Slow-cooked Turkey Drumsticks

Here they are. A pair of shrinkwrapped turkey drumsticks. Yet another cheap cut for which the supermarkets insist on giving inappropriate roasting instructions on the label.

Guess what - this is another slow-cooking joint! This time you will need a large oval slow-cooker.

When choosing which model of oval slow cooker to buy, I went to my local huge Tesco's and took a shrinkwrapped turkey drumstick from the meat section over to the homewares section and tried it for size in the bowls of the models they had on display. Turns out some of the models of oval slow cooker on sale are too small for turkey drumsticks.



The procedure for slow-cooking any joint of meat is much as I outlined in Slow-cooked Beef. So, first I lined the bottom of the cooker dish with sliced shallots, diced garlic, and sprigs of rosemary and basil. Then added a diced homegrown tomato.

Next, I unwrapped and added the meat. In this case there was a bit of working out how best to fit the drumsticks in the slow-cooker - it took a couple of tries before I finally found which way round would not leave the larger one sitting proud of the rim at one end or the other.

And now for some more flavours. A few more diced homegrown tomatoes. Some dried porcini mushroom pieces that came from my Flavrbox. Salt and Pepper. A good slug of sherry. And to top it all off, sprigs of tarragon and oregano from the garden.

Pop on the lid, switch to Auto mode, and forget about it for 8 hours or so.


Come the evening, strip the meat from the bones and calcified tendons, and remove the hard stalks of the herb sprigs. Return the meat to the juices in the pan to reheat briefly, adjust the seasoning, then serve with potatoes and vegetables and maybe a bit of crusty bread on the side.

Two drumsticks will feed 4 people.