According to information from the folks at Butterball, about 90% of Americans cook a turkey for Thanksgiving and about 50% of Americans cook a turkey for Christmas.  That’s a lot of turkeys being consumed over the holidays to say the very least.

Turkeys are normally a very frugal choice for holiday meals.  Price per pound is typically very attractive so you can feed a lot of people for very little money.  But, how do you know what size turkey to buy?  You don’t want to plan too small and feel like you passed up a real deal, but you don’t want to plan too big and end up being stressed out about wasting leftovers.

Enter our friends at Butterball.com.  With a little help from their turkey experts, we’re going to give you some guidelines as to the size of turkey you should consider.  For simplicity, we’re going to assume that everyone would like to have leftovers.  Here are just a few examples:

• For a guest list of 4 adults and 2 kids, you’ll want to cook about a 7 pound turkey, using around 5 cups of stuffing.  If you are big eaters, go up to a 10 pound turkey and stuff it with about 7 cups of stuffing.
• If you are serving 4 adults and 6 kids, and there aren’t really big eaters in the bunch, you’ll be looking for a 10 pound bird and stuff it with about 7 cups of stuffing.
• What if you have a house full with 6 adults and 12 kids, and you’re all big eaters?  You’re looking at a whopping 24 pound turkey with about 18 cups of stuffing.

You also may want to consider alternatives to cooking one large bird.  If you have the oven space, you can choose two smaller turkeys and cook them together.  The advantage is more drumsticks, more thighs, more breasts, more wings… well, you get the idea.  If you choose this method, be sure you have two roasting pans that fit side-by-side in your oven, leaving room around the sides for the heat in the oven to move around freely.

Once you decide what size turkey or turkeys to buy, your frugal planning continues.  If you bought a turkey with leftovers in mind, it’s time to get out your recipes and lay out your plan of attack.  Cooking a 24 pound turkey and not having a strategy for leftovers means turkey sandwiches for weeks.  This is what produces that dreaded moment when you have to throw away food.

To prevent the “leftover panic” start by taking all the leftover meat off the bird and put it all into nice zip lock bags and set in the refrigerator.  Once the good meat has been packaged up, scrape all the leftover fat, skin, bones, and the entire carcass into a big soup pot.  Set that in the refrigerator if you don’t have time to boil it for stock right away.

In order to keep on track with this leftover turkey, get busy as soon as possible boiling the bones for stock and separating the meat into packages for recipes.

I’ve included a very simple stock recipe so you won’t have to put that off too long!  Here it is:

Classic Turkey Stock

• Put turkey carcass and all leftover fat, skin, and bones, in big soup pot – cover with fresh cold water.

Add to soup pot:

• yellow onion or onions – scrubbed clean but not peeled – cut in half
• celery – 1/2 a bunch – use leafy tops
• peppercorns – 8 or 16 depending on size of bird

Bring to boil, then immediately turn down to simmer slowly, gentle bubbles rising to the surface.  Put a lid on the pot loosely, tipped.  Let simmer for at least a couple hours, the longer the better.

Place a colander or large sieve in another big pot and pour through to strain off bones, vegetables, etc.  Pour stock into small containers and place in FREEZER to cool quickly.  If you want, keep some in the freezer and put some in the refrigerator, but not until the stock has been cooled completely in the freezer.

And, to help keep you on that frugal path, some simple recipe suggestions to use up the meat from the bird are listed here:

Turkey Veggie Stir Fry

Barbecued Turkey Oven Bake

Turkey and Swiss Calzone

Turkey Jalapeno Quesadillas

The frugal challenge when planning a holiday dinner is budgeting not only money, but the size of your meal.  You can do that if you plan the size of your bird ahead of time AND plan a strategy to use every last ounce of those leftovers.  You can get a lot of mileage out of a holiday turkey with a good plan of attack!