Wild Turkey Recipes: Bacon Wrapped Wild Turkey Breast

I promised to share recipes for some of the ways that we used the meat from the wild turkey I brought home this spring.

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In this post I’ll share my recipe for Bacon Wrapped Turkey Breasts:

First I took care to remove each breast (which were startlingly huge) keeping as much of the meat in one whole piece as possible. I must admit that my butchering skills are anything but graceful and by the time I was done the turkey breasts were most definitely a little wonky and different sizes. I went into this expecting an altogether smaller bird than I was used to getting either from the farmer’s market or my local 4H meat auction, since those are generally a domestic breed selected for their ability to produce meat. The sheer volume of breast meat on this bird was astounding, I didn’t worry too much about any meat left on the bones since I was planning to use them for stock later. I took each breast and laid thick slices of bacon over the top, wrapping them under as I went (I used toothpicks for any stubborn pieces of bacon trying to slip off). I placed them on wire cookie cooling racks in a shallow baking pan and placed into a 350 degree oven for about 2-2.5 hours or until internal temp at thickest part of breast reads a minimum of 165 degrees.

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These turkey breasts were Divine!!! I was hesitant to use the bacon at first, thinking that it’d be better to allow the wild turkey flavor to shine, but since I was sharing it with my family, I wanted them to love it & I knew that bacon was the way to their hearts… It worked like a dream, the wild turkey flavor held it’s own wonderfully, it just walked right alongside the bacon flavor, like old pals. The extra bacon fat imparted a succulence I have not yet found in meat anywhere. I also think it didn’t hurt that I took this bird right at the beginning of the mating season and so he had built up quite a generous fat sponge on his breast and had not yet used it up. I did take care to trim this away, but I think it still added some wonderful juiciness. These two turkey breasts were plenty to feed us dinner and provide many a turkey sandwich after the fact. 

*confession: we ate the wild turkey up so fast that no pictures remain, so the photos included in this post are from a later dinner in which we had domestic turkey breast, not wild turkey, the breasts in theses photos are much smaller than the wild ones were.