Can you eat turtles

The act of eating turtle was beside the point. As the turtle trade matured through the s, access expanded, and the middle-class was finally let in on the action. Select London taverns offered bowls of soup regularly, and one—aptly called The Ship And The Turtle—stocked an aquarium full of live specimens in the dining room where guests could eye their next meal.

For those who managed to secure their own wriggling animal, beer halls offered to handle the dirty work of butchering and cooking, meaning fancy dinner party hosts could provide their guests with catered bowls while sparing their home kitchens. While turtle soup in England may have been a luxury made from giant green sea turtles, American colonists found great numbers of smaller turtles and tortoises, enough to make it an accessible dietary staple.

The founding fathers were big fans —John Adams and George Washington both celebrated independence with hearty bowls of turtle stew—and early frontiersmen fought off hunger by catching turtles out of streams as they pushed west along with other bygone snacks such as beaver and river eel. Northern states celebrated the diamond terrapin, while Southern states were home to grand alligator snappers.

The Texas Gulf Coast even provided a domestic source for the giant green sea turtles of yore. By the mids, turtle was quintessentially American cuisine. Consider the Victorian favorite mock turtle soup. For the true historical throwback touch, serve it in a hollowed-out turtle shell and add meatballs in the shape of turtle eggs. They and their eggs are often still illegally hunted as they can be valuable and are considered a delicacy by many.

In states where certain turtles can be hunted, it is not usually allowed all year long; there is a specified hunting season. Similar to cooking and eating rats , you will first want to remove the feet and head as they are the dirtiest part. If they are healthy, they can live without food for months, so you can catch them and keep them for quite some time.

Most are relatively easy to catch and have other parts besides the meat, like the shell, that could be useful. However, for the most part, it is probably best to avoid eating turtles unless you need to for survival. Author: Ethan. Can You Eat Turtles? This article will cover how they taste, how people cook them, and the legalities of doing so.

What are the Benefits of Eating Turtle Meat? Can You Eat Turtle Eggs? Is it Legal to Eat Turtle? Top with a paper thin slice of lemon. Season the meat to taste with your favorite seasonings and then roll in flour. Heat a little oil in a large skillet.

Add the onion and garlic if desired. Add the meat and brown on all sides. Place the meat in a baking dish. Cover and cook at F for 3 hours. Add water as needed. Place the upper and lower shell in a large kettle with 4 quarts of cold water, simmer gently until bones fall apart.

Put into soup kettle the head, fins, liver, heart, and all the meat; add all the seasonings, cover with liquor in which the shells were boiled and simmer until meat is thoroughly done; strain the mixture through a fine sieve. Melt the butter and brown the finely chopped onion in it. Add the flour and cook together until brown. Add a pint of the soup, a little at a time, and cook until smooth. Combine with rest of the soup. After removing the entrails, cut up the coarser parts of the turtle meat and bones.

Add four quarts of water, and stew four hours with the herbs, onions, pepper and salt. Stew very slowly, do not let it cease boiling during this time. At the end of four hours strain the soup, and add the finer parts of the turtle and the green fat, which has been simmered one hour in two quarts of water.

Thicken with brown flour; return to the soup-pot, and simmer mildly for an hour longer. If there are eggs in the turtle, boil them in a separate vessel for four hours, and throw into the soup before taking up.

If not, put in force meat balls; then the juice of the lemon, and the wine; beat up at once and pour out. Some cooks add the finer meat before straining, boiling all together five hours; then strain, thicken and put in the green fat, sliced into lumps an inch long.

This makes a handsomer soup than if the meat is left in. Force Meat Balls for the Above: Six tablespoonfuls of turtle meat chopped very fine. Rub to a paste, with the yolk of two hard-boiled eggs, a tablespoonful of butter, and, if convenient, a small amount of oyster liquor.

Bind all with a well-beaten egg; shape into small balls; dip in egg, then powdered cracker; fry in butter, and drop into the soup when it is served.

Place in a pot of cold water to cover and bring to a boil. Remove the turtle and scrape off the black skin. Remove upper shell and gut.

Chop off the claws. Heat oil or lard in wok over high heat to about F C , or until a piece of scallion or ginger sizzles and moves around quickly when dropped into the oil. Add the scallions, ginger, garlic, and peppercorns, and stir-fry until fragrant. Add the turtle, chicken, and soy sauce, and stir-fry for 3 minutes. Then turn the heat to high and bring to a full boil. Skim off the foam and add the rice wine. Remove and serve. Melt one stick of butter in a heavy saucepan.

