Author:
Lisa
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Date Posted: 10:16:16 12/19/06 Tue
To answer your question, we eat both. If you have a chance to try a heritage turkey from a local farm, I highly recommend it - it's so much better than a frozen store-bought.
There are only five real species of turkeys, but with different varieties of the same breed. Colonists brought turkeys with them in 1629. Some of these turkeys escaped, bred with wild varieties and were plentiful by 1700. The original New England turkey, the Narragansett, is thought to be the first turkey domesticated in the U.S. The Bronze, Bourbon Reds and others then intermixed.
In the 1930s and 1940s, researchers tried to develop a broad-breasted version of the Bronze turkey, working to get a meatier and heavier bird. They eventually produced the Broadbreasted White, the most common turkey we have today.
After years of engineering, the breed has morphed into a bird that cannot run, fly or mate. They are artificially inseminated, because even if old Tom wanted to get romantic, his huge chest would keep him too far away.
One reason the meat of the Broadbreasted White is often dry is because they are fed pelleted feed, nothing natural, and they are harvested young, bred to be ready for slaughter when they are 4 and 5 months, when the meat just hasn't developed yet. When the life of the bird is short, it never matures and puts on the layer of fat. That's why the dry commercial birds have to be injected with liquid. Home cooks, then, are instructed to brine them to get some flavor and moisture back into them.
you can read more here (you'll have to copy link) www.post-gazette.com/food/20021121turkey1121fnp2.asp
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