally a dry stick better used for getting someone’s attention at the table. In order to avoid these flaws created by nature and cooks, we took out our knives, meat grinder, and Activa and rebuilt the turkey leg into something completely delicious and edible.
We boned out several turkey legs, leaving the end of the bone attached and the skin in one long piece like a sock. We removed the sinew, tendon, and small bones from the meat (for stock, of course). We mixed the meat with salt, cumin, and paprika and ground it with spiced mixed olives. After the meat was ground, we folded in 1% Activa RM. This allows us to keep the meat bound tighter together around the coarse chunks of olives. To ensure a uniform, stuffed, and secured turkey leg for cooking, we brushed the inside of the leg skin with a slurry of Activa GS.
With the Activa dispersed and applied, we stuffed the leg with the farce and rolled it in plastic wrap to set the leg’s shape. We put the stuffed legs into the refrigerator for the flavors to mature and the Activa to bond the meat together. The following day, we roasted the stuffed turkey leg and occasionally basted them with the quick turkey stock we made in our pressure cooker from the sinew, tendons, and bones we removed from the leg. After the leg was roasted, we sliced it and served it with pan juices on the side.
Now we have a trophy worth trying to win.
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