We love turkey meat. But we don’t want to throw such a whole bird on the barbecue every time. And the best part of a turkey is the leg. The meat is juicier and much tastier than turkey breast. And such a huge leg is also big enough for dinner.

However, it is a thing to get such a leg really tasty. We’ve done a few different preparations over the past few weeks to see what the best way is to prepare a turkey leg. We came up with a preparation that gave a great result every time. Juicy, tasty and tender meat that you can put on the table with confidence.

Where do you buy turkey legs
You won’t find turkey legs at the supermarket. Maybe they bought them around Christmas, but you don’t see them the rest of the year. For good turkey meat you really end up at the poulterer or at the online butchers. There you can buy the turkey leg as a backless turkey leg. That’s the drumstick, with thigh.

Between the joint you cut the thigh free from the drumstick with a sturdy knife, so you are left with 2 nice parts of turkey. The turkey thigh is ready to throw right on the grill. But the drumstick needs some preparation first. We call the drumstick the turkey leg from now on because we associate a drumstick too much with chicken.

You have to pickle turkey legs
Turkey meat is naturally lean meat. And lean meats and barbecue don’t go well together. The chance of dry meat is simply too high. The turkey leg first prepared a few times without brine and that sometimes went well, but more often the meat was just too dry. We just ate them anyway. And they were still tasty. But after brining them a few times, we had a good result every time.