turkey sizes

[rbowman]

You can figure roughly a 25% loss. That's for the whole bird. Then you have the weight of the inedible bones. Overall the yield is about 50%.

A friend tried a number of business ventures, most of which didn't work out. He was quite meticulous to the point of being suffering from OCD. One was a sandwich business for a barroom. He was quite shocked when a

10 pound beef roast didn't yield the number of 4 ounce sandwich portions he had calculated after cooking. He found that buying frozen pre-cooked roasts from a restaurant supply was more economical.

Then there was the pizza parlor... The night before the grand opening I found him sitting on the floor drinking beer and close to tears. 'I made a pizza and it was so bad the dog wouldn't eat it.'

[rbowman]

I think the National Turkey Federation claims 53% yield.

I was never ambitious enough to figure the net cost per ounce of cheap whole chickens versus the various parts or skinless boneless breasts. The local market usually had skinless boneless breasts at a very good price. Cheap protein but I ate them so often I've developed sort of a gag reflex.

[Clare Snyder]

A 12 lb bird yields about 5 lbs of cooked meat cut off the bones. If you got 7 lb you likely had a 14 or 15 lb bird. Count on 1.5 lb dressed weight (not cooked) per person when buying uncooked bird.

Not counting bone weight you lose almost 25% of the bird's weight when it is coocked with most "commercial" turkeys

[Clare Snyder]

I generally order fresh chilled never frozen turkey if I think about it early enough. Pick up from the butcher 2 days ahead. I have also done the roast from frozen trick - and it worked pretty good. The fresh never frozen doesn't generally lose as much weight because they are not generally "pumped up" like the commercial frozen bird

[Clare Snyder]

25%, generally speaking - so a 16 lb bird would lose 4 lb before boning

[Clare Snyder]

When you get a b or c grade bird they are even cheaper - some have 3 wings or 1 1/2 legs or other configurations, or torn skin - but they taste just as good

[Beef]

Cooking turkeys are a pain in the ass.  Much easier to just buy some ground beef/pork stuffing and make a meatloaf.  Form it into a turkey shape if you must.

[Cindy Hamilton]

It's not as if Thanksgiving comes as a surprise. Plan ahead.

A turkey takes longer than 2 days to thaw in a refrigerator. I gave mine 6 days to defrost, which was probably a little much. Four is probably sufficient.

You paid a lot for the labor to cook your turkey for you. Materials costs are a relatively small proportion of any restaurant's costs.

Cindy Hamilton

[Cindy Hamilton]

But it doesn't taste like turkey and there's no stuffing. Turkey's highest purposes is as a vessel for stuffing.

Cindy Hamilton

[Ralph Mowery]

Seems like everyone is saying around 50% meat from the turkey.

I was really wondering if others had noticed the already cooked turkeys getting smaller.

I don't really care what it cost, I just want enough for everyone. However I am not going to buy two turkeys for just 6 people at $ 35 each.

Cindy mentioned the labor is the thing and not the meat. I agree with that. For a few dollars more they could get a larger turkey. Then I would not have had to spend that much more to get another turkey at the grocery store and cook it.

I think I have made up my mind that for Christmas I am going to the get one of the Butterball ones. They have one that is frozen and in a baking bag. They advertise you just take it from the freezer and put it in the oven and in about 4 hours it is ready. Has anyonne tried that one ?

I will still get one of the Boston butts from there as we like the smoked pork and theirs was good.

[gfretwell]

I am a pretty careful shopper and it appears that the skin and bones makes up around 25-30% of the breast with ribs, depending on whether they sell you the breast bone two. Typically half have it and half don't, just because of where they cut. At that point you have some math to do. My take away is when the boneless, skinless, tasteless breasts are on sale, it is a better deal than with the skin and ribs. Not on sale, you have to do the math but your labor is worth something too. I really prefer the dark meat anyway and if you are willing to buy thigh quarters you can get them for less than a buck a pound in the 10 pound bag. Again there is lots of waste but if it is 69 cents a pound, who cares? With a sharp paring knife, you can bone the whole thing out in less than a minute and end up with one slab of meat that is great on the grill. I leave the skin on for that.

[trader_4]

A turkey is free here at Shoprite, if you spend $400 in about the previous three weeks. It used to be just $300 until a few years ago.

And I agree with DPB, turkeys of all sizes are available at all the supermarkets here, unless maybe if you wait until the very last day.

