Turtle Soup, Snapping (Michigan)

Snapping turtle soup, and in Michigan it is a regulated harvest — season, size limit, daily limit and legal gear, all of which are in the Notes and all of which you should read before you go anywhere near a pond. Rich, dark, and closer to a good beef soup than anyone expects.

Ingredients

• 2-3 lb snapping turtle meat, cleaned and cut into 1 inch pieces

(legally taken — see Notes)

• 2 quarts water or beef stock
• 1/2 cup butter
• 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
• 2 onions, diced
• 3 stalks celery, diced
• 1 green bell pepper, diced
• 4 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 can (14 oz) diced tomatoes
• 2 bay leaves
• 1 teaspoon dried thyme
• 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
• 1 teaspoon hot sauce, or to taste
• 2 hard-boiled eggs, chopped
• 1/4 cup dry sherry
• 1/4 cup fresh parsley, chopped
• Salt and black pepper to taste
• Lemon wedges, to serve

Directions

Key ingredients

Worcestershire Sauce · Black Pepper · Salt

1. Step 1 - Read the regulations first. See the Notes. In Michigan this is a licensed, seasonal, size-limited harvest with specific legal gear, and turtles may not be bought or sold.
2. Step 2 - Simmer the meat until tender. Snapping turtle carries several distinct cuts and they are not the same texture. Cover the meat in water or stock with a bay leaf and simmer gently 1 1/2 to 2 hours until fork-tender. Strain and keep the broth — it is the base of the soup. Pick the meat off any bone and chop it.
3. Step 3 - Make a dark roux. Melt the butter, whisk in the flour, and cook over medium-low heat, stirring constantly, until it reaches the colour of peanut butter to milk chocolate — 15 to 25 minutes. This is where the soup’s depth comes from and it cannot be rushed. A scorched roux is bitter and must be thrown out.
4. Step 4 - Vegetables into the roux. Add the onion, celery and bell pepper and cook until softened, 8 minutes, then the garlic for a minute more. The roux will cool and stop darkening, which is what you want.
5. Step 5 - Build the soup. Whisk in the reserved broth gradually to avoid lumps. Add the tomatoes, bay, thyme, Worcestershire, hot sauce and the chopped turtle meat.
6. Step 6 - Simmer 45 minutes, uncovered, stirring now and then, until it thickens to a heavy soup.
7. Step 7 - Finish off the heat. Stir in the chopped egg, the sherry and the parsley. Season. The sherry goes in at the end — boiled off, it contributes nothing.
8. Serve with lemon wedges and more sherry at the table.

Notes

🔴 MICHIGAN REGULATIONS — read before harvesting. Taken from the 2026 Michigan Fishing Regulations (DNR), p. 22, “Amphibians & Reptiles”. Rules apply April 1, 2026 - March 31, 2027. Verify against the current digest before you go; these change.

• Season: July 15 - September 15
• Minimum size: 13 inch carapace length
• Daily possession limit: 1
• Total possession limit: 2
• A fishing license is required to take amphibians and reptiles for personal use.
• “Reptiles and amphibians may not be bought, sold or offered for sale.” So you cannot legally buy one in Michigan, and you cannot sell what you catch.
• Legal gear: hand, trap, nets, seines up to 12 x 4 feet, and hook-and-line. “Set lines may not be used to take turtles.”
• Traps: no more than 3, mesh no less than 1 inch, and “traps must be set to allow turtles to surface and breathe.”
• May not be shot with firearms (including spring, air or gas propelled), bow and arrow, blowgun or crossbow.
• Carapace measurement: flexible tape from the nuchal scute (directly behind the head) to the base of the notch where the two most posterior scutes meet.
• You must be able to identify what you caught. Blanding’s, spotted, wood and eastern box turtles are protected and may not be taken. It is also illegal to possess or transport in the field dressed or processed reptiles that cannot be measured or identified.

⚠ Note that many web sources get these numbers wrong — the first result I found claimed a daily limit of 2 and possession of 4. Both are incorrect. Go to the DNR digest, not a blog.

🔴 THIS IS NOT THE FAMILY RECIPE, AND THAT IS DELIBERATE.

The turtle soup I actually want recorded is my mother’s father’s — Grandpa Murawski’s. I would catch the large snapping turtles and he would butcher and cook them. I have not yet written down his method, and putting somebody else’s recipe under his name would be exactly the fake heirloom I refuse to make of Grandma Hay’s peaches. So this is an honest general Michigan recipe, and his will get its own record once I have set the method down properly. That one is owed.

Related: the collection also has Appalachian Turtle Soup with Cornbread and Creole Turtle Soup, neither of which is the family version either.