Saturday, February 27, 2016

Turtle (Red-Eared Slider) Soup

In a prior post I blogged about making peacock and vegetable pie. When I was at the Exotic Meat Market warehouse in Grand Terrace to pick up the peacock, I learned that they had some red-eared slider turtle meat available and I had to get it. I've only tasted snapping turtle (turtle soup and grilled turtle) and wanted to try some other variety.
Red-eared slider turtles. Picture from here
I picked up a package that include four pairs of back legs and a package that included quite a few front legs. 
Four sets of back legs that include the pelvis.
Many front legs that were not connected. 
I read that turtle could taste kind of swampy and I wanted to take every precaution to remove any objectionable taste. I've also had turtle that was very tough and wanted to break it down to make it as tender as possible. The use of a combined brine and marinade can help with both of those concerns. By immersing meat in brine, the brine that has a higher concentration of salt than the moisture in the meat is absorbed into the meat by osmosis and any flavoring in the brine is carried into the meat. The osmosis also removes much of the blood in the meat and reduces the gamey taste. The salt denatures (alters) the chemical structure of the proteins in the meat causing them to unwind and form a matrix that traps the water and allows the flavoring agents to permeate the meat. Marinade uses acidity to break down the texture of the meat and make it more tender. Acid, like citrus or apple cider vinegar, can give a mushy exterior to meat which is perfectly acceptable when you are dealing with wild game.  

For my brine/marinade mix, I used 1 tablespoon of salt for each cup of water, adding enough of the mix to fully cover the meat. Then I squeezed the juice from two Meyer lemons into the brine and added a fair amount of apple cider vinegar, probably five or six tablespoons. Finally, I crushed about 8 juniper berries into the brine and also added some crushed ginger. I added the turtle meat, sealed it in Tupperware and put it in the refrigerator overnight. 
Turtle legs in the brine/marinade. The black specks are pieces of juniper berry and the yellowish/white specks are lemon seeds. 
The next morning I poured out the brine/marinade and thoroughly washed the turtle meat and patted it dry. The meat turned a gray color because much of the blood was removed. 
The turtle legs are now gray because much of the blood has been removed. Using kitchen shears, I cut off the claws.
I wanted my soup to be thick with vegetables. So I cut up two red peppers, 2 poblano peppers, 6 Anaheim chiles, 1 large onion and 1 bulb of fennel and fried it quite slowly in a frying pan in olive oil and some wagyu beef fat and a little bit of wagyu beef. I sprinkled it liberally with cayenne pepper, sage and sweet basil and added, added four large tablespoons of chopped garlic and a quarter package of frozen sweet white corn near the end. Then I added the mixture to a crock pot, along with the turtle legs, 32 ounces of chicken stock and 14.5 ounces of chicken broth. I also added two heaping spoonfuls of vegan chicken bouillon, then cooked the mixture on low for six hours. 
Turtle soup mixture in crock pot. 
I couldn't have hoped for it to turn out any better. The vegetables were nice and plentiful and the broth was flavorful. Best of all, the turtle was very tender and moist and came right off the bones. It had no gamey taste at all. 
My first sample of soup to see how the turtle turned out. I hold a front leg. The meat came right off the bone.
A bowl of the soup full of vegetables.
One of the meatier back legs.
Left over bones from a bowl of the soup. Note the bare bones - evidence that the meat came right off. 
The combination of brine/marinade followed by crock pot cooking has given me the desire to try snapping turtle again, a larger and  meatier turtle. I believe that this same process will help transform that meat into a more pleasant product. 

16 comments:

  1. Somehow I missed seeing the original version with the claws still intact. I'm kind of glad I did. This was good soup--very flavorful, great meat.

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  2. I'm always interested to see what's next on your bucket list of exotic meats. Very helpful explanation of brining.

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  3. Hello, My 12-year-old 6th grader and 2 of his friends enjoyed your "Florida Chicken Turtle" pics from Sunday, March 24, 2013. They enjoyed one pic (http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-G2c3PP8T8GA/UU6A0g_JVlI/AAAAAAAARyI/Q0Z3XrJZ6AM/s400/2b+Florida+Chicken+Turtle.JPG) so much that they would like to have it printed on an shirt to wear proudly around school. I would like to do that, however as you may know copyright laws prevent me from doing so without your permission. Would you allow me to print this pic on 3 shirts for my son and his 2 friends?

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  4. You are so wicked with animals
    May god Punish U for what have U done

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  5. My pet turtle is a red-eared slider! WTH IS WRONG WITH YOU?!?!?!?!?!?!?!Do something else with your life than cook pets you molester!

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    1. ok first off, turtles have never taken an iq test your just shoving this out of your filthy ass, and i have pet turtles and guess what, i can rub the top of their heads without them caring, shit, i have given them a neck message before, i have even rubbed their chin, they get exited to see me, even after i feed them and their no longer hungry, they still come and try to get my attention, also, most animal brains are primitive, some just smarter than others, my red eared slider turtles can even get stuck and then think of a way that actually gets them out, and think if you were an sea turtle in the ocean and you saw a plastic bag and thought it was a jellyfish, turtles and all other life mistake it for a jellyfish because they don't fucking know what plastic is, there is nothing else that that plastic bag could be but a jellyfish since they don't know what plastic is, how the fuck can you blame them for that.

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    2. farmers have thousands of pet cows and you are eating them??????

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    3. Red-eared sliders are an ecologically invasive species in much of the world, including in Canada, the American west, Europe, Asia, Australia, South Africa - basically everywhere except for their native range in the US southeast and midwest. In these areas, they transmit disease to native species and outcompete them for food. I don't know where the sliders this guy ate came from, but I'm all for eating invasive species.

      People also keep pigs, chickens, and cows as pets. Get off ya high horse.

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  6. Hey Bob! I'm working on an educational project involving turtle meat and I'm searching for example images and yours are the best. May I have permission to use these? Please email me at JonathanKolby@gmail.com and I'll explain in greater detail. Thanks and have a great day!

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  7. i like soup is gut ja very gut

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  8. I just casually stumbled upon this blog and found it fairly interesting.

    Funny it seems, we don’t consider it monstrous that we now convert insects into food; however eating a turtle is really no different in the nature that we have a need to eat to live.

    Think of it like this: if you were stranded on a river bank and the most plentiful and readily accessible food around was turtle, I’m sure you would bring yourself to eat it.

    My family has lived in the Southern U.S. and we all enjoy snapping turtle and sliders, and frankly it’s more of a cultural thing. There’s nothing wrong with eating a turtle, much like how there is nothing wrong with eating a dog or a cat.

    I see turtles as just another accessible food source for humans, much like a lion or bear would see a vulnerable human: Just another morsel ready for consumption.

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