In the process of working on Take Control of Thanksgiving Dinner, I mentioned the items you’ll have to remove from the inside of your fresh or frozen turkey: the neck and the giblets (heart, gizzard, and liver). These parts aren’t usually eaten, but they can be used to make an excellent gravy. I wanted to make the point that I recommend leaving out the liver, which might add undesirable flavors to the gravy, but in order to explain to the uninitiated which one of these weird tissue masses was the liver, I had to give a verbal description of the size, shape, and color of each item that constitutes the giblets. Upon reading my description, the publisher felt that a picture would serve better, and I agreed, so I snapped a shot of the neck and giblets sitting on my cutting board the next time I roasted a turkey.
Now granted, if you’re not used to mucking around with animal insides, this sort of thing might strike you as kind of gross. But I was unprepared for the strong “yuck” reaction I got from my editor and publisher. Although they were both seasoned cooks and had dealt with these things personally numerous times, they thought the picture was somehow just too graphic and unappetizing to include in the book. My view was that if you’re going to see it and touch it in real life, it shouldn’t be a big deal to see a picture—but I was overruled, and we had a drawing made instead.
However, I did include a link to this post, wherein I’m pleased to present the full-size, not-for-the-queasy photo of the giblets (click the thumbnail to see the larger image). That’s the neck on the left, of course; on the right, from top to bottom, are the heart, gizzard, and liver. Obviously, the exact appearance (and size) of these items will depend on what sort of turkey you buy and how it’s butchered. But this should give you a pretty good idea of what you’re looking for. Whatever else you do, be sure to check both cavities (the large one at the tail end and the small one at the neck end) for these items—often found in plastic bags—and remove them before cooking the turkey!
October 3rd, 2006 at 12:25 am
CA has a tradition… she very carefully takes the giblets out, boils them in water & some spices while the turkey is cooking. “For the gravy”. Then She makes the gravy without touchiing the giblets. After dinner, the dog gets the giblets in his dinner.
October 3rd, 2006 at 12:52 pm
Cris: That’s too funny!
October 26th, 2006 at 3:28 pm
THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU for publishing photos and descriptions of what’s what in the giblets package. I’ve looked in dozens of cookbooks and haven’t found this info anywhere. I want to ensure that I don’t include the liver in my gravy, because the liver would make it taste gross–but I wasn’t really sure which icky-looking thing was the actual liver. (I’m not much into organ meats.) You have performed a public service. Thanks again!
October 26th, 2006 at 4:03 pm
Marla: I can’t tell you how pleased I am that someone has found that photo useful!
November 12th, 2006 at 9:00 pm
I am so grateful for your picture of the giblets. Not having prepared a turkey for years and recalling my confusion in the past (I always had to call my mother-in-law for a description) you can just imagine how thrilled I was to just type in ‘picture turkey giblets’ – and there you were! Thank you so much – your publishers are a bunch of wooses!
November 12th, 2006 at 9:07 pm
Maureen: Delighted to have been of service!
November 19th, 2006 at 12:00 pm
Thanks for leaving a picture of the birds organs on this website, it helps a lot. A great tip for your gravy is to boil everything and remove after an hour, cut up giblets put half into gravy and half into dressing. Liver- put just a little into dressing also. It does give it a great taste even though you wouldn’t think so.
November 19th, 2006 at 7:12 pm
Melissa: I’m glad I could help! Thanks for your suggestion.
November 20th, 2006 at 8:25 am
I too am so happy you included the picture. I cook turkeys all the time but never knew which piece was a gizzard, heart or liver. I called the Butterball talk line and they gave me a description of color and the amount of softness to the touch. But a picture, as they say, is worth a thousand words. I am printing out your image, labeling it and sticking it in my Thanksgiving file. Many many thanks.
November 20th, 2006 at 11:49 am
Myra: It’s great to know my yucky picture has been so useful!
November 22nd, 2006 at 7:59 am
Joe, THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!! I looked all over the web for a picture of what the giblet parts looked like. I was relieved to find your picture and identification. My guess is that your editor/publisher are more into eating food than preparing it. People who are serious about cooking want good information, not just pretty pictures. I didn’t find your picture offensive at all. What do they think people do with the giblet package – pick it out with a pair of tongs, hold their nose and wing it out the back door? My guess is nearly everyone who has ever cooked a turkey has at least taken a gander at the mysterious bagged items. To prove that a picture is worth a thousand words, I am a biologist, cook, and raise CHICKENS and I didn’t know which parts were which. When I opened my giblet pack and was looking for the liver to remove – everything but the heart looked like liver! I’m going to go in for the feel test (not sure what I’m feeling for – but hey, I’m desperate). Anyway, thanks so much for the picture. Next time, go with your gut (pun intended)! :) Happy Thanksgiving!
