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[1] Momsdish says that her turkey neck soup is “absolutely the best.” Here’s her recipe (photo © Momsdish).
[2] The vegetables in this soup are made with a vegetable spiralizer (photo courtesy Wholesomeness.com.au).
[3] Turkey necks (photo © Perdue).
[4] One of the two varieties of wild turkey, the North American wild turkey, is the source of all the domesticated turkeys we eat (photo © Randy Fath | Unsplash).
[5] The other variety is the ocellated turkey, native to Belize, Guatemala, and the Yucatan Peninsula. What a beauty! It was never domesticated(photo © Imgur).
[6] The Broad Breasted White breed is the most commonly raised turkey due to its rapid growth, large breast size, and mild flavor (photo © Greg Lippert | Unsplash).
[7] The Narragansett, a heritage†† turkey breed (photo by Temuls Lightning Poncho, CC BY-SA 4.0).
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THE NIBBLE first created its Daily Food Holiday Calendar in 2004. But it’s taken us this long to address one of the more unusual holidays: National Turkey Neck Soup Day, March 30th.
Turkey neck soup is a concept we’d only come across on the calendar. This year, for the first time, we had enough down time to wonder:
Who established a holiday for turkey neck soup?
And do you need more than one turkey neck?
We couldn’t find an answer to who, but it turns out that turkey neck soup is a more economical way to feed a family than, say chicken or turkey soup made with the main parts of the poultry.
And yes, you do need more than one turkey neck. Some people freeze the necks from the giblets bags that come in whole turkeys and chickens, until they have enough.
You can buy turkey necks in the poultry department of supermarkets from Perdue and Shady Brook Farms, along with non-branded packages.
Turkey necks themselves are bony, but they do have meat; and thus can be used to make that Paleo diet darling, bone broth.
Below:
> Recipe ideas for turkey neck soup.
> The history of turkey neck soup.
> A brief history of turkey.
> Turkey trivia.
Elsewhere on The Nibble:
> The history of soup and the different types of soup, a photo glossary.
> The year’s 7 turkey holidays.
> The year’s 18+ soup and stew holidays.
> A more extensive history of turkey in the East Coast.
RECIPE IDEAS FOR TURKEY NECK SOUP
The classic, economical recipe combines turkey necks with root vegetables—carrots, parsnips, rutabaga, turnips—plus onion, celery and parsley. Potatoes, noodles or rice can bulk up the recipe. Check out the recipe from photo #1.
Here’s a recipe with veggies and rice.
A variation, this recipe adds both rice and potatoes to create a heartier “main dish” soup.
Some recipes called “turkey neck soup” start with the entire carcass from a roast turkey dinner. The neck from the giblets bag is usually available to toss in; and perhaps the other giblets, if they didn’t go into the gravy.
However, if a so-called turkey neck soup has a good portion of turkey meat, then it’s regular turkey soup. If cooks have all that meat at hand, they don’t need to focus on the neck.
THE HISTORY OF TURKEY NECK SOUP
The first turkey neck soup was made somewhere in what is now Mexico and the eastern and southwestern U.S., where the wild turkey originated (photos #4 and #5).
Like many ingredients in soups and stews, turkey neck soup likely evolved as a practical way to use all parts of the turkey, including the neck, which isn’t as easy to eat otherwise*.
Turkey neck soup is still common in various cultures and cuisines where turkey is eaten, including American Southern cooking, where it’s often cooked like chicken soup, seasoned with herbs and vegetables. See other preparations in the footnote† below.
Similar soups elsewhere around the world, where poultry necks are valued for both their rich flavor and collagen content.
Today the soup represents a traditional form of nose-to-tail cooking that predates modern food waste concerns, focusing on using every part of the animal.
The History Of Turkeys: When Did The Turkey Originate?
Wild turkeys (Meleagris gallopavo) have been around for millions of years. Fossil evidence suggests that their ancestors appeared in North America around 5 million years ago, during the Miocene epoch.
The modern wild turkey species likely evolved around 2.5 million years ago, during the Pleistocene epoch.
Turkeys are part of the Phasianidae family, which includes pheasants, quail, and chickens,. They share a common ancestor with other game birds that date back even further.
(Ducks belong to a different family, Anatidae, which includes geese and swans‡.)
Indigenous peoples in the Americas domesticated turkeys over 2,000 years ago, long before European contact.
Archaeological evidence suggests that Native Americans domesticated turkeys as early as 200 B.C.E. to 500 C.E., particularly in central Mexico and the southwestern U.S. (Turkeys were one of the few animals domesticated by pre-Columbian Mesoamerican peoples, bred turkeys for both for their meat and feathers.)
