In my freezer, I have a "Honeysuckle White (brand) turkey breast in an ‘up to a 15% solution’ " I’ve never bought one before, but it was a ridiculously good deal.
My problem; what can i now do with it? My family can’t eat “7.16lbs” of turkey, even taking away the bone weight, in one or two days.
So, can I cook and carve it, re-freezing the rest , or do I need to wait until I have a need (pot-luck) to serve the whole thing?
Any help with general turkey breast recipes will also help.
Well, I think that a fresh-roasted turkey breast makes the world’s best cold-cuts. If you have some sort of picnic or other event coming up where a big pile o’ fresh turkey sandwiches would be eaten up, you could time it for that.
I like to season it well, roast it slowly until it’s almost done, and then turn up the heat high for the last 15 minutes or so to brown the skin well. Wrap it in foil while it’s still warm and refrigerate it until sandwich day. Buy some better breads, then carve the breast up nicely into thin slices and create batches of turkey, bacon and tomato SWs, turkey with cranberry sauce SWs, turkey-and-ham SWs, etc., etc.
Well, I’d rinse the breast and pat dry, then rub the skin with course salt, butter and pepper and roast until it is 171 degrees in the thickest portion. I’d serve with stove top and mashed potatoes, use the drippings to make gravy (thickened with a flour roux) and cranberry sauce.
Whatever portion of the meat your family doesn’t eat the first night, strip it from the bones, and cut it into cubes. Boil the bones a bit and make some stock. Both the cubed turkey and the stock can be frozen in meal sized portions.
The turkey cubes can be used for anything that calls for cooked diced poultry. Turkey ala king is much better than chicken ala king in my book, and turkey salad is far better than chicken salad. The meat can also be used in a stir fry or casserole or fried rice, or soup. Since it is fully cooked, it doesn’t need to cook all that long or at all, so it can be used as the start of another night’s quick dinner.
You can freeze what you’re not going to use in a couple of days.
If you have the capabilities, grilled, smoked turkey breast is awesome.
You can cube and freeze some for use in salads.
You can use cooked turkey in just about any recipe that calls for shredded or chopped cooked chicken, like chicken enchiladas or chicken pot pie or chicken divan.
A classic is turkey tetrazzini, which is basically creamed turkey and mushrooms with sherry in the sauce, mixed with spaghetti and baked with parmesan cheese on top. Yum. Haven’t had it in aeons, and now I want some.
It should freeze perfectly well after cooking. Try to get the air out of the bag to avoid freezer burn if you’ll be keeping it in there a long time.
I’d make some turkey divan.
The basic recipe is a layer of green veggies, a layer of turkey, a layer of mayo mixture, cheese on top, and bake. The actual amounts aren’t critical, so for example if you like more veggies use more, less cheese if that’s not your thing, etc.
How I make it:
Optional: sautee some onion or leek in a little oil.
Take about two lbs of your choice of frozen green veggies. I use green beans or broccoli, but you can go with an asian mix or something with a few mushrooms in it, whatever floats your boat. Cook in pan over medium heat…the goal is to drive off some of the moisture and heat them through. You could get fancier and blanch some fresh veggies etc. I’ll leave that up to you.
Drain any moisture off and transfer that to a 9x13 as your bottom layer (adding the onion/leek if desired). Next, place a layer of shredded turkey atop that. I sprinkle some kosher salt on top.
In a medium bowl, mix 8 oz mayonnaise with about 1/4 cup lemon juice. Add some dashes of curry powder, taste. I like adding fresh ground black pepper to it, but that’s optional. When satisfied with the curry flavor intensity, spread over the turkey (it’ll be a thin layer). Then top with 6-8 oz sharp shredded cheddar. Some go an extra step and add some breadcrumbs. Bake at 325 or 350 till cheese bubbles.
It’s somewhat complete as a meal…you could add other things, like water chestnuts for crunch. I’d have some breadsticks, maybe, and a little chilled fruit on the side.
If you have a slow cooker large enough to hold it, here is a good recipe. Thaw it then brown it on the stove. Place in slow cooker with a can of cranberry sauce and a jar of orange marmalade. Cook until done. Here YMMV based on your slow cooker, but assume 8 or more hours on low.
There’s just the two of us and when I’ve bought a big turkey breast, I always think “why did I buy that huge sullen chunk of protein, it’s going to be hanging around forever”. And somehow I’m always surprised at how fast it disappears. Turkey sandwiches on marble rye, with lettuce and mayo, just disappear that turkey breast practically overnight. By the third day, I cut off whatever is left and put it in containers with gravy and freeze, to bring out in triumph a couple of weeks later.
I’d do almost the same thing, except that I season with poultry seasoning instead of salt and pepper. I can find turkey stove top just about year round, and that’s the stuffing that we prefer. There’s also turkey gravy in a jar that isn’t bad at all.
