Turkey - The Frugal Meat?

Most people consider turkey to be a once (sometimes twice) a year dinner meat.


In reality, when turkey is bought on sale, it can be an incredibly frugal dinner. You're hard pressed to find any other meat that costs around 99 cents a pound - much less at the right time of year, of course - and you can store it in your freezer for up to a year, as long as you store it properly! If you have a deep freezer, buying several this time of year is a wonderful deal. Even if you don't, you can usually easily store a 14-16 pound turkey in the freezer, as well as the one you purchase for your Thanksgiving dinner in the fridge to thaw out.

The problems with turkey is that it's easy to get bored easily with the leftovers if you don't have a lot of recipes for it. Over the next week, I'll be sharing some recipes (some with the help of Kikkoman sauces, who sent me some sauces to try out), as well as some without (because not everyone has all these sauces lying around or usually buys them) to help you get some new ideas.

One of the best tips I can give you is to immediately begin preparing your leftovers as soon as your done relaxing from your turkey dinner. Have a box of freezer safe bags ready to go. If you have a food processor, you can use that to speed it along, or you can even use your blender - I shredded up a bunch of turkey last year just using our blender since I didn't have a food processor at the time.

Shredded turkey worked well for me because I could use it in lots of casserole style dishes. You can also use it in place of tuna in Tuna Helper style dishes. Don't forget to write the date of your packaging the turkey up on the freezer bag, as well as the portion size if you are making several different sizes, and if you added any seasoning - such as taco seasoning for making turkey tacos.