How to save big money on ground turkey breast by DIY.

Every holiday, especially Thanksgiving, many supermarkets have fresh or frozen whole Turkey breasts on sale. I got mine for 89 cents a pound the other day.

I will tell you what I did today to save money but first I want to give you a magic calculation that only commercial food buyers know:

To convert a whole chicken, turkey - even whole turkey breast to its equivilant in "meat only" weight simply:

Multiply the weight of the whole poultry by 0.55

That's it. So my 13 lbs of turkey breasts (two very large breasts) worked out to 7 lbs of meat. And, in the end, when I weight it with a sale, it matched up perfectly.

Here's how you save a lot of money on 99% ground turkey breast.

1) Make sure it is a bargain by doing the math.

Take the weight of the whole turkey, multiply it by .55.

Then take the price and divide it by the number of meat lbs you came up with. In my case: 13 lbs at 89 cents a pound became 7.15 lbs at $1.64/lb. The Jeanni-O 99% fat free ground turkey breast in our area is going for $4.99/lb. That's a 68% savings - its 1/3 the price doing it yourself! Remember that as you go through the work you're going to go through.

2) If the meat is fresh, freeze it. Mostly frozen meat is MUCH easier to work with and much safer. If its frozen, go to the next step.

3) Take it out of the freezer and put it in a big bowl. Let it sit there for 10-15 minutes until the skin is partially thawed.

4) Get a larger bowl, put ice at the bottom. Set the turkey bowl inside of the ice bowl. This will serve to keep the turkey partially frozen throughout the whole process.

NOTE: from this point forward, maintain clean hands. Use gloves if you can or if not, wash hands as frequently as you like. A spray bottle with a weak bleach solution (a capful or two of bleach in a spray bottle should be fine, or buy an over-the-counter one) is helpful too. Clean yourself and equipment as many times as you like. I did it three times while preparing and washed my hands about 10 times. Now to continue:

5) Take the skin and pull it off. You should be able to get your hands under the skin and peel it off like an unripe bannana. Get as much skin off as you can. This is where most of the fat lies.

6) Get a very large cutting board out. You can cover it with tin foil (I did) if you like.

Using your favorite knife (mine is a steak knife), cut the meat down to the bone and tear the meat off in chunks. Use kitchen scissors, knives, whatever you wish to get the meat off of the bone. There are techniques out there, but I don't know them and don't want to know. My goal is just to get most of the meat off of the bones. Put the meat in the same bowl the turkey is in. This took me about 15 minutes.

7) Using kitchen scissors, cut the meat into smaller chunks, enough to fit into a:

a) food processor

b) meat grinder

c) Ninja Master Prep (that's what I used)

d) Magic Bullet (I'm told this grinds meat as well)

e) If you have nothing that can grind or chop up meat into tiny bits and pieces, then you'll need to get one.

8) Doing small batches as a time, I put the chunks of mostly frozen turkey meat into my Ninja Master Prep (the smaller container).

9) Pulse about 12 times. Viola - "instant" ground turkey!

For single serving sizes, I then took two "snack bags" and put one half of the meat into one bag, the other half into the other bag. These little bags hold about 1/2 a cup, which is approximately 4 oz of meat, which is a serving size of ground turkey breast! (mine worked out to 4.6oz each when I did the math, but its plenty close enough)

I pushed most of the air out of the bags while sealing and then put the bags in the same bowl the meat was in (with the ice in the bottom bowl to keep it all chilled).

This part of the prrocess took the longest, but that's because I was doing a massive amount of meat (over 7 lbs) and processing it about 1 cup of meat at a time.

But it was very easy and well worth the savings from the process.

I now have 25 bags of single portion ground non-fat turkey breast sitting in my freezer.

When it comes time to cook it, add whatever fats or oils or oil substitutes that you need. And you will need SOME kind of oil/fat/substitute as 99% fat free meat sticks to the pan - sticks to anything. It's PURE PROTEIN. No fat to grease the pan.

But this gives you flexibility.

If you KNOW what kind of fat you like (bacon fat is popular or you could use high-oleic safflower oil (I found mine for cheap at Whole Foods - it has even more monounsaturated fat than olive oil and yet you can cook at high temperatures (up to 445 degrees))... oh I digressed...

if you KNOW what kind of fat or flavors that you want, you can mix the oil/fat/substitute/flavors/salt in with the meat cubes so that it mixes with it at the same time. Instant sausage! Instant flavored burger meat! Instant meatloaf meat!

I may try it in the future with onion soup mix. Mix it right in along with some healthy fat.

So, that's it! Save your cash, do it yourself. It took me, not knowing what I was doing at all, a little under two hours from start to finish.

Next time it'll probably take me about an hour, now that I know what I'm doing.

Best part about this, beyond just being cheap, is that the meat was easy to work with and SAFE! Keeping everything partially frozen seems to be the real trick here.

I got the idea from one little blurb on a website that said, "Commercial Butchers typically grind their meat while frozen."

I thought, "Frozen? Frozen? You can DO THAT?!?!?" Yes. Yes you can. And you should. It is the best way.

Kenneth Udut Webmaster of http://free.naplesplus.us - Naples, FL News, Jobs, For Sale, Busienss Directory, Events, Videos. Also owner of Affordable Trapping 239-465-9291