Krissie Mason’s Colossal Wild Turkey Club with Cranberry Aioli

Ingredients

Sandwich:

Smoked wild turkey breast meat

Thick-cut bacon

Butter Lettuce

Mayonnaise (homemade or grocers variety)

Cranberry aioli

Juicy ripe tomato

Bread of choice

Butter

Cranberry aioli:

½ cup homemade cranberry sauce (I had some leftover in my freezer)

1 tsp. chopped shallot

2 tbsp. mayonnaise

1 tsp. Dijon

Small sprig of fresh rosemary or thyme

Olive oil for thinning

Salt and pepper to taste

Directions

1. For the sandwich build, slice meat thin with a deli-style slicer. I really like the Chef’s Choice Professional 665 Electric Food Slicer. It’s a perfect slicer for situational recipes in my wild kitchen. There are bigger slicers for processing large amounts of wild game, but they become behemoths and utter over-kill in the kitchen when cooking on a daily basis.

2. Heat the grill, and cook several slices of thick-cut bacon until crispy. Remove and drain. Next brush some of the bacon grease on the bread and lay on the hot grill. I use a cast iron pan to flatten almost pannini-like and get those appetizing grill marks. Once bread is toasted, set aside.

3. Make the cranberry aioli by putting all ingredients except olive oil into a bowl, or cup. Blend with immersion blender, or small food processor. Slowly add a bit of olive oil if needed to thin. Salt and pepper to taste.

4. Time to make a double-decker club: On a cutting board, arrange the 3 bread slices in a row. Spread mayonnaise over 1 side of each bread slice. Next, top with a generous portion of turkey. Place two slices of bacon on top of turkey, add a lettuce stack and two thinly sliced tomatoes. Drizzle, or slather depending on your preference, with cranberry aioli. Repeat with stack with a second slice of bread, and top with last slice of bread, mayonnaise side down, of course. Wrap in butchers paper, or pin with whittled sticks and slice into halves, or quarters.

Click here to see more photos of this recipe in the Outdoor section.

March Madness is all about the brackets, office pools, friends and finger foods. A quick search via Google and you’ll have tons of tapas at your fingertips. But what if you watching an evening game on a weeknight with the family and finger foods can’t fill the rumbling hole in your bellies? As a change-up, consider this a time for wild game Sandwich Madness. On Thursday afternoon as the University of Minnesota Gophers faced off against the Middle Tennessee Blue Raiders I was preparing a double decker wild turkey club sandwich that bookies and betters might wager belongs in any March Madness Sandwich Bracket. Griddle grilled bread, smoky bacon, juicy tomato, butter lettuce, homemade mayo and cranberry aioli and a mounds of thin sliced smoked wild turkey is a lay-up for a fistful of belly busting satisfaction. Concerned it might be too dry? Though wild turkey breast sometimes gets a bum rap for being dry, if brined, tenderized and prepared properly it yields a moist flavorful bite. If you are really locked in on appetizers, make mini-versions, or quarter a full sized sandwich and skewer with whittled sticks to keep it all together.