To buy a supermarket christmas turkey?

[Littleunicorndreams]

It’s my first time hosting christmas for a crowd. I have cooked plenty of xmas dinners but at other houses and I’ve never had to provide the turkey. Everyone else has always had turkeys sourced from good butchers or their local farm shop.

We don’t have a butcher or farm shop that we trust and use regularly? But AIBU to just add one to my Xmas delivery from Sainsbury's
Asking now as I believe I need to order it soon?

£90 turkey gets its throat slit just the same .

It's ridiculous to believe that supermarket means inferior. Of course it does not. They carry great, organic, well sourced meat. This is from a vegetarian.

They offer lots of choice and you can choose from many price points, organic or not and many different supermarkets. Where's the dilemma?

Mrsjayy yes but it will have had a longer and better quality of life than a cheap intensively farmed one of the same size.

You will get free range from a supermarket,

And you are also less likely to be buying antibiotics & GM with in unininetntionally.

Yes- you can quite easily spend £90 on a turkey at Waitrose and it will be better quality and have lived a better life than a £20 turkey.

YABU again.

Nice judgement of everyone who buys supermarket turkeys. It's just meat. Literally the most random thing to be a snob about.

I’ve trie the full range. Nobody could taste the difference or remember from one year to another. So now I just buy a frozen free range. It defrosts in the laundry room so saves space in my fridge. Winner!

A turkey's a turkey's a turkey! They are all procured from turkey farms! Personally, after having free range bronze at a friend's house I was happy to go back to frozen butter basted here, though in principle, if I could afford it, I would choose free range.

falcon5 Thank you SO much for highlighting the NFU TurkeyFinder website. Was having the same issue as OP and we’ve solved it thanks to your suggestion. Local farm identified.

I've heard Morrison's do a lovely turkey.

I'm in Scotland though, and I know they can vary. I think they're reasonably close to butcher-like quality though.

Go free range for animal welfare reasons. Battery farming is cruel but apart from that there will be little difference in flavour between a supermarket free range bird and a top of the range Kelly Bronze from a fancy supplier.

We used to have a top free range turkey supplied by my DH's employer. The flavour was better. But a lot is down to the cooking of it.

I'd try to go for the highest welfare that you can. But that isn't always guaranteed, there's footage every year of abuse in supossed high welfare farms.

So I wouldn't overstress yourself. They all are treated badly the the last two days of their life, before they are killed.

I've had turkeys from farm shops and Tesco, and, allowing for the fact I bought the nicer bronze turkey from Tesco, not a big standard or frozen one, I can honestly say I couldn't tell the difference. The nice supermarket ones are not much cheaper than the farm ones either so I think they are probably similar quality, but much more easily come by.

Oh sorry, you’re right- I think I got sidetracked by the posters talking about how expensive turkeys were and forgot how the thread started. My bad!

Dieu thanks for the Morries thumbs up

This thread is a revelation to me. I thought everyone bought them from the supermarket..

I always buy my turkey from Tescos and have never had a problem.

I don't even order it in advance. Just pick one out about 3 days before Xmas when I do my shop.

Oh, just get one from the super - as Eleanor said, it's the trimmings that matter.

Perhaps you could do as my mother did one year - Grandma (her MIL) was staying and she was one of life's moaners - and that included 'supermarket birds'. On the 23rd, me and DM told her we were driving up to the 'farm shop' to pick up the turkey. On the sly, we went to Tesco, bought a bog standard one and back in the car, we took it out of its wrapper and shoved it in a white pedal bin liner, knotted the top and cut the ends off. We then wrote our surname on it with a black marker.

We got back home and presented our 'farm bird' with quite a flourish and during the meal itself, DGM commented, a few times, that the meat was 'so much nicer than that Tesco rubbish'.

I buy my crown from Iceland. £16 and its lovely. Ive only bought fresh once and for the price i vowed not to do it again.

Im also given a free turkey which is fresh as i use that instead of the crown. Its not guaranteed that a free one is given so i buy a crown from Iceland.

YABVU for using the word 'source' Unless you're actually going round bunch of turkey farms to evaluate their farming methods, then it's just 'buying' regardless of whether you hand over your money to an artisan butcher or Asda.

@ViciousJackdaw I love that story

M&S sell lovely turkeys if you pre-order.