turkey sizes

[rbowman]

I'm not sure I'd eat a turkey with three wings; sounds like gene splicing gone awry.

[rbowman]

Precisely. My mother-in-law was a harridan who insisted on cooking the stuffing in a separate pan. I had to retrain her daughter.

At least Beef didn't suggest cooking up a Tofurky.

[Ralph Mowery]

For the restraunt turkeys all that is probably true.

For places like the volnteer fire departments, the labor is really free. The ones doing the cooking are volunteers. They have a big brick fireplace of somekind with a cover it. Seems to be a grill about 5 feet wide and 20 feet long.. I have seen them, but never paid any attention to them. They seem to cook the hams and turkeys all over the same fire pit. That way size is no problem. Just put the smaller ones on later in the time frame.

[gfretwell]

I can see you have a reason to buy a cooked one (the smoke flavor) Maybe you just need to negotiate the size. If they are decent businessman, you will serve your customer but don't be surprised if the price is up a tad.

If you are going to buy a turkey and cook it in a bag, it will be cheaper to just get a turkey on sale and buy a cooking bag. That is really simple to do. If you like that crispy skin thing, open the bag toward the end of the cooking cycle. I leave it sealed up the whole time because my wife doesn't eat the skin anyway. It makes the turkey juice squirting moist. Cook it breast down too. That keeps the white meat moist. I toss some spices in the bag with the flour they recommend and shake it up to coat the turkey.

[gfretwell]

You don't really have to cook the whole shoulder, I cut the big ones into two or 3 pieces and freeze the ones I don't cook right away. Actually my dog likes pork shoulder too so we can make the leftovers disappear. Pork shoulder is cheaper than most comparable dog food.

[trader_4]

I would still do it. Put it in a 5 gallon bucket, HD sells them if you don't have one. Cover it with water day and a half before cooking time. Then depending on the outside temp, check the water temp a couple times a day. If it's getting too warm, just add some ice. I think this is largely overblown. Even if you took a frozen turkey and left it out somewhere that it's 60F, I doubt anything bad is going to happen as long as you keep an eye on it and use it as soon as it's thawed. First, it's frozen and the temp of the outside is going to be lower than room temp until it all thaws out. Second, it gets cooked to 160F which kills all the bacteria anyway. So, I think you;d have to leave it someplace like 80F, let it all thaw out and start to rot, before it was bad. And even then, I would bet it would taste bad before it was capable of making you sick.

I would think you could cook any bird from frozen. The only problem is, the outside will become overcooked, dry, burned, before the inside is done, so it's going to be far from perfect. I bet the cook from frozen ones are smaller, which is a help. After that, IDK, good question what they can do to make it work right.

[Cindy Hamilton]

I have not. The notion of steaming a turkey in a plastic bag holds no appeal. The best part of the turkey is the crispy skin.

Cindy Hamilton

[Ed Pawlowski]

I've had the cooked-in-bag turkey. It was OK, but the skin is garbage.

[Scott Lurndal]

Costco's shoulder packs are about 14 pounds (2 7# butts) here; I smoke and pull them; freeze the cooked pulled pork in 3.5 oz vacuum packs. Use for sandwiches, stir into scrambled eggs, as a pizza topping, stir into mac&cheese, stir-fry with vegetables, stir with mashed potatoes, gravy, onions and mushrooms, etc, et alia, und so weiter.

[rbowman]

My 'freezer' is only operational this time of year.

[rbowman]

That goes double for duck.

[gfretwell]

You can crisp up the skin by cutting the bag open for the last half hour to hour of cooking.

[Clare Snyder]

Nope - just bad packing of mutilated birds

[micky]

I tried streaming a turkey but Verizon said I had the wrong kind of modem.

[micky]

I got an f grade once. He was not just cheaper, they paid ME to take care of him. He'd been kicked out of turkey school and in return for the pay, we had to give him classes on the meaning of various kinds of gobbling and on turkey etiquette. He was a good student for 3 weeks until we ate him.