105 A Turkey Fit for The Queen with Paul Kelly of Kelly Bronze Turkey

Kelly Bronze turkeys have been the centerpiece of the Royal Family’s Christmas dinner and have been specially requested by dignitaries as far as Dubai. Their turkeys are featured on the menus of Michelin-starred restaurants and the Bronze family has been celebrated across the UK.... But it wasn’t always this way.

In fact, there was a time when the Kelly family was in dire straits financially. The turkey market was oversaturated and as far as prices, well, as Paul says, it was a race to the bottom. Paul and his parents became the laughingstock of the turkey industry when they traveled the UK buying up every non-genetically-modified turkey they could find and decided to rear the turkeys according to their natural life cycle. Most shocking of all the Kelly family allowed their turkeys to live and roam in the great outdoors.

It’s really a great success story and, beyond that, Paul is truly a great storyteller. Not everyone could make the history and life cycle of turkeys interesting, but I *promise* you’ll be hanging on Paul’s every nugget of knowledge and laughing all the way through.

(Oh, and p.s. Paul didn’t give me a turkey recipe! He gave me one of the most adventurous, challenging recipes I’ve made for the podcast thus far - his mother’s Steak and Kidney Pudding. I had lots of questions for him about this, and in the end, we genuinely enjoyed the result!!)

Highlights

• I could use all sorts of fancy titles, but I hate that sort of thing
• The life cycle of the mass-produced turkey (which grows 10x faster than the natural turkey)
• The natural, non-modified life cycle of turkeys
• The reaction when they began rearing turkeys outside
• In Holland, you need a license to keep animals OUTSIDE
• Predators for turkeys in Virginia vs the UK
• The 5 stages of development in any animal - and how the stages affect the taste of an animal
• Why a slow-grown turkey doesn’t need to be brined, basted, or enhanced in any way
• “Every turkey in the history of the world originated from Mexico” - a history lesson about turkeys
• The evolution of the modern white turkey - why it was popularized - and what happened to the Bronze Turkeys
• The innovative, entrepreneurial approach of the Kelly family
• Why free-range alone doesn’t improve the taste of a turkey
• The critical reason dry-plucking the turkey massively improves the taste
• Michelin-starred restaurants feature Kelly Bronze Turkey Tartar
• “I wake up every morning and feel I must be the luckiest man alive.”
• Why America was the perfect next market
• “At the end of the day, quality wins.”
• “If anyone is passionate about something, everyone listens”
• The power of transparency in business
• “The consumer never really got involved in the conversation”
• “A man’s wealth is always measured by the fewness of his wants”
• Steak & Kidney Pudding

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