So many may not fully understand the delicacies of some wild game. Here is a tough one. I didn't keep the one in this picture, but it got me thinking that maybe some out there have some recipes they would like to share.

My uncles tells me that there are several (7 maybe) kinds of meat on a turtle. One part he says is just like scallops. One part like pork, one like chicken, one like beef, one like fish and a couple more. He says it is a delicacy.

Hardest thing I ever tried to clean was a turtle. Took me forever.

I opened this thread looking for recipes for the chocolaty gooey turtles. I'm so disappointed.

We've always fried them. We would mix up a bunch of batter, and dip fish, frog legs, and turtles all in the same batter and fry them up in a huge pot of grease. Ok, now I am hungry.

I've had it in soup and fried. Both are good if prepared right. My brother soaks it -- possibly in buttermilk ----- before frying it. I've had some fried that was super tough.

I've never had it. I'd love to try it.

Hardest thing I ever tried to clean was a turtle. Took me forever.

 

There's two steps to cleaning a turtle: 1) separating the skin, which is most easily done with a garden hose, and then 2) cleaning the turtle. Similar to fish, there is no way to properly butcher a turtle without a VERY sharp knife.

 

Here are a couple of YouTube videos on how to do it:

 

(We always use a hose clamp to hold the hose inside of the turtle's neck.)

 

I opened this thread looking for recipes for the chocolaty gooey turtles. I'm so disappointed.

 

That's what I'm talking about!

My grandma had an AWESOME turtle soup recipe, which one of my aunts has now. I need to ask for a copy of it. In the meantime, I've got a first edition of a 1949 cookbook by Louisville writer Marion Flexner called Out Of Kentucky Kitchens. It's pretty awesome. The forward was written by Duncan Hines (a Bowling Green, KY native), and Flexner has quite a few great recipes in the book, including the first known published recipe for a Hot Brown sandwich, taken straight from Louisville's Brown Hotel (along with their lesser-known Cold Brown), the first known published recipe for beer cheese, which is thought to have originated in Kentucky, a nice Kentucky Burgoo recipe, and several others...including a recipe for Turtle Soup.

 

The recipe is a little long to type out here, but you can see it in its entirety in the link above, and it's a good one if anyone is looking for a real turtle soup recipe.

I'm going to have to ask my brother how he makes the soup. He has served it blind to many people and they all loved it!

My dad fries it, it's awesome. They do kind of suck to clean.

Turtles are by far the toughest animal to clean, which is probably my hesitancy with only getting 1 at a time. You got to have 2 or 3 to have a mess, but plan on spending some time with it.

 

I had heard garden hose, but have used an air hose as well. Anything to get the skin to separate. I do love some fried turtle...