So I created this recipe after thinking about how to innovate at our Thanksgiving table this year as I felt things were getting a little stale with the expected dishes.
Well, I got to thinking and remembered a wonderful tuna ceviche I had at the Cayman Islands, and figured it would be nice to introduce some tropical flavors to the usual starchy and heavy Thanksgiving dinner. A coworker of mine mentioned that at the local turkey processing center (Hain's, near us), they often had some turkey skin leftover as a byproduct of the processing with no real way to use it all up and mentioned he could put in a good word for me. I drove down to the plant and managed to score an entire crate of Turkey skins on the cheap after talking to their manager, after my coworker put in a good word for me. The whole deal was pretty shady and I'm pretty sure the manager was keeping the cash for himself but I wasn't about to start asking questions about his bootleg turkey skins. Don't look a gift horse in the mouth, right ?
Anyway, I wasn't entirely sure how to prepare the turkey skins because I didn't want to "overcook" them with the lime. We tried making ceviche once and left it soaking too long and the fish wasn't as good as when we had it prepared for us at the restaurant, so I wanted to avoid that and decided to make two batches, one that was fresher and one that was soaking a little longer just in case the fresh one was a little too raw. I would decide which one to use during the big day.
I prepped the turkey skins by spraying them down with a garden hose in my backyard after I gave up rinsing them by hand. It was about 50 pounds worth of turkey skin and I didn't have a big basin sink like in my last house so I had to adapt a little. I didn't want it to be too wet, so I tried drying some out by spreading it out on our lawn furniture (I put it on wax paper, I'm not an animal), but I really didn't have enough surface area so I employed my youngest son (7 y.o , going to be 8 this december) to dry them off with my wife's hair dryer. This probably wasn't a good idea since he dropped it into the plastic tub full of turkey skins and water, and it fried the hair dryer, it might've charred some of the turkey skin too, I'm not exactly sure but it had a bit of that plastic smell after.
After this small hiccup, I broke out my ziplock bags and prepped the turkey with some salt, lime, and since I forgot to buy cilantro, I used basil instead. I prepped this round about 2 days before thanksgiving and used about 15 pounds of turkey skin, and figured I would use another 15 the day of and see if it's better.
On the day of I had a bit of an accident. At this point my fridge was stockpiled with 30 pounds of ceviche turkey skins stuffed in ziplock bags and when I was taking one of the bags out, they all fell out and got mixed up. I tried my best to separate them but there wasn't much difference between the turkey skins so I just picked a couple of bags at random. I actually managed to step on a bag and it projectiled the contents along the kitchen floor. I was running low on time at this point so I had my dog take care of the cleanup effort.
I was very excited to have people try the dish so I asked them to guess what it was. A lot of people were inquiring about whether it was safe to eat so I fibbed a little and said it was store bought to have them try it. I know it's safe since it's ceviche but people some people are uncultured and won't touch anything that isn't chicken nuggets.
I tried some for myself and it was really an interesting flavor, a little like uncrispy chicken skin with a zesty finish. It was a little tough to chew so I figured I used one of the bags that had been soaking longer but I was pretty confident with the safety of it at that point since I didn't want to risk the fresher turkey skins.
Overall everyone seemed to be pleased with the ceviche appetizer, so I sent everyone home with a ziplock bag to boot.
Ingredients
-Turkey skins (washed)
-Lime juice
-Salt
-Cilantro
Method
-Wash your turkey skins after picking them up from the processing center, if you have a big sink this is a plus, feel free to use a garden hose if you don't.
-Eyeball the amount of lime juice and cilantro you use, you don't want to use too little lime juice since it won't cover the skins properly.
-Season with salt to taste, remember that salt and lime interact together so be careful with how much you add.
-Seal your turkey skins in ziplock bags either a day before thanksgiving or on the morning of. I think I overcooked mine so you can try even less time, play with the results ! We are cooking here !
To Serve
-Serve by ladling onto plate, make sure you finish with some of the lime juice mixture on top, you could even use it to replace your gravy.
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