Where can a get a reasonably priced Turkey in/near Zürich

I did a quick search, but surprisingly didn’t find anything quite so near thanksgiving.
Grateful for alternative suggestions, farm shops, online (not outside Switzerland. There’s a 1kg limit per person on meat products)

Do you have a Migros Cumulus card? If so use the points from that against the price of a turkey. I always get mine there because of that and also because they do smaller turkeys - 2.8kgs rather than the 3.8kgs that others have. With only 2 of us we don’t need a big turkey so 2.8kgs is more than enough.

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I gave up on whole turkeys years ago because it’s overkill for two people. This year I bought a nice, large turkey breast at Coop and it was more than enough with the rest of the sides for a good Thanksgiving meal. And a lot less work! :slight_smile:

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This!

Our first Thanksgiving here I made the mistake of buying the biggest turkey available (still smaller than a typical US bird fed doG-knows-what growth hormones) only to find once I got home that it wouldn’t fit in my Swiss oven. Cue standing outside in the freezing rain basting my bird over the patio grill…

Never again.

So unless you have a larger than typical oven, I’d really recommend a turkey breast. Then there is still room in the oven for your sides.

As to where to get a turkey: If you don’t want to run around looking for one, your local butcher likely can special order one for you. You will probably need lead-time, our butcher asks for a week ahead for whole bird turkey orders. I’ve found that my butcher really isn’t much more expensive than the big grocery stores.

Lately, I’ve been skipping the turkey altogether. Some years I do a roast a chicken and a few sides, and some years I skip tradition altogether and just do something ‘American’. This year it was that most American of dishes, enchiladas mole. :slight_smile:

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@Meloncollie I had a similar experience, but I was lucky. I first wanted to see how my roasting pan fit into our oven before I determined the size of bird to buy. Turned out the pan didn’t fit. That led to my hunt for turkey breasts instead of a whole turkey. :rofl:

Sorry @SkyBlue we’re getting a bit off track. :smiling_face: Back to your thread title - what do you consider to be “reasonably priced”?

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Yeah, we’ll probably go for just a turkey breast or maybe goose this time around. Still got cooked turkey from last year to use up so don’t really want to add any more to the freezer.

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As in previous years, Lidl are doing a 3.5kg frozen turkey for chf34. Yes, not huge, not by US or even UK standards.

I’ll be doing an early xmas dinner when I have some friends over in a couple of weeks, will be plenty to last me over the whole period with leftovers for sandwiches, curries etc.

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We haven’t had a whole (Christmas) turkey for years. But when we did we ordered from a local butcher at Swiss prices.

Last few times we have been home we’ve gone out for Christmas lunch.

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We bought one of those one year. The taste was really not very good. Pretty bland.

The French ones you can order at COOP are expensive (we pay around 140 CHF) but they are much tastier.

I was more thinking of the “reasonably priced” than anything else.

I think we had one of these the year before last, was OK. Previously we’d sourced them over the border in France, but I was becoming increasingly reticent about crossing over with more than the allowed limit. These days I’m always squeaky clean.

That year we just happened to see one in Lidl and thought why not give it a try? As I say, I think it was OK, flavour-wise, but of course a proper fresh one from a butcher will be much better. The question is, is it really worth four times the price? It was just for the two of us, but we always did the whole xmas dinner thing with so many other flavours, so the meat itself is just a part of the whole thing.

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Slight thread drift but is it Christmas Lunch or Dinner. My English in-laws insist it’s (late) Lunch around 13h30 to 14h00 whereas I fondly remember Christmas Dinner where I grew up.

Getting up before the crack of dawn to stuff the turkey is inhumane.

My mum used to put it in the oven on Christmas Eve before bed and leave it to cook during the night.
I don’t like Christmas Dinner before 4 or 5pm. A few years a go we invited Spanish couple who were in Basel on their own for Christmas Dinner, husband worked with mine. We asked them to come at 4pm, they turned up at 8.30pm by which time the meal was dried up. OH was texting them when they didn’t turn up, they kept texting back they were on their way (they were only a tram ride away in another district). When I served up the husband announced he never ate vegetables and would only eat the meat (I’d bought a lovely big piece of roast beef), unknown to me the wife had been a bariatric surgery patient for weight loss so she ate virtually nothing (she lived on a matcha drink thing with whipped cream on the top from Starbucks).
Not the best Christmas Dinner. When they went off we put the TV on and there was an announcement to say George Michael had been found dead :frowning_face_with_open_mouth:

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Gave up on birds long ago
Really!!

Now at Christmas I cook beef fillet or pork tenderloin in puff pastry

I agree with Vance that turkey doesn’t taste good

Maybe as schnitzel or Cordon Bleu is OK

Or turkey trotters, but in a pinch swan is as good as turkey.

Swan can have a really bad taste like mud, you must be sure to buy one from someone who knows how to keep them before slaughter and prepare them correctly

The slow-cook recipe I have suggests putting it in the oven at max for 20 or 30 Minutes or so and then leaving it there for 5h+ at something like 130-ish or so.

When I did this the first time, the kitchen filled with smoke. Completely.

These days, I’d dread the cleaning of the oven afterwards, so I’d look for something that can be cooked in a casserole with a lid…

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This pic is from the “where are the gobblers?” thread last year. I got a 4kg local turkey from Lidl (sourcing local food is something they excel at!). Cooked it with a pizza stone heated to 250C, after a rub and a fridge extended stay. Best turkey I’ve had in years. I certainly hope to find another this year, around mid-December.

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Christmas dinner. But where I grew up dinner was always the mid-day meal anyway.

I think in practice, when I was a kid, it always tended to migrate to be later than a normal dinnertime, maybe as late as 1430 or 1500.

I switched my vocabulary round many years ago so dinner became the evening meal, and for at least the last 25 years Christmas dinner would also have to be in the evening, because of course one would be skiing during the day. (ISTR one year we didn’t ski, can’t recall why, and it may be that we had an earlier Christmas dinner that time too).

Our local Lidl has never had fresh turkeys and never ones so big. The ones they have had came from Germany and never from Switzerland.

I guess people have different experiences depending on what country they live in.

I found a local farm-supplier at one end of Zugersee near Kussnacht am Rigi -

They obviously cater to the expat audience as although their website is in Germany, the default for the Turkey section is in English!

Anyway I’ll try them this year, especially as their prices are pretty good.

Bühlhof, Greppen

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I just looked back at my electronic kassabon…this bird cost 26€…6€ per kilo, at a shade over 4 kg.