In Dish Decoded, we break down all the components, stories, and techniques behind a restaurant’s... well... dish that we’re obsessed with right now.
It’s not every day you see turkey tails on a restaurant menu. But there they were at Lineage, the newest restaurant from chef Sheldon Simeon in Wailea, Maui, tossed in adobo and served with chunks of juicy tomato and sweet Maui onion. I didn’t even know you could cook and eat turkey tails! So naturally I had to try them, and it was mind-blowing. How did Simeon turn oily turkey organs into the most delicious, orange-chicken-esque dish? Here he breaks it down.
The Tail
Technically the oily gland that holds the turkey’s feathers together (don’t google it), the tail has long been a reliable cheap cut for Hawaii residents like chef Sheldon Simeon and his crew of Filipino cooks. They grew up eating the tails steamed in taro leaves for laulau or slicked in adobo sauce.
The Adobo
“We love adobo so much it’s scary,” Simeon says of his obsession with the staple Filipino sauce. He’s been tweaking his recipe for years, adding berbere to bring out the pepperiness and heat and holding back on the vinegar after sampling more soy sauce–forward versions. The result is a deeply rich adobo that you’ll want to steal a quart container of (not guilty).
The Fry-Braise-Fry
Simeon picked up on this technique when he was traveling in the Philippines a few years ago: The tail is fried to get some color, then braised in the adobo sauce and fried once more before going back into the sauce to finish. That final fry seals each tail in a crispy, crackled shell akin to, in Simeon’s words, “the joy of eating chicken wings.”
The Marinade
The turkey tails bathe in a mixture of soy sauce and apple cider vinegar, bobbing with peppercorns, bay leaf, ginger, and garlic, to tenderize the meat and echo the flavors of the adobo sauce. “We are adding these same ingredients but at different moments in the recipe, which brings a more complex flavor in the end,” he says.
The Salad
You can’t eat adobo without a raw tomato salad. “It’s a very Filipino thing to have,” Simeon says. It cuts through the glorious fattiness of those glossy turkey tails but also gives the dish a needed hit of acid. Hunks of sweet Maui onion (duh) and tomato are tossed with a little olive oil and fish sauce, then sprinkled on top of the turkey tails for a refreshing and actually useful garnish.