There’s only one other time that I’ve attempted to cook a turkey, and that was under the toughest of circumstances in Uzbekistan when I taught children overseas. Although they don’t really celebrate Thanksgiving there, they do happen to have a turkey bazaar, where you can go and pick out a live turkey. The only problem is, you have to trust the seller at his word for how much it weighs, and of course, that includes feathers. When my student, Caleb, and I went to the bazaar several years ago, Caleb haggled in Uzbek (having grown up there, he’s got a pretty good grasp of the language) and I just gave the sellers dirty looks when they asked for a ridiculous price. We finally picked one out, had them tie up its feet and wings, and it rode home with us in a taxi with its head popped up out of the tote bag we had brought.
This time around, it’s a bit easier, and as I perused the Safeway ads this week, I saw that they were advertising turkeys of a weight up to 16 lbs. for $5.99. Today I purchased a 14.2 lb turkey (that was the biggest they had left), and if I do my math right, that works out to about $0.42/lb, which is almost half the price of the cheapest chicken I’ve ever bought around here. So, despite the fact that we’re celebrating Thanksgiving somewhere else this year, I’ve gone ahead and purchased my turkey to see how many meals I can make out of it. For $6, I figure if I fail, it will still be a relatively inexpensive failure. My plans so far for what I think I can get out of a bird this size are:
Turkey and stuffing w/ the load of bread a friend recently gave me
Turkey soup with parsley dumplings
Turkey tetrazzini
Gourmet grilled turkey sandwiches (maybe with a homemade tomato soup?)
Turkey pot pie
What about you? I’d love to hear your ideas on things you like to do with turkey!
7 Comments
November 15, 2008 at 4:00 pm
It depends how many people are in your family. I made a delicious Autumn Stew the other day with a cream cheese pastry crust. I’ll add the recipe to my website soon (sorry; I wish I could tell you it’s there now, but I have to make it again and write down all the measurements). We like BBQ turkey sandwiches. We also make Chicken Devan but make it into Turkey Devan.
November 15, 2008 at 11:14 pm
A turkey pot pie? Chicken dumplings?
I’m hungry! :)
http://thejoereview.com/
November 24, 2008 at 11:17 am
We always buy a few turkeys available in this season for later use as it is such an inexpensive price and we can find lots of uses for it. Here are some ways we’ve used ours. http://pursuitsofheartandhome.blogspot.com/2007/03/what-to-do-with-all-that-turkey.html
I often just plan on the roasted turkey and then one more meal and then dice and freeze the rest for easy meals in future weeks. I just found your blog via Money Saving Mom today.
November 24, 2008 at 4:26 pm
I got my turkey for free from Lucky’s. If you spend $100, they give you a free turkey. I spent $100 last week and $100 this week and ended up with TWO free turkeys. I’m just mentioning this because I see you are from the Bay Area (as am I) and we have this store here.
JULIE
November 24, 2008 at 5:08 pm
A free turkey is even better than a $6 turkey! Let me know what you end up doing with it. Mine is baking in the oven as I write!
November 24, 2008 at 5:54 pm
Turkey quesadilla’s are yummy
November 26, 2008 at 8:11 am
I did this was well, although you got a better deal! Mine was $0.49/lb. My husband and I ate roasted turkey for dinner, and then I cubed the rest. I ended up with 8 cups. I turned 4 cups into this: http://www.recipezaar.com/Chicken-Packets-Oamc-50767 which will feed the 4 of us 4 more meals. The remaining 4 cups will be turned into mexican wraps, frittata/quiche and a casserole. I figure we’ll end up with 7 total meals!