Timaru Takes Out Top Tegel Turkey Award

Timaru Takes Out Top Tegel Turkey Award

It’s official, Timaru’s Grosveners’ Pillars Restaurant serves the best Tegel Turkey in New Zealand.

The restaurant’s chefs Lindsay Bennett, Kane Van Leeuwen and Bradley Hornby have won the first New Zealand Tegel Turkey Award for their Tea Smoked Turkey Tenderloin recipe.

Tegel launched the national competition to encourage New Zealand chefs to add turkey to their restaurant menu - outside the traditional Easter and Christmas periods.

During the past three years Tegel has looked at ways to improve the quality and tenderness of turkey meat, which involved working closely with Lincoln University.

As a result of this work, all of Tegel’s turkey fillets are now aged on the bone to achieve optimum tenderness and whole birds are Tender Bastedä to keep the meat moist and tender during cooking.

New Zealand food writer and critic from Eating Out magazine, Michael Guy, who led the judging panel, says chefs are always looking for something new to add to their menu and turkey offers a point of difference.

“I’ve been involved in the food and restaurant industry for 20 years and like many New Zealand chefs I’ve rarely used turkey, mainly because it tended to dry out during cooking and was only available at certain times of the year

“It’s been exciting to see what can be done with turkey now that it has overcome these challenges. As a meat it has a distinct interesting flavour and can be used in a diverse range of ethnic dishes using different spices”.

The competition’s two other finalists were also from the South Island Marcel Rood of Bacchus Restaurant in Blenheim, and Jeremy Griffiths of Cook ‘n’ With Gas, Christchurch.

The winning prize: Accommodation at the Kirketon Hotel and dinner at Luke Mangan’s Salt restaurant in Sydney.

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