The birds found their way to the East Coast, with the gratitude of the Pilgrims for whom they were a critical food source.
There are two main species of turkey:
The North American wild turkey (Meleagris gallopavo), which was domesticated by indigenous peoples and is the ancestor of the domestic turkey we eat today.
The ocellated turkey (Meleagris ocellata), native to the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico and parts of Central America, which was never widely domesticated.
When Spanish conquistadors arrived in the Americas in the early 16th century, they encountered domesticated turkeys and brought them back to Europe. From Spain, turkeys quickly spread throughout Europe and were later reintroduced to North America by European colonists.
How Did The All-American Bird Get Named For A Foreign Country?
In many languages, the turkey is named after countries that had nothing to do with its origin. For example:
In English, the name “turkey,” suggesting an origin in Turkey.
In French it’s “dinde” from d’Inde, meaning “from India.”
In Turkish itself, it’s “hindi,” again referencing India.
These names reflect the confusion about geographic origins during the Age of Exploration.
And the original name for the bird?
The Aztec (Nahuatl) name for turkey is huexolotl or uexolotl (pronounced way-SHO-lotl).
The linguistic root of huexolotl still exists in modern Mexican Spanish, where the word for turkey is “guajolote.”
[Source: Claude.ai 2025-03-30]
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TURKEY TRIVIA
A baby turkey is called a poult, chick, or turklette. An adolescent male is a jake, an adult male turkey is tom, and a female is a hen.
Only male turkeys can gobble. Mostly in the spring and fall, the gobble is a mating call that attracts the hens. Wild turkeys gobble when they’re surprised by loud sounds and when they settle in for the night. The wild turkey can make at least 30 different calls!
Wild tom turkeys can weigh up to 20 pounds, and the wild hen up to 12 pounds. As a result of selective breeding, the domestic tom can weigh up to 50 pounds, and the domestic hen up to 16 pounds.
The average life span of a wild turkey is 3 or 4 years. It generally feeds on seeds, nuts, insects, and berries. The average life span of a domestic turkey, from birth to harvesting, is 26 weeks.
Benjamin Franklin once joked that the turkey would be a better national symbol than the bald eagle‡‡.
The loose red skin attached to the underside of a turkey’s beak is called a wattle. When a male turkey is excited, especially during mating season, the wattle turns a scarlet red. The fleshy flap of skin hanging over his beak is called a snood and also turns bright red when the bird is excited. The small wobbly part on the turkey’s chest is called the beard, made of keratin bristles (keratin is the same substance that forms hair and horns on other animals).
[8] A poult (public domain photo).
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*Turkey necks, while most commonly used in soup in the U.S., are also braised/roasted, smothered in gravy, grilled, smoked, even deep-fried.
†There are also heritage breeds such as the Black Spanish, Bourbon Red, Narragansett (photo #7), Royal Palm, and Standard Bronze; but these are less common in supermarkets and typically obtained from butchers. See them here.
††A heritage breed is a traditional livestock breed that was developed over time through natural selection and selective breeding, often before the rise of industrialized agriculture. These breeds are typically genetically diverse, hardy, and well-adapted to specific environments or traditional farming methods. For turkeys, this means natural mating (no artificial insemination) and slow growth (6-7 months to reach market weight compared to 3–4 months for commercial breeds like the Broad Breasted White).
‡The distant common ancestor of both chickens (Phasianidae family) and ducks (Anatidae family) was likely a primitive Galliformes-Anseriformes bird that lived some 60–90 million years ago during the Late Cretaceous or early Paleogene period. Both chickens and ducks belong to the order Galloanserae, a major bird clade that includes Galliformes (landfowl like chickens, turkeys, and quail) and Anseriformes (waterfowl like ducks, geese, and swans). A clade is a group of organisms that includes a common ancestor and all of its descendants. It represents a single branch on the tree of life.
‡‡Franklin wrote to his daughter: “For my own part, I wish the bald eagle had not been chosen as the representative of our country; he is a bird of bad moral character; he does not get his living honestly…like those among men who live by sharping and robbing…he is generally poor, and often very lousy. Besides, he is a rank coward; the little king-bird, not bigger than a sparrow, attacks him boldly and drives him out of the district…For in truth, the turkey is in comparison a much more respectable bird, and withal a true original native of America. Eagles have been found in all countries, but the turkey was peculiar to ours…”
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