How much do you really pay for a turkey after you subtract the weight of the non-edibles like packaging, bones, and blood.

With Thanksgiving two days away, and the nearby Walmart selling whole turkeys for $0.68 per pound, I decided to find out.

So I bought a 16.07 lb. Jennie-O, removed the packaging, drained the blood, washed the skin,1 cooked the turkey, and then pulled the meat off while it was still hot out of the oven.

How much meat did I collect? I got 5.1 lbs, which means that instead if $0.68, I paid $2.14 per pound.

Of course, the broth, neck, giblets, and gravy packet (except the plastic bag) are all edible. But for my purposes today, Iā€™m going to count these as bonuses.

  1. Oops. Don’t wash the turkey! ↩︎