The leather folder is starting to smell like river mud, which tells you how far along we are. Amos never fussed over a clean pantry. Recipe No. 4 has a boot print on the corner and a heading he wrote in pencil so hard it tore the paper: “SNAPPER. nothing else.” Underneath it, in pencil that’s worn down to the wood, he added the note I’ve been thinking about all week: “got to be a snapper. box turtle aint worth the work and painted turtle tastes like mud. trust me i tried it.”
Now you know what to look for. A snapping turtle is a whole different animal from the little painted turtles sunning themselves on a log. A snapper has a tail like an alligator, a neck that reaches back past its own shell, and a bite that’ll take a finger off if you don’t pay attention. It’s also the one turtle worth turning into soup. The old folks up and down the river bottoms knew it, and Amos knew it better than most.
Recipe No. 4: Snapping Turtle Soup
Ingredients
- 1 snapping turtle, 8-15 pounds, cleaned and meat cut off the bone
- 2-3 pounds turtle meat (a smaller snapper will give you less, that’s fine)
- 6 cups water or chicken broth
- 1 large onion, chopped
- 2 carrots, chopped
- 2 stalks celery, chopped
- 3 cloves garlic, smashed
- 1 bay leaf
- 4 tablespoons butter or bacon grease, split
- 4 tablespoons flour
- 1 can crushed tomatoes (14-15 oz), or a pint of home-canned
- 1/2 cup sherry or a splash of whiskey — “cookin sherry if yor fancy. whiskey if yor honest.”
- 1 lemon, juice of
- Salt, black pepper, and a pinch of cayenne
- A couple eggs, hard-boiled and chopped (optional, but Amos did it)
Procedure
Step 1 — Get the turtle clean, and keep your hands whole. This is the part that scares off city folks. A snapping turtle comes out of the water covered in mud, and you have to dispatch it and clean it before the meat’s any good to you. Amos handled this the old way: a sharp knife, a steady hand, and no rush. The head has to come off properly because a snapper will snap at you long after it ought to be done. Once it’s bled and the head is separated, flip it on its back and work the shell.
There are two ways to get at the meat. You can cut around the bottom shell (the plastron) where it meets the top, or you can cut the legs out at the joints and pull the meat from the openings. The best meat is in the legs and the neck — seven different textures of meat, the old-timers say, from white to dark, some of it tender and some of it tough as boot leather until it’s cooked slow. The neck has the most and the best of it. Save every scrap from the bones and shell.
Amos’s margin note, written along the side: “dont git bit. a snapper will hold on till it thunders and then some. i know a man lost a thumb clean off.”
Step 2 — Render it tender. Turtle meat is tough until you cook it long and low. Simmer the meat, bones, and shell in the water or broth with the onion, carrot, celery, garlic, and bay leaf. Skim the scum off the top for the first few minutes. Cook this slowly for an hour and a half to two hours, until the meat will pull apart with a fork. The broth that comes off this is the base of the soup, and it’s worth more than the meat. Strain it, and set the meat aside to cool. Pick the meat off the bones and chop it into bite-sized pieces. Throw the bones away.
Step 3 — Build the soup. In a heavy pot, melt 4 tablespoons of butter or bacon grease over medium heat. Stir in the flour and cook it for a couple minutes until it smells nutty and turns a pale tan — this is a light roux, not a dark one. Slowly whisk in about 6 cups of the strained turtle broth. Keep whisking so it doesn’t lump. Add the crushed tomatoes, the chopped turtle meat, salt, black pepper, and a pinch of cayenne. Simmer it for 45 minutes to an hour, uncovered, until it thickens up and the flavors settle together.
Step 4 — Finish it. Just before serving, stir in the sherry or whiskey, the lemon juice, and the chopped hard-boiled eggs if you’re using them. Taste for salt. The lemon is important — it cuts through the richness and wakes the whole pot up. Serve hot in deep bowls with cornbread or crackers on the side.
What It Actually Tastes Like
People always ask what turtle tastes like, and the answer is harder than they want. A snapping turtle has several kinds of meat, each one cooking up different. Some of it tastes like chicken, some of it closer to frog legs or dark turkey, and a piece of neck can taste like the best pot roast you ever pulled apart with your fingers. The soup itself is rich, dark, a little sweet from the tomatoes, with a broth so thick it’ll coat the back of a spoon. The sherry and lemon lift it so it doesn’t sit heavy. It tastes like a river bottom in the fall, which is exactly what it is.
Amos summed it up in his usual way, at the bottom of the page: “feed this to a man dont know what it is he’ll ask for seconds then call you a liar when you tell him.”
Practical Notes
- Catch them clean, not in midsummer. Snappers taken from cold water, early spring or late fall, taste better. Midsummer mud turtles can taste like the bottom of the pond.
- The neck is the prize. Don’t waste a inch of it.
- Parboil the meat if it’s an old, big turtle. A 30-pound snapper is tougher than a 10-pounder, same as any animal that’s lived a long time.
- Keep your hands clear of the head, even after you think it’s done. A snapper’s reflexes outlast everything else about it.
- Check the regs where you are. Snapping turtle seasons and limits vary by state.
Next from the folder: Recipe No. 5 — Raccoon. Amos’s note reads: “coon is greasy but if yor hungry you wont complain.”
