Thanksgiving is around the corner and plans are in the works for your holiday meal. A meal that will most likely center around a turkey.
Do you always wonder how big the turkey needs to be? CLICK HERE to use this convenient tool to calculate the amount of Turkey, Stuffing and Gravy you need to make for your gathering. It allows you to specify adults, children, and eating style!
Many supermarkets offer free turkeys as a holiday promotion. I now splurge and buy a free range organic turkey for our Thanksgiving Meal. It’s a couple of times a year so I feel it’s worth spending a little extra to know how it grew and what it ate.
Like most areas of grocery shopping these day, consumers have many choices. Within each type of turkey – you may want to learn about the individual farm that raised your turkey. Each farm has their own set of standards.
Kosher – Kosher Turkeys are blessed by a Rabbi, they will be rinsed and salted, cleaned with fresh water. The Kosher process tends to be a more time consuming way of processing meat and the process will typically produce a higher quality product.
Brined – Brined Turkey is prepared in a salted solution. I’ve never purchased a brined turkey, but I’ve had good results brining a turkey and it was delicious.
Free Range – Free range is a bit of a nebulous term due to the fact that the USDA only requires the animal have access to the outdoors, due to this it can pay to learn a little bit more about the actual farm raising the turkey to ensure the turkey you are buying has actually roamed the range free.
Certified Organic – Certified Oraganic Turkeys should be truly free range, humanely raised with plenty of room to roam, with access to fresh water. They should be fed an all vegetarian organic diet without GMO. They should be raised free of antibiotics, growth stimulants, or chemical fertilizers.
Conventional – Convential Turkeys are raised in a confined space, about 1/4 of that of a free range turkey, will be given growth stimulants that will cause them to mature significantly faster than it would on it’s own.
What’s It Going To Cost Me:
We did a little shopping around to find out what prices are in the marketplace, this should give you an idea of what you can expect to pay.
Whole Foods:
Mary’s Certified Organic – ate an organic diet $3.69 per pound.
Mary’s Natural Free Range $2.29 per pound.
Diestel Free Range $2.69 per pound.
Heidi’s Organic $3.99 per pound.
Delivered:
Check out Local Harvest to find local Turkey Farms. Prices range from $59 – $150+.
Spud Delivery also offers Turkeys with their organic grocery delivery service.
Organic Turkey’s $4.49 per pound.
Free Range Turkey’s for $3.22 per pound (Delivered to your door!).Spud has extended the following offer to PND readers – use code PureNaturalDiva in the promo code field to get $25 off your first 4 orders with Spud ($6.25 will be taken off each order). Delivery with Spud is free with a minimum order (in LA $32).
Spud delivers to: Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, & in Western Canada, Vancouver, Vancouver Island & Calgary.
The Farmer’s Market!
If you are lucky enough to have a farmer’s market with a poultry vendor, chances are good that they will offer turkeys. Our local vendor was pre-ordering for $3.99 per pound.
Hopefully this gives you more information for your turkey shopping this Thanksgiving.
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We have reserved a turkey at a locally owned store, it’s organic and free range. I love buying from the store we did because I know the owners and I know their standards meet mine and they are very picky about what meat they will sell.