Later this morning I will buy a frozen turkey at Ralph's. If I spend $25 dollars it's 37 cents a pound. A 24lb bird will cost me about $9. I don't like to cook a big turkey. Then it's like a race to eat it before it goes bad. The trick is to utilize the entire bird at your leisure over a month or two.
I will bone the bird stripping off all the meat. The carcass I will immediately roast along with the neck, giblets and skin, with a couple of sliced onions, on a rack. When done I can make a nice, brown stock with carrots and celery, some for soup and some for casserole sauce. The fat gets poured into a saucepan. Chunks of the meat can be slow simmered in it, into a confite, which will keep for months in the frig. Very French. La La. The thigh meat would be good for this. The drumsticks I will put in a butcher's brine. It can cure for weeks if I want and makes a good roast or barbecue. It can also be cooked with blackeyed peas, beans or greens. It will be redder than ham and only a little salty. The breast can be cut into one pound portions, plastic wrapped and frozen. Easy meals. The small scraps I will use right away for soup and we'll eat soup this week. The larger scraps I will bag up and freeze along with half the stock for pot pie, a la king, tettrazini, whatever. A lot of meals, cheap. Yum.
It's not so much we need to economize. I like a little domestic challenge.
Turkey isn't that inspiring of a poultry variety. I'm not that crazy about it. It's OK. I wish we had a holiday where they sold cheap duck. Goose would be even better.
2 comments:
Wow. I do take all the meat off the bones and turn the bones into broth for soup. I do package up the meat for later.
I must go out this weekend to pickup a turkey, maybe even a goose or a duck.:) The big turkeys they sell are trouble because you can hardly handle them. I like a twelve pound turkey like I cooked last year.
One year, I wrapped the turkey in foil, put it in a basting pan, and barbecued it in the charcoal grill one year. It was trouble to handle putting on the grill and taking it off since the whole operation was outside. But the turkey was scrumptious.
Take a Turkey Breast, wrap fore to aft with bacon secured with toothpicks, place on grill with indirect heat and a drip pan, roast till done.. Serve with cream corn, biscuits and veggies MMMM Good
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