Beer Battered Turkey

Thanksgiving leftovers are infamous for the headaches they cause. Slate has an excellent essay on why we should forsake the tradition of using up leftover turkey and another article which concludes that cooking chicken would be a better, more environmentally friendly idea. But the turkey tradition will continue, and I still can’t bring myself to throw out the leftovers.

Sarah’s Mom was kind enough to give us the turkey carcass to take home after an excellent Thanksgiving dinner. First I made Michael Ruhlman’s turkey stock (I should be portioning it out to freeze now instead of writing this blog — we have over a gallon of Turkey stock), which turned out well, but I still had turkey left.

I concocted the recipe below for the leg meat and ate it last night:

Beer Battered Turkey

2/3 cup beer (I used pale ale, but I’d probably try a dark beer next time)
2/3 cup flour
1 t. baking soda
salt, pepper, and any other spices you’d like to add
1 egg, beaten
cooked chunks of turkey leg, straight from the fridge (they should be cool as you’re heating them here, not cooking them)
oil for deep frying
A dipping sauce (chili lime, cranberry orange barbecue, regular barbecue, honey mustard, whatever)

Put oil in heavy saucepan and begin heating to 375 degrees or so.

Combine the flour, baking soda and spices. Whisk in the beer and let sit for ten minutes. Stir in the beaten egg. Coat the tukey pieces in the batter and deep fry until golden brown. Serve with dipping sauce.

This makes enough batter to serve two people–increase the portions based on how many servings you’re making.

This turned out pretty decent. Something about deep frying is transformative, and I definitely wasn’t reminded of Thanksgiving dinner–which is a main goal of the turkey leftover enterprise. That said, I didn’t spice it up to the point of its being unrecognizable as turkey.

I might reference Alton Brown’s recipe next time. He uses Miller Lite, which would probably work for white meat. I would guess that Dos Equis or some German dark beer would compliment the dark meat better, though. His dipping sauce looks really good, but we unfortunately didn’t have any cranberries.

I reuse frying oil 5–6 times. I bring this up because, as far as I’m concerned, the “no waste” aspect of this recipe is moot if you’re throwing out a quart or two of oil to preserve a bit of turkey. To save your oil, you should strain it through cheesecloth after using it and never allow the oil to smoke (which usually happens at around 400 degrees), at which point it’s ruined. Alton Brown reuses oil as well. For medical support from Columbia University on the safety and tradition of this process, click here.