[trader_4]

So? How long ahead of time do you have to order the cooked ones? Here since it's usually cold enough outside or in the garage, I just leave them to thaw out for a couple days in the trunk of the car. I wouldn't do that if it's 60 outside, but when it's

40F, it's fine. You can also thaw them in hours if you have to, by putting it in a kitchen sink full of water. Or put it in a 5 gal bucket and brine it for a day.

The people cooking them do it over wood and sort of smoke

Yes, I agree that would be a good reason to buy a cooked one.

What do they put in it? Some more special chemicals? I'd bet that it's also going to be one of those small ones that you don't like.

[trader_4]

The gourmet in thing now are those heritage turkeys that go for $100. They are closer to what real turkeys were like 200 years ago. Not sure I'd like it, as they are supposed to be more like dark meat and I like the white meat.

[trader_4]

If you're in the business of cooking or smoking turkeys, you can't just buy turkeys that are twice the size and have the only impact on your costs be the increased cost of the bigger turkeys. You have X employees and Y size ovens or smokers. You can't put 20 pounds of turkey into a 10 pound oven. Generally speaking, in addition to the increased cost of the larger turkeys, you'd need either more/larger ovens or twice as long to cook them. That's a big impact on costs.

[Ralph Mowery]

I do like the ones that are cooked over the wood for the flavor. Main reason for buying them.

It is too hot here to do the thawing out of the refrigerator. At noon today it is 57 deg F. If it were cooler I could put it in an out building I store the lawn equipment in or the unheated garage.

Our refrigerator is small. I think only about 20 cuft. The house has 4 bed rooms. We bought the house used. Whoever built it put cabinets in and only left a small space for the refrigerator. One would think that with that many bedrooms they would have left a large space for a larger refirgerator. As it is just me and the wife we did not think small refrigerator would be a problem. For us, it isn't, but when a whole turkey is in it, there is little room for much else special for the larger family geathering. We do have a small freezer in the basement to put forzen items in. By buying the cooked turkey a day ahead and cutting it off the bones it takes up only a small space.

I don't know how they do the bagged Butterball. I just found out about it Wensday after I got home and was looking around on the computer about turkeys thinking about what to do for Christmas. If it is as good as the unfrozen one we bought on Wensday, it will be ok. Not great, but ok.

[trader_4]

I just checked the prices at the local turkey farm here. It's a family business, been around 50+ years. They sell turkeys, cooked or uncooked, also have a small deli operation that serves turkey, soup, sandwiches, pies, etc. For a rotisserie cooked turkey, it's $5.75 /lb and for a smoked turkey breast, it's $13 a pound. They offer smoked whole turkeys, but no posted price. So, a roasted 16 lb turkey would be $92 and a 5 lb smoked breast would be $65. Sounds like a lot of money to me. I did buy a whole cooked turkey from them once. A friend's father had passed away and I split buying the turkey plus the rest of the stuff with a friend. There is stuff is pretty good, but I don't think the regular turkey is any better than what I can cook myself.

[rbowman]

No data for comparison since I never bought a pre-cooked turkey. In fact I haven't cooked one in several years but it wasn't that big a deal when I did. I had the opposite problem, finding a small enough bird that I wouldn't be eating turkey for two weeks.

Of course some people can screw up royally. When aluminum foil started getting popular one of my aunts interpreted the aluminum foil tent as wrapping the bird in a foil cocoon. We ate around noon and went over to her house in the evening. She had a large extended family, all of which were in a bad mood since the turkey was way overdue. When it was finally pronounced edible it was more steamed turkey than the traditional version.

Traditional holiday should preserve tradition. When the turkeys came with popups indicating they were done my mother approached the innovation with extreme suspicion and insisted on the tried and true technique of wiggling the drumstick.

[rbowman]

Tasteless and dry was what finally got me off the cheap breast meat.

I haven't gotten them in a long time but Costco had boneless thighs. They were pretty good. I had the same reaction to pork loins. They were inexpensive at Costco but dry. Pork shoulder is a lot tastier if I could find a parcel less than 15 pounds. Costco seems to aim at a $20 portion, which is a lot of pork shoulder.

[rbowman]

You don't like paying for the salt water that makes up 10% of the sticker weight? When I was receiving religious indoctrination, adultery was explained as watering the milk.