How to Turn 1 Turkey Breast into 27 Meals

Looking for a way to reduce your grocery bill? Choose a turkey breast instead of chicken and feed your whole family 27 times for less than $0.25 a meal!

I’ve been itching for some turkey. It must be the cooler weather or maybe it’s just a need for more protein. But our local grocery store doesn’t sell pre-cut turkey breasts. So, this past week I finally gave in and picked up a whole turkey breast.

Which, for those of you who don’t know, is basically a whole bird without the legs. And that’s fine for me, because I don’t like the legs anyway.

Since it was Labor Day weekend, we went camping at our family camp in the Catskills.

Of course, I don’t have all our “usual” cooking supplies there. So, instead we decided to “roast” the turkey on the grill instead of putting it in the oven.

Cooking the Turkey

We did it “beer can” style which makes it nice and tender, but you can cook yours any way you like.

I highly recommend you pick up a “ChickCan” rack to cook on the grill. We have both the single rack and the double rack.

They work great, but you don’t need one if you don’t have it handy. You could roast the turkey, bake it or even cut it apart and fry the individual pieces instead.

You’ll still get a ton of meals out of the meat.

After roasting the turkey, we cut off one breast and ate it for dinner that night.

Saving the Leftover Turkey Meat

We had a little bit of the cut up meat  leftover, so we put it in a freezer bag to store for another meal. Then, we wrapped the remainder of the whole turkey in foil.

When we got home after our camping trip, I pulled out the rest of the whole turkey and cut off the other breast.

I put the second breast on my meat slicer and sliced it into lunch meat. And just that turkey breast yielded roughly 2 pounds of lunch meat, or for my family, 2 weeks worth!

I bought my meat slicer at a yard sale for just $10 (Awesome purchase!), but you can get them on Amazon for less than $75.

If you regularly buy lunch meat at 8 or 9 dollars a pound, it’ll only take a few weeks to recoup your cost. It’s well worth it.

Making Stock

The rest of the bird went into a large stockpot with strainer (it makes it easier to pull the meat out of the stock).

I added a couple of bouillon cubes, some onion and spices, then filled the pot with water and let it cook for a couple of hours. After it was done cooking, I removed the turkey from the pot to let it cool, then ladled all the yummy stock into mason jars.

I got 12 pint jars of stock out of it.

More Meat!

After making the stock, I picked the remaining meat off the bones and ended up with another 6 cups of meat. So, I made some gravy (with the stock!) and we had hot turkey sandwiches for dinner.

There was still a ton of meat and gravy left after dinner, so I dumped it into a freezer bag and stuck it in the freezer for another 2 to 3 meals.

We’ll use it in soups, stews, casseroles or even more hot turkey sandwiches.

1 Turkey Breast = 27 Meals

• 4 to 5 dinner meals worth of meat
• 2 weeks (10 days) worth of lunch meat
• 12 pint jars of stock

The turkey I bought weighed in at 8 lbs. and it was just over $6.00. So, if you were to count each day of lunch meat as a meal, plus each jar of stock as a meal, that would be 27 meals worth of meat/stock for just $6.00.

That’s like paying $0.22 per meal!

You can’t beat that no matter what you buy.

So, if your family loves turkey, start thinking about buying it throughout the year. Don’t save it just for Thanksgiving or Christmas. It is cheap, plus it’s really good for you and you can use it in place of chicken in any recipe.

Try swapping the chicken in these recipes for turkey – you’ll love it!

I hope you’ve enjoyed checking out this post! It’s so nice to have leftovers that you can freeze and eat later, isn’t it?

You might also like:

• How to Freeze Potatoes Like A Pro
• How to Make Chicken Stock in Your Slow Cooker
• Homemade Chicken Nuggets for the Freezer: Your Kids Will Love These!

Have an Awesome Day!

~Vanessa