Hot Turtle Bites.....Served Hot!

As promised in this post......

 Here is what we do with the canned turtle!

First I drain all the broth off.....Your dog will love this, or your pigs, or chickens, or whatever....

Please excuse the wadded up tissue.........I'd like to say it wasn't used on my snoot, but that would be a lie....

Then I beat an egg with a little bit of milk......

Then toss the turtle meat in the egg/milk mixture....

Then toss with some seasoned flour......

 Now heat some lard in a cast iron skillet....

You'll notice a bit of funk in the bottom of my skillet....that's because I seldom wash it, and I also reuse lard or bacon grease quite a bit....again, sorry if that offfends, you don't have to do it that way....

And add the floured meat......

Brown on one side......

Then flip and brown on the other side........

Now put in a casserole dish with some hot sauce and butter........

And bake in the oven for just a bit to "set" the sauce.......

Now eat!!  We like it with a little bit of ranch dressing, or blue cheese, or shredded mozzarella...the possibilities are endless and if you don't "do" hot sauce, you could use your favorite barbecue sauce or it's even really good just plain!

Now go catch you a snapping turtle and make you some supper!

Till next time!

God Bless,

Canning Turtle...........Or Snapping Turtle is Food Too!

Umm...excuse me?  Did she just say canning TURTLE?

Yup I sure did!  We love to fish for catfish, and where we live, when you love to fish for catfish, you usually catch a few catfish and a whole lot of snapping turtles.

But that is totally ok, because turtle is DELISH!

So pretty much every fishing trip we come home with some of these...

And some of these......

Please do excuse my attire....I would NEVER go out in public in this state of affairs, and probably shouldn't be putting a photo on my blog.....

So how in the world do you reduce a snapping turtle to food you ask?  

The first, FIRST thing you do is make sure it's a regular old snapping turtle and not an alligator snapping turtle.  Regular ones are legal to take here where we live but Alligator Snappers are protected and shouldn't be harvested for any reason!

First thing you do is put the turtle in a tub (nice and deep and with a cover over it because they WILL climb out of things that you cannot imagine they could ever get out of.

We usually keep them in the tubs, in the shade, changing the water every day, from one weekend to the next.  We also put them one turtle to a tub because they will fight.....we've had them get each other bloody in the boat bottom together, so you really don't want to put them in a tub together for a week!

Then you fill the tub with enough clean water to cover the turtle.....

This is a snapping turtle in the bottom of a trash toter....the big ones that they give you from the trash company....it's a REALLY big turtle...

Then you change the water every day.  This is how you "clean out" a turtle.

The water will get disgusting.  I mean.....for real.....super gross, which is why you do it.  You want the turtle to be as clean as he can be when you process him.

Then we process them.  Processing a turtle isn't for the faint of heart, but it is pretty quick and not that difficult.  We hang them up and skin them, and then cut the meat away from the shell.  There is some really delicious meat up between the spine and the shell, the turtle "back strap" if you will.  We slice that and fry it up fresh, but the rest of the meat gets soaked in salt water, and then de-boned.  Then I either can it right up, or freeze it to can later.

We also don't let the shell go to waste.  The Man totally cleans the shell, skull, and claws.  He then seals them with a coating of shellac and then we sell them or give them away.

This isn't the best picture of the turtle shells, but it's the only one I can find!

Lest you think we've been doing a lot of fishing, we haven't.  This de-boned turtle meat has been resting in my freezer until I had time to can it.  I got it out of the freezer last night and after a wonderful, uplifting church service today, I'm canning it up!

So the first thing you do is put your de-boned turtle in a stock pot and cover with water.

Bring it to a boil and boil for about 10 min or so....

Then pack your hot turtle meat loosely in a wide mouth quart jar, and top with your hot cooking liquid.  You can add 1 tsp of pickling salt if you'd like.

Wipe the rim clean and do all the good stuff you are supposed to do when you can, then put on a simmered flat and ring, and process for 90 minutes at whatever weight your altitude calls for (11#'s where I'm at).

Then you take them out and wait for the "ping"!

And that's how you can turtle!

What do we do with that canned turtle you ask?

Well stay tuned for a blog post entitled...

Hot Turtle Bites Served Hot

To find out!

Until next time............as the preacher said today......Grow and Glow in the Lord!!

Good fishing!

Saturday night and Sunday morning we went cat fishing at a local lake. We had decent luck........caught two 3 pounders Saturday night and a 4 pounder Sunday morning. The one Sunday morning had a small cache of eggs in her so they will be getting ready to spawn and then the fishing will be hot! We'll go back this coming weekend and see if we can't catch a nice mess of big cats for the freezer! Nothing better than a nice fat catfish fillet!

Hope you had a great weekend!

Til next time.........
GOD BLESS FROM GOODWIFE FARM!