It was nearly 20 pounds. I asked for 16-20 like last year, because they gave me one just over 16; not this year. So post-Tday dinner we have done the following:
Trimmed all the meat off the carcass, then made about four quarts of stock from the bones. Froze the dark meat.
Feasted on turkey sandwiches and reprises of the dinner itself for about four days (white meat).
Made a giant batch of turkey tikka masala (dark meat) and ate on that for four days. Good stuff.
Made four ramekin-sized pot pies with dark meat and stock and had those for two meals.
Am presently waiting for another four pot pies to come out of the oven, which will be another two meals.
We’ll be making turkey soup with the remaining frozen meat and stock on Sunday to share with neighbors.
So about 15 meals containing turkey. Yeah, I’m a little burned out on it, but I think we got our money’s worth.
I think you’ve already hit all the suggestions I had for saving and repurposing the turkey. However, I keep many of these things frozen for long periods of time. Properly wrapped and frozen, a pot pie can easily last two or three months in the freezer.
Biggest I ever made was 24 lbs., but there were 17 people for Thanksgiving dinner. There were still leftovers, I double stuffed it so that added several more pounds of meat to the whole thing. We had turkey and leftovers the whole weekend and then I just tossed the rest, I just wasn’t in the mood for anymore cooking. Other years I packed up and froze turkey dinners, we’d eat some but never finish them. Another year with lots of turkey left I made a huge pot of turkey soup and nobody wanted any so I never bothered again. Usually turkey doesn’t cost much but I had to pay a premium to get that 24 pounder. There’s a farm around here that has them up to 40 lbs. and they’ll lend you the roasting pan to cook one in. That’s still insane, if you need that much turkey get several smaller ones.
Growing up, we always had a ~ 24 lb turkey a holiday meals. And we were not a large family. I do the same whenever I cook for a group. There is no such thing as too big. More soup, more sandwiches, more… leftovers. Everything you have can be safely frozen and eaten later.
We are not big turkey fans but it’s nice to have one on Thanksgiving. The families we have over for Thanksgiving are from China and generally not big turkey fans. An organic 15 pounder gave everyone (about 25 people) as much turkey as they wanted, and the Chinese pot luck covered the rest. We still had one whole breast left over.
When I was 5yo, my mom made a 23-pound turkey and was expecting lots of family members to show up. However, there was a huge blizzard, actually historic. We had drifts up to the second-floor windows. So no guests, and the four of us ate turkey forever. I have never gotten so totally sick of any particular food. I think it was several years before we had turkey again.