November 22nd, 2006 at 12:28 pm
This will be my first go at cooking a turkey and all the fixings for Thanksgiving.. I have read many recipes telling me to put aside the giblets, but I had NO idea what that even meant.. clueless. Your article and images have been a huge help. Thank you very much!
November 22nd, 2006 at 5:44 pm
Anna: You’re welcome, you’re welcome, you’re welcome!
Caro: Ditto!
November 23rd, 2006 at 8:54 am
Joe,
I just knew all i had to do was Google “Turkey giblet pictures”
November 23rd, 2006 at 2:55 pm
Rob: You’re welcome! I’m not sure about the other organ you’re describing. Maybe if I saw a picture ;-).
December 12th, 2006 at 1:56 am
Many thanks for your picture am in England and am rearing bourbon reds for the first time, have eaten before, but this is the first time selling to others , had no idea which bits were the giblets but your picture has certainly helped didnt know what the gizzard was or that it was included. Many Thanks Sarah
December 24th, 2006 at 4:25 pm
It’s Christmas eve and I have desperately been trying to find out which bit of the Turkey was the Liver so I didn’t put it in the gravy. Your website has saved me. There will now be 13 very happy people eating dinner in the UK with proper gravy tommorow. Thankyou, Happy Christmas.
December 27th, 2006 at 9:33 pm
Ian: It’s clearly an international conspiracy! Well, it’s good to know I’ve performed a public service!
July 26th, 2007 at 7:52 pm
Dear Sir,, I need to buy 10 pounds of fresh or frozen giblets or turkey hearts, do you know where in the San Francisco Area?
Many Thanks Virginia Ayala
July 27th, 2007 at 12:03 am
Virginia: I’m afraid I have no idea. You might inquire at a butcher shop; they’d be more likely to have that sort of information.
August 28th, 2007 at 7:11 am
Hi Rob, The yellow kunquat looking thing is, I believe, ebryos of undeveloped eggs. You know… Where the yolk part of the egg will be… It would have become a egg if the turkey had a longer life :D
September 4th, 2007 at 3:24 am
Hello
I am confused by the term ‘giblet’. I am 60 yrs old and what everyone that refered to as the giblets were the two lumps of meat connected by gristle found in the innards bag. I always found the heart, liver, kidneys (sometimes) and what I call the giblets in the bag. My Mom prepared many a giblet stew with no other meat than these pieces that she got from the local butcher. What is what??? Thank you, Bernie
September 4th, 2007 at 11:25 am
Bernie:
If you look up “giblets” in the dictionary, you’ll see that it’s a term that collectively means all the edible viscera of a bird. So the heart and liver are part of the giblets. My guess is that what you grew up calling the “giblets” is the gizzard, as that’s the only other organ that’s typically found in the bag, and it does have two sections.
Joe
October 13th, 2007 at 10:21 pm
Thank you so much for posting this picture! As for your editor and publisher…tisk, tisk is all I can say. Had I come across a cookbook with such a precise description, it would have made it’s way on my bookshelf for certain After all, a cookbook is not just about the recipes but often serves as reference material too.
November 11th, 2007 at 11:48 pm
thank you! i had no idea what i was looking for until i found this link!
November 18th, 2007 at 10:28 pm
Thank you for publishing the photo. Like others, I had been searching everywhere in recipe books and online to know what to look for, but it was only when I searched for “picture turkey giblets” that I came across your helpful picture.
One quick question, though: I made a “practice turkey” last week (this is my first official Thanksgiving to do it all myself) and I couldn’t find a bag of anything anywhere. Sadly, I think I may have cooked the turkey with the giblets still inside because I vaguely recall wondering if the little mushy parts still attached inside the cavity were organs. Is it possible that the butcher did not remove these for me and insert them nicely in a bag? If this happens come The Big Day, what do I do to remove these organs myself? (I shudder at the thought, but one must do what one must do!)
Thank you for any ideas and also for your helpful photo.
November 18th, 2007 at 10:38 pm
Sherry:
I can’t say without actually seeing what came out of your turkey, but “little mushy parts” does sound like giblets. I’d have a talk with your butcher. It’s possible he or she didn’t put them in a bag but left them “loose” in the cavity – I can’t quite figure out, anatomically speaking, how they’d be attached or what they’d be attached to! But basically there shouldn’t be anything in those two body cavities. Feel around in there, and if you encounter anything squishy, it should come out!
