TURKEY BREAST SPONGE: A “secret ingredient” that will 
ensure the next wild turkey you harvest and cook is juicy. 
Details ahead on Passport to Texas.

This is Passport to Texas

If you harvested a bird during the 2019 spring 
turkey season, don’t wait until Thanksgiving to eat 
it. Yet, whenever you prepare it, be sure to save their 
built-in “flavor packet”.

10— Wild turkeys have this huge fatty deposit at the top of the chest 
and the base of their neck; it’s called the breast sponge. 

Susan Ebert is author of The Field to Table Cookbook. She 
says gobblers develop this fat layer to sustain them 
during mating season and it can account for up to 10 
percent of the bird’s body weight.

25— It’s very weird looking tissue. And some people will just cut it off 
and throw it away, and I say, oh no…no…no. Leave that breast sponge 
on the turkey’s breast. Because, what you have is a built-in fat blanket 
to keep that meat moist while it’s cooking. It will shrink substantially 
during the cooking process. You can discard it afterwards, before you 
start carving.

We have a longer segment on harvesting and 
preparing wild turkey with Susan Ebert, as well as a 
segment on turkey restoration and another on how 
to call turkey for hunting or nature watching, and on 
our podcast Under the Texas Sky. 

It’s the one called “Talking Turkey”.

The podcast is available on spotify, iTunes and other 
places where podcasts roam. 

For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti.









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