sweasel.com

Somewhat against my better judgement, I ordered a breed of turkey called a bronze. Very popular here, slightly more expensive, has the reputation of being more “flavorful”.

For which read gamey. The first one we had was just too…flavorful. I like my turkey dry and tasteless, thank you very much.

But we ordered an ordinary white and got a bronze anyway last year and it was very good. The butcher said they get so few orders for whites that the farm usually gives them bronzes instead anyway.

Just to add to wot her Stoatliness said, our local independent supermarket prices start at about £70 ($90).

That isn’t to say you can’t buy them cheaper – frozen ones are a lot less expensive (and usually disgusting we’ve found) and factory farmed boids are a fair bit cheaper from the major stores.

At least one supermarket has a package deal of a 10-12 lb. turkey, dressing, and a couple other side dishes for about $50. All pre-cooked, just warm and eat. The ad says “serves 7 to 10”. So…yeah.

$0.99/lb in Colorado

We have a flock of 14 wild turkeys hanging around our back yard…hands off, they’re pets now :+) I feed the local birds and they invited themselves.

Kroger had frozen turkey breasts for .99/lb a couple weeks before T’giving. Way cheap.

I try to stick to wild turkey.

The 101 proof kind.

Very “flavorful” and prep is a cinch.

$0.99/lb at the local Costco so certainly not a artisan carcass with its own backstory.

We have 2-3 good sized flocks of wild turkey as well (sadly not the 101 kind) that stalk my area. I’ve been tempted to invite one or two to dinner…

Aldi had Butterball Whole Turkeys for 99 cents a pound in FLA. We smoked an 18 pounder…deelish!

Two Examples:

Fresh Market:
https://www.thefreshmarket.com/products/10-14-lb-the-fresh-market-fresh-whole-turkey
~
U.S. Wellness Meats, shipped by FedEx:
https://grasslandbeef.com/organic-free-range-turkey-10-14-lbs

We did a 26 lb er.
And payed about $30.00 ( the guvnor must receive his tithe!)

These ‘rumors’ must come from the same place Adam Schitt gets his impeachment evidence.

99 cents is about what I paid for it during the great “Durned Vs FUnemployment” times nearly 20 years ago.
And discovered we could have ‘Thanksgiving’ every week and eat good, cheap. Turkey dinner, turkey sandwiches, turkey soup were pretty regular for about 6 months around here as I recall. And I got good at cooking turkey.

Safeway was cheaper than Kroger this year [they run specials at Thanksgiving on turkey to try to get you to buy your whole dinner there] so our 24 lb-er was $14 and change for a frozen bird. I am not all that sold on fresh killed birds. We do brine the frozen bird [salt, sugar, spices] for 12-24 hours after thawing and before roasting.

Christmas we have prime rib and cioppino. For our Chinese New Year’s family feast [large extended family, everyone brings something] I do 4 Peking Ducks as my contribution. These feasts tend to be a lot more expensive than Thanksgiving.

Subotai Bahadur

We haven’t purchased a T-day turkey or a Christmas ham in decades. The local grocery store gives them away free if you spend $X in the weeks ahead of the holiday. And running up $300-$400 of groceries the month before a holiday is dead easy. You can get a frozen butterball, a kosher bird, a fresh one, or a canned ham, frozen lasagna, or a tofurky thing. Bird sizes run up to about 24lb. The Christmas hams run about 12lb in a variety of cuts including spiral sliced.

I thought in England y’all had a goose for Xmas. Yuck.

Love the sound of that Peking duck, Subotai Bahadur – one of my favourite foods!

An eye watering difference in prices then, between the UK and the US, as expected (feared). It’d be even more terrifying had it been beef!

As for goose, it’s still sold but if you think turkey prices are high…. Not so nice cold, either…

Cheap frozen birds can be quite flavorful if you brine them. I currently use a citrus brine that adds a real snap, but I did the whole Alton Brown thing for a few years and it’s hard to beat.

https://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alton-brown/good-eats-roast-turkey-recipe-1950271

Bonus to brining (however you want) and cooking the Alton Brown way – it takes far less time to cook a bird. No shit, a 16 pound bird will go from the brine to done in 3-3.5 hours. It’s also very tolerant to overcooking. You can let it stay in until 165F and let it rest to 170 and it will stay juicy and flavorful and everyone will sing your praises while not getting food poisoning.

Just don’t stuff the bird with traditional dressing, it’ll be salty as fuck and hinders the full cook. Make giblet stock and use that 50/50 with water to make your gravy and stuffing in a dish.

Spiral-sliced hams are the debil. Dry as hell no matter what you try to do.

@Jasonious Wild turkey is pretty stringy and gamy, they don’t have the plumb breastses of the domestic white turkey and flavor depends on what it has been feeding and of course, on the Left Coast, one needs a license and a game bird stamp to take them. The Gov gets his cut no matter what.

Turkey is definitely cheap meat hereabouts.

Whole frozen turkeys were $0.37 or $0.39 per pound (on sale for Thanksgiving).

We had a whole frozen turkey breast (2.75 lb) for $10. (Cooks frozen to eating in a bag; convenient and delicious.)

Turkey meat is cheap most of the year.

I see ground turkey on sale for $2/lb, IIRC. Turkey breakfast sausage is 6.4 oz/$1.99, but we wait for sales when it comes down to $1.29 or even $1.00.

$6/lb?? Good god. OK, fresh, and special quality (“bronze”). But still…

I think the turkey breasts before thanksgiving – whole breasts with bone – were 20-25 dollars here in pricey California. You can make a mini-roast with that for one and what I go for if I feel like cooking one.

Whole birds are less per pound.

S. Weasel and Uncle Badger:

One of my daughters reminded me of something. It was a while ago, but one of her aunts was career Air Force [long retired now] and after 9/11 volunteered for AF Spec Ops, changed career tracks, and was assigned to a support role with a squadron based in England.

Being at a Brit-American shared base, there was an American Commissary for our people. In passing, the formulas for American Coca Cola and Brit Coca Cola are noticably different. The Commissary carries American Coke. She was known on occasion to give a twelve pack to an expat American friend.

I would bet that our Commissaries carry American turkeys at American prices or a lot closer to American prices. If you would happen to know any of our people stationed there, or who is a dependent of Americans stationed there, they might be willing to help an expat American with a turkey.

Subotai Bahadur

Here in Eugene Oregon:
1.50 per pound for a butterball at Safeway, 99 cents for the store brand. These birds are bred to pack on weight, and have no flavor.
For a heratage breed from the farm, you’ll pay 3-4 dollars per poubd live weight, and 4 to 6 for dressed weight.
Eugene is infested with wild turkeys, and many of them disappear during the holidays.