Joe
November 18th, 2007 at 11:04 pm
Hello again Joe:
Thank you for your response. After writing you, I went to the USDA website and discovered that giblets aren’t required to come with every turkey, so maybe my turkey just didn’t come with giblets. As you suggested, how could anything still be attached in there? Perhaps the mushy things I saw were just part of the inside of the bird and my grand imagination was running away with me. I guess we’ll never truly know for sure.
My hope is that when Thanksgiving arrives, I will find a little bag of “goodies” in the turkey I’m cooking on Thursday. This mystery has been haunting me a bit, but I’m starting to feel better knowing that what I experienced was not the norm, so I shouldn’t worry too much that it’ll happen again.
Thanks again for being such a great resource to all us newbies out there!
Sherry
November 22nd, 2007 at 2:04 am
Every year I go through the same thing. Which is the heart and which is the gizzard and liver. Now I have pictures, thanks to you. I guess the cookbook authors think we’re all born with this knowledge.
November 22nd, 2007 at 5:43 am
Joe, Can’t tell you how much time you saved me this year–I go through it each year. Each year I am on the phone with whoever just to make sure I don’t put the “wrong part” in (liver). I too went by verbal descriptions and, boy, everyone used different words. This is like ABC and so simple to have pics and identified. Many many cook books don’t even show these or hardly describe them. You are a credit to cooking. I am definitely marking your website as a favorite. Have a good one!
November 22nd, 2007 at 2:42 pm
How long to I boil the gizzards to make a broth to use in my gravy?
November 22nd, 2007 at 2:52 pm
Tierney: If you want to make gravy with the giblets, merely boiling them for broth wouldn’t really give you much flavor. You’d sauté them, adding them (along with the browned bits on the bottom of the pan) to your gravy early in the cooking process and straining out the large pieces later. I’ve got a detailed recipe in my book Take Control of Thanksgiving Dinner!
November 22nd, 2007 at 4:26 pm
Thanks for the pictures. Just what I needed! I bet you’ll get lots of hits today.
Back to the kitchen, I go!
November 22nd, 2007 at 9:14 pm
[...] and checking out the legs, we inspected all that fun stuff they send in little plastic baggies inside the birds. We checked out the neck, and the muscles and tendons that make it work. Then we looked at the [...]
November 26th, 2007 at 12:06 am
Ok so i go thru the same thing every year as to which one is the darn liver! thanks so much for putting a pic. this year we had 2 turkeys. the first i bought and defrosted for us but the second was given to us but was laready defrosted. so we cooked the first but did not use any bagged item. the second one i am cooking right now and decided to make giblet gravy. but i have 2 things that loook like liver. one is big and the other is smaller. it doesn’t seem to have broken off but it seems like another piece of something entirely. it really does look just like the liver. what could it be? i won’t be using either in my gravy today but for future info it would be appreciated as to what that other liver-looking thing is~~~aloha
November 28th, 2007 at 9:07 pm
Best reference ever! Thanks so much…I’m printing the page and adding it to my cookbook. And then I’m going out and finding your cookbook to add to my collection.
December 29th, 2007 at 6:40 am
Thanks, Joe, reading through most of the respondents stories and comments was humorous and enlightening (and reminds me of my earlier days, too). But I’m really surprised that most everyone avoids cooking up the neck and giblets, including,(gasp!), the livers, to eat as a side or as a snack type of thing. Even if I plan to use some of them in the gravy, I still saute up most of them in a pan on the stove with as much butter, onion and garlic as I have a taste for, and any spices that are handy. They’re great! I grew up in the mid-west, German heritage, and this was pretty much the norm. (The food stores sell packaged chicken livers and hearts in the meat dept.) Try something different, you might like it! I’ve been doing this for 50 years and still kicking. Thanks. RG
October 12th, 2008 at 8:36 pm
Another thank-you for the picture. Today is Canadian Thanksgiving, and I was on-line trying to find out what the heck else one can do with turkey giblets besides make gravy or put them in the dressing. I was also trying to explain to my 12 year old what the giblets were, and was only certain about the heart. My trusty mainstay cookbook wasn’t any help on either account.
Many thanks. Now I just have to decide if I am going to put the liver in or not.
November 26th, 2008 at 6:52 pm
Thank you so much for showing that photo. I’m making a turkey for the first time this year, and didn’t know which was the heart and which the gizzard. I appreciate the clarification!
November 27th, 2008 at 4:42 am
That picture deserves a website all its own. Thanks for helping me keep my gravy liver free!
