If you’re like me, then you found yourself staring longingly at the fresh turkeys this year, convinced that they must taste better. After all, they’re fresh.
OK, so I’m not convinced that they do taste better. My husband swears by it, though. I’ll admit, the idea of skipping the thawing process with a huge turkey taking up half my fridge for a week before Thanksgiving is appealing to me. But there’s no way I’m ever going to spend $1+ a pound for fresh turkey when the frozen ones are on sale for 49 cents a pound.
I was kicking myself yesterday, though. You see, this year Tony and I went to a potluck for Thanksgiving Day and cooked our own Thanksgiving meal yesterday. We ran out to the store for a few last minute items yesterday and discovered that fresh turkeys were deeply discounted. They were actually about 40 cents a pound.
“Why didn’t we think of that?” my husband asked.
He’s right. We’ve known since before we bought our turkey that we would be cooking on Friday. It makes perfect sense that fresh turkeys would be dirt cheap the day after the holiday. What else are they going to do with a bunch of fresh turkeys with a sell-by date a week away?
Next year we’ll try a fresh turkey, and we’ll only pay 40 cents a pound. I don’t mind cooking a day late if it’s just us again.
You’ll see the same discounts happen at Christmas time as well. It’s a great idea to buy the turkeys, cook them right away, then freeze the cooked meat so it’s ready for use at a moment’s notice. Also keep an eye out for grocery stores offering deeper discount if you purchase $X from them. Last year, FoodLion offered frozen turkeys for under $.20/lb if you purchased $25 in groceries at the same time.