Ground Turkey

We went a little crazy on the turkey this year. Last year we bought a turkey and canned all the meat from it. We liked it so much that this year we bought 4 turkeys: 2 for canning and 2 for grinding. Ground turkey is expensive in stores so we thought this might be an option to stock up on some meat. We've used turkey in place of beef for several recipes and have been pleased with the results.

We started by de-boning the turkey. That is Craig's job. He likes to do it and I'm glad he likes to do it. It's good to have someone in the house that knows how to do this. If you do not currently have someone doing this I would advise you to go on YouTube and learn how. In the picture above you see the end result. I saved all the bones and innards for stock.  I also peeled the skin off and cut the meat into small chunks to fit in the grinder and then I ground away.

Once it was all ground up I packaged it in one pound portions in freezer bags and stuck it in the freezer for later use.

This will be an experimental year for us. We bought our turkeys frozen and thawed them to do this. I had always heard that once you thaw meat out it had to be used. I asked Craig about this before we did it, since he is the food safety expert. (His job involves running a kitchen for a hospital) He believed that as long as the turkey was ground before it was in the temperature danger zone for too long, it should be fine. We also figured that since we processed it and repackaged it, they would not get frostbite. I will have to give you an update later this year to let you know if we get sick from the meat or if it gets frostbite. I'm thinking it will be good. I am excited about all the ground turkey, regardless.

This also was a wise investment for us. We calculated the cost of the turkey and figured out that our ground turkey came out to around a dollar per pound. This is not even counting all the turkey stock we will get from the carcass. Plus, now we have 20 pounds of ground turkey in our freezer! Booyah!