Add flour and cook, stirring frequently, over medium heat until the roux is a light brown. In a 10 quart saucepan, melt remaining butter and add turtle meat, veal and beef. Cook over high heat until meat is brown. Add celery, onions, garlic, bay leaves and oregano and cook until vegetables are transparent. Add tomato puree, hot sauce, Worcestershire and black pepper and simmer for 10 minutes. Add stock and simmer for 30 minutes. Add roux and cook over low heat, stirring until soup is smooth and thickened.

Correct seasoning with salt and pepper to taste. Add lemon, eggs, spinach and sherry. Remove from heat and serve. If desired, at the table add one teaspoon of sherry to each soup plate.

In heavy saucepan melt butter. When melted add flour and cook until the flour turns the color of a penny. When roux reaches the desired color add your vegetables and turtle meat and cook until turtle is brown and vegetables are clear. Add the tomato puree and cook for about 15 minutes on low fire. In stock pot simmer beef stock.

While boiling add the mixture from your saucepan and stir until soup is mixed and roux is dissolved. Simmer soup until turtle becomes tender at which time you may add your lemon diced eggs and parsley.

Each plate should be served with a shot of sherry on the side. What a fabulous website! Kudos to you and your contributors. Use the knife. Next, flip the top shell upside down over your chum-bucket and empty out the intestines without cutting them. Keep an eye out for the urinary sac and the gal-bladder, cause if you puncture these, you can spoil the meat. Both of these should be in a sac. Galbladders are normally green, but they can be very difficult to identify in a turtle, so just be suspicious of all sac-like organs attached to the liver.

Dump the intestines. If you want to eat the intestines, you got to squeegie the poop out right away. The urinary sack may be found near the tail, attached to the top shell. May as well leave it there and not try to remove it. Just cut off the meat and other organs you want to eat and put it in the frying pan and brown the outer edges of the meat and enjoy. They smell and appear repulsive, so, identifying it wont be an issue once you get to it.

Getting turtle meat can be a lot of hassle, but, it sure is some of the best tasting meat out there. Some people say you have to boil it, or cook it on low heat for a few hours, or bread it.

Those worms are in magic mushrooms too. Boxturtles eat magic mushrooms and deadly mushrooms. The deadly mushroom are extremely dangerous and deadly. Again, I haven't attempted this--I'm just giving my untested thoughts. I do think it would be a cool project, so feel free to post a pic or make an Instructable about it when you finish! Snapping turtles and other hard shells can be well cleaned by ants.

In Hawaii when we catch or harvest items from the ocean we place them in the sun near an ant hill. In a week it is absolutely picked clean and regards a sea shell bleached near white by the uv from the sun. Turtle shells don't turn shite but the u v does great good in killing microscopic critters and bacteria on and in the shell.

Good idea to separate upper and lower shells first. This works good for many other items that need micro cleaning. Good luck. This is very informative, I'm looking forward to trying this. And to indy dawg, you can't rip the meat off while the animal is alive that would just be cruel. The animal has no idea what will happen of when it happens they can't feel a thing.

Would it be safe to assume they clipped a bladder or other sac and tainted the meat? Reply 6 years ago on Introduction. I had to research and see how you are supposed to kill a turtle for this. My neighbor last night disrupted my sleep I am sick, atm by "hammering " right by my window. I found out this morning he was killing pet store bought turtles, I imagine since catching and disrupting turtles in our area is illegal.

I am debating calling the cops for animal cruelty because the way they killed the turtles, was inhumane death by smashing. I just have a couple points I'd like you to consider. As my brother discovered at the state fair when he was a child and my grandfather took the excited child to see the hogs , "They're just big pigs! Both can be beautiful animals with unique traits what you might call "personality".

Just because many people never interact with cows that aren't wrapped in plastic at the supermarket does not mean that they aren't real animals. If you've never seen chickens, it would be easy to assume that they are annoying.

All that clucking and crowing. What is a person to do? If you've actually had or tended chickens at least those of the free range persuasion , you would probably know how amusing they can be to watch.

Why would people be universally better off eating fish than turtles? If your only reason is that turtles are cute and fish are not, let me be the one to tell you that this is a personal opinion. Many people find fish to be quite adorable, and turtles to be nasty. Put a turtle terrarium in one room, a freshwater aquarium in another. See which stinks first.

Turtles won't seem as cute. If you've never eaten turtle meat, I'm curious to find out why you assume that it would not be as tasty as fish meat. I made sure to state clearly in the introduction that this was about preparing turtles for eating. I mentioned that different, "typical" American food animals can be cute or friendly. That doesn't mean I wouldn't eat them. I do eat most animals.

I've never eaten dog or cat, but that's largely because I've never come across the right restaurant. Kind of like how I like to eat squirrel. Introduction: How to Clean a Turtle.