cooking snapping turtle?

Anyone ever use a crockpot to cook turtle? We used to use a pressure cooker but that idea scares me. Even when we used the p cooker years ago it was quit a project. Sure was worth it though.

I an no expert with turtle but have cooked it. We always parboiled the meat. This helped get all the collagen out. We never had a problem with it being cooked all the way through. I would parboil the meat and freeze what we did not use. When we thawed the meat to cook the next time it would cook pretty quick and was already clean and free of the collagen. This was more preference for me. The crock pot would work just fine.

Mom made it all the time. She rolled it in flour, browned it, put water in a roaster, onions and baked it till meat separated from the bone. I always added dry onion soup mix.

There is no reason to be afraid of a pressure cooker. Make sure the blow off valves is clear and operation and it won’t build enough pressure to explode. Your instant pot is just a fancy electric pressure cooker. Sorry I don’t remember how grandpa used to make us turtle. It was fantastic. All I remember is grandpa would put a stick in front of the turtle’s head. The turtle would bite the stick and we chopped his head off after stretching it out.

My brother picked up a large snapper on the way to work one day. He put it in his trunk after he emptied it out. That big guy ate thru his back seat trying to get out. He was good.

“My brother picked up a large snapper on the way to work one day. He put it in his trunk after he emptied it out. That big guy ate thru his back seat trying to get out. He was good.”

I bet he was a mere shell of himself after that experience..

On average, a 10″ snapping turtle is 20 years old with growth rates slowing more as they get larger.

The giant ones that some people wrongly pick up by their tail are generally over 50 years old. We see a ton of this on the banks of Pool 4 when they become active again in early Summer/Spring. If I see a large one on the road, I pull over and help it across. 2 years ago one got angry about being prodded to move and decided to destroy my favorite morel stick (an old aluminum ski pole).

It’s an easy pass on me for eating them in current times due to contamination and how cool it is to see the giant ones that are decades old. The ones I did eat in my younger years at an uncle’s house were always rolled in a little flour and fried, before being set in the oven on a tray as was mentioned above.

We catch quite a few of them fishing for cats in the Red River and some pretty big ones. I always thought that if one latched on to one of your fingers he’d cut it right off, especially a large snapping turtle. I found out that’s not true but they can sure make you bleed. Don’t ask me how I know.

This is what I do with snapping turtles after I eat them!!

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That is definitely unique.