The Sunday before Thanksgiving marks an important day at What the Farm. It’s the END of “processing season” (praise Jesus!) After 8 full days of taking the chicken from the pasture to the freezer, we are ready for a break. This year we kept 5 whole turkeys (not counting our Thanksgiving turkey) to freeze and use throughout the year. I have to admit that other than sandwiches for lunch, we rarely ever thought about eating turkey any other time, but now that we are focusing on reducing the amount of “store-bought” in our home, we’ve gotten more creative.
How Five Whole Turkeys Last Us a Year
My husband, Chris, and I spent an hour breaking down 5 turkeys into leg quarters (thigh and drumstick), wings, breasts, and tenders. We packaged, vacuum-sealed, labeled, and put everything in the freezer and ended up with the following:
- 8 packages of Leg Quarters
- 4 packages of Wings
- 10 packages of Breast
- 2 packages of Tenders
Weight of each package
The idea is that each of these packages is enough for a family meal.
- In general, one turkey leg quarter was about 2.5 pounds
- 2 wings were about 1.5 pounds
- The tenders were packaged in groups of 4-5
- And all of the turkey breasts were packaged individually
What meals to prepare
Once we took inventory of what we have, we just spread it out over the next 12 months.
Each month we will bake one package of breasts or tenders and slice them for turkey sandwiches (my daughter Sophie’s favorite) and we will use a package of either wings or leg quarters for another meal.
That’s 2 turkey meals per month for our family.
Turkey pot pies, chili and many more!
We also made 8 quarts of stock that we will use for soups, casseroles, etc.
That’s the plan for whole turkeys throughout the year
Here’s to 12 months of amazing turkey dishes and permanently marking one more item off our grocery list.
