Can a chef give me some ideas for Turkey Skin?

[jaymer]

You can visit a webpage here for an example pic:

http://gallery.me.com/jaymer#100006/photo1...0&bgcolor=black

I basically have the skin from a netted turkey breast ("brt" - Bone Rolled & Tied).

I remove the "surplus" skin before cooking the meat - but I'd like to turn it into something nice instead of tossing it in the bin.

Can someone give me some ideas (and instructions) on what culinary delight I could make with this?

thx

jaymer...

[Tsulli1]

Cracklings can be a nice garnish for salads.

Render the fat out and then dry the skin and cut it into a julienne.

[YPants]

i was close to starting a thread on poultry skin after reading what alex+aki @ Ideas In Food did with it. they use something called activa (some enzyme) to "glue" chicken skin onto fillets of fish and also shrimp. so incredibly brilliant. i have no idea where to get activa tho so i dunno. maybe you could brush eggs onto the fish and it could stick that way? im gonna try it.

[judiu]

i was close to starting a thread on poultry skin after reading what alex+aki @ Ideas In Food did with it. they use something called activa (some enzyme) to "glue" chicken skin onto fillets of fish and also shrimp. so incredibly brilliant. i have no idea where to get activa tho so i dunno. maybe you could brush eggs onto the fish and it could stick that way? im gonna try it.

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See this site: http://www.activatg.com/

Don't think the egg "glue" would work too well. Me, I'd just render it to make turkey cracklins.

[Pam R]

jackal10 suggested helzel in the chicken skin topic. My grandmother made it from turkey neck skin, rather than chicken neck skin, because it's kind of hard to stuff a chicken neck. Wikipedia has a little entry on it here, but you could stuff it with anything, really.

[Toliver]

This isn't my idea (I believe it may have been jinmyo's but originally suggested with chicken skin) but you could slice the skin into strips. Wrap the strips around a cannoli mold and deep fry it. Remove the crispy skin from the molds and pipe mashed potatoes into them. Serve immediately.

[Tsulli1]

You could always freeze it, accumulate enough and sew together a skin suit a la 'Silence of the Lambs'

"It rubs the gravy on its skin; It does this whenever its told."

[Chris Amirault]

You gotta try Dave the Cook's method outlined here.

[CalumC]

Watch from 8:45 onwards in this video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oo-LEAl_FxQ&feature=related

and it follows onto part 3/3, this video,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_DVXmtlVho&feature=related

from the start to 2:15, then 6:28 onwards.

Thats basically a lacquered crispy duck skin that Heston Blumenthal did for In Search Of Perfection (peking duck). 3 cooking processes, but it looks pretty worthwhile, i dont see why it wouldnt work for turkey.

[Chris Hennes]

Once you're rendered the fat out, keep the fat! All these suggestions for the skin itself, but don't forget that turkey fat will function much the same way chicken fat does. And it should keep for approximately forever in the freezer.

[Magictofu]

You could also do what Peter the Eater did with with duck skin (see the whole duck tread) and use it to stuff meat and other things inside. I guess you could use it to form the outside of a reconstituted roast.

[Peter the eater]

Duck skin is a wily substance. I've been putting strips of turkey skin in my George Foreman Grill. That's right . . . the poorly designed and overpriced panini press endorsed by an overweight has-been. The results are good though -- you get crisp wavy strips with pure poultry flavor.

It's got that bacon press aspect that Dave the Cook mentions, and you can collect all that precious fat that Chris H mentions.

[Peter the eater]

You could always freeze it, accumulate enough and sew together a skin suit a la 'Silence of the Lambs'

"It rubs the gravy on its skin;  It does this whenever its told." 

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That's the kind of twisted comment that makes my day, thank you strange Tsuilli1.

Great, now I'm going to have a dream where a Richard Simmons/Elton John hybrid wearing a greasy bird suit goes homicidal.