November 27th, 2008 at 8:49 am
Thank you for including the picture and the hint on looking in both cavities! I am doing my first thanksgiving turkey and earlier tonight I could only find the neck sort of frozen and stuck inside the body cavity of the turkey. I couldn’t get it out, and also could not find any other parts in that cavity… so I just stuck the whole thing in a brining solution overnight. Now I read your instructions and realized I did not know about the second cavity to search! I dug the turkey out of the brining solution after an hour and found the bag in the small neck cavity! But the bag (which has round holes in it) had a heart, 2 gizzards and a tiny little thing that looked nothing like the liver in your picture, but could that be the liver? or did the liver float or dissolve out of the bag into the brine? The neck is still stuck inside the big cavity, so I’ll have to try to remove it later before I roast. Please let me know if you think I missed some of the liver or not! And if it has messed up the brining now!!
November 27th, 2008 at 1:20 pm
May: I couldn’t say what the mystery part is, but I can say with certainty that the liver wouldn’t dissolve in the brine. It’s possible the liver just never made it into the bag (as I’m sure you can imagine, the process of relocating the turkey’s organs isn’t done with the greatest of care or personal attention) and that your extra gizzard means someone else got two livers. Either way, I wouldn’t worry about the liver or the brining. I think you’re in good shape.
Joe
November 27th, 2008 at 5:46 pm
[...] FYI: if you’re faced with the challenge of figuring out what is what when it comes to parts, this image might give you a hand. We needed all the organs EXCEPT the liver, and had no idea what the liver [...]
November 27th, 2008 at 7:56 pm
Thanks for the ‘graphic’ picture of the turkey’s pieces and parts… although I grew up with a dad who made good use of these parts (in the gravy and stuffing) I wasn’t sure if there were kidneys in there… and I didn’t want to confuse them for the liver, had they been included. I’m happy to see after confirming with your picture that they are not normally included in the pouch. Now my stuffing will be tasty (with the liver) and the gravy will be tasty with all the rest slowly simmering in the broth all day! Thanks again!
November 28th, 2008 at 2:53 am
Thanks for clearing up this giblet issues. The picture and description are great.
November 30th, 2008 at 9:46 pm
I am also one of the THANKFUL masses! Momma never got me past the ewwwwwww factor and am now a full fledged grown up needing to protect my own friends and family from random organ meats and now I am officially equipped! I only remember my dad sucking on the neck bone every year and had no idea where the other stuff went (though i am sure my mother hid it all in the food somewhere). I am adding a little curry to dinner this year and am thrilled to have curry buttery gravy and glazy eyed too full friends and family to enjoy!
THANK YOU
December 23rd, 2008 at 3:59 pm
Hey I’m in my first year of University so you can imagine when my flat mates and i were told in a cook book to remove the giblets. We had no idea what they were being the first Christmas dinner any of us had cooked (we had an early Christmas meal). So i can’t thank you enough actually showing us a picture of what they are. Needless to say none of us are aspiring to become chefs. Good luck in your career! Many thanks Megz
December 24th, 2008 at 1:27 am
Megan: You’re quite welcome!
December 24th, 2008 at 11:40 pm
Thank you so much for posting this blog. I was just helping my mom prepare a turkey for Christmas dinner. When she only saw the neck in the body cavity, but couldn’t find the giblets. After searching & searching..she had me look. I couldn’t find them either. We were both so confused by this. We proceeded to put the turkey in the oven, when I was still bothered that we couldn’t find those darn giblets. So, I went online and found this blog. I read thru Joe, Anna, and May’s postings..Yelled, for my mom to take the turkey out..we looked in the second opening in the body cavity…And, we FOUND THE GIBLETS!!! We got a good laugh out of it, but really you all helped save Christmas dinner. Thanks again and happy holidays, Catie & Barbara
December 25th, 2008 at 11:27 am
Thank You!!
June 6th, 2009 at 9:31 pm
Well another hearty thank you for identifying each organ meat. That’s what we needed and now we know. Thanks again.
June 13th, 2009 at 7:59 pm
Thank you. Thank you thank you thank you.
Not even the ‘Joy’ has this that I could find!
Maybe a good book concept would be “Things you want to know, but no one will tell you”, with the subtext of course “because their squeemish publishers won’t let them”
Thanks again!
June 14th, 2009 at 6:56 am
As always, you’re welcome!
@Cyph That’s a fantastic idea. I’d be very interested to know if anyone has suggestions for other hard-to-find pieces of information like that (whether cooking-related or not). I’ll start making a list!