The turkey that time forgot

Originally published at Notes from the bunker…. You can comment here or there.

A number of years ago, me and missus were strolling through the local ALbertson’s the day after Thanksgiving. I was looking for bargain turkeys but couldnt find any. I said to her “Its the day after Thanksgiving. Where are all the marked down turkeys?” An employee overheard me and steered me to an endcap freezer. Butterball turkeys for, I think , around twentyfive cents a pound or some ridiculously low price. (Seventeen cents is the number sticking in my head.) What had happened was that they had gotten a bunch of ‘fresh’ turkeys and someone had put them in the freezer. Apparently, to be labelled fresh, they cannot be frozen. So they had all these turkeys they needed to unload. Naturally, I went to the front of the store and grabbed a cart. We wallked outta there with something like 125# of frozen. I used them up as time went by but saved the last one…a big twenty-something pounder. But I never got around to using it. Mostly because the thawing process would have taken a few weeks. But, last week I dragged it outta the freezer and set it in the fridge. Just pulled it outta the oven a while ago and its juuuust fine. how long was it in the cryo-nap? by my math, about five years. No special treatment…this one didnt get vacuum sealed. But it seems to have turned out just right. Unless theres some ghastly ..ahem…’digestive complication’….I would say that five years didnt seem to do any harm to the frozen turkey. So! Turkey chili and turkey soup on the horizon and , of course, turkey sandiwiches.

But, more importantly, another empirical lesson that, if frozen properly, meats last a darn long time.