Homemade turkey soup is very comforting.
I have a little over a pound of ground turkey in the fridge right now. I have snubbed it before, but that was before I had all my upper teeth removed. I can nom on ground meat, and I’m tired of ground beef, so I’m eating some ground turkey for a change. It’s not bad, as long as I am not trying to pretend that it’s ground beef.
Thanks for all the advice and recipe suggestions. I’ve cooked turkey before for holidays, but I’ve never had enough leftovers to have to figure out what to do them. I’m now picturing half for dinner and the rest for cold cuts. What would be the best (oven only, no grill or smoker right now) recipe for the best taste hot or cold?
I’d ask if I were married to you, except Wife is not yet interested in MBs. There’s hope, as I believe she recently disagreed with someone online, but she doesn’t have your history.
This is an important message for everyone except those Merkins with taste buds as stunted as Lynn’s:
The only gravy, ESPECIALLY TURKEY, that is edible is homemade. And it’s simple enough even a drunken husband can make it: Heat up the liquid at the bottom of the roasting pan. Slowly add a roux of flour dissolved in water that is the consistency of whole milk. Keep mixing until it curdles. VOILA!
Canned/jarred gravy indicates an ancestry from the British Isles (Wife’s example: Wales), and they plain can’t cook and will RUIN your holiday dinners.
One meal just sliced up, with veggies, gravy (store bought, a plain breast doesn’t make the best gravy), maybe some Stove-Top stuffing.
Then: Remove all the meat you can from the bones. Add bones to stock pot with water, onions, celery, carrots, bay leaves, peppercorns (and if you like, some allspice and cloves; those are ingredients in the brining recipe I use and they add something nice to the stock), and boil it until the bones are falling apart. Strain, pick any residual meat from the bones and add that to the meat you carved off before stock-ifying it.
Then make this (I double it): http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Turkey-Potpie-with-Cheddar-Biscuit-Crust-240566
I always make the filling the day before and pop it into the fridge, when I go to cook it the next day I pour it cold into a glass pan, slide that into the oven while I mix up the biscuits, then add the biscuit topping and bake it the rest of the day.
If you’ve got enough meat left over, add it to the leftover stock, then add sliced carrots / celery / other veggies, boil that up for a bit, then add noodles and you’ve got soup. If you don’t have enough meat, save the stock in the freezer, then the next time you make a turkey breast, use the stock from that one, plus the stock you’ve saved, and make a big pot of turkey soup instead of one of the casseroles.
Turkey breasts and ground turkey don’t really make enough liquid to make enough gravy. I cooked up about 2/3 to 3/4 of a pound of ground turkey last night, and got barely half a spoonful of liquid from it. I had to augment that liquid somehow.
When I have enough liquid from any sort of meat, then I do make homemade gravy, and it’s much better than the jarred stuff. However, the jarred stuff is much better than no gravy at all.
As for my ancestry, my father’s parents came over from Sicily. My mother’s parents mostly came from somewhere in the British Isles, but it was quite a few generations ago.
See, what you do, is get out some of the frozen turkey stock from the last time you had a turkey breast and boiled the carcass and combine that with any drippings from the current one to make gravy.
That’s what I would do. Serve it as a main meal then turkey tetrazzini plus cold cuts and then soup. Easy soup rescipe is 2 packs of lipton dry chicken soup, 2 eggs, a little extra macaroni and some turkey meat.
1 pkg refrigerated pie crusts
4 tbs butter, divided
1 sm onion, chopped
2 ribs celery, chopped
2 carrots, chopped
2 tbs fresh parsley, chopped
1/2 tsp dried oregano
1/2 tsp poultry seasoning
2 cups chicken stock
2 sm potatoes, peeled and chopped
1-1/2 cups cubed cooked turkey (or chicken)
2 tbs flour
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup frozen peas
1 egg, beaten with a splash of water, for egg wash
Preheat oven to 425°. Place one crust into pie pan.
Melt 2 tbs butter in a large skillet over medium heat. Saute onion, celery, carrots, parsley, oregano, poultry seasoning and salt and pepper to taste until vegetables are soft. Stir in the stock. Bring to a boil, and add potatoes, and cook until tender but firm.
In a medium saucepan, melt the remaining two tbs butter. Stir in the flour and cook for one minute. Add the milk, and heat through, stirring until thickened. Add the turkey and peas into the veggies, then add the flour/milk mixture into the skillet. Stir until heated through. Cool slightly.
Pour the turkey mixture into the pie crust, then top with other pie crust. Flute the edges (or crimp with a fork) and cut slits for letting out the steam. Brush with beaten egg, and bake for 15 minutes. Reduce temperature to 350° and continue baking for 20 minutes, or until crust is golden brown.
