Cookaholics Bulletin Board

I have a turkey in my freezer that I would like to thaw, grind up & refreeze. Has anyone done this & lived to tell about it?

Also, I know I need some fat in the ground turkey. Do you use skin? or what?
TIA

Kathy,

What is a frozen turkey??????????????????????

Yes, you will live. I'd use leaf lard, chicken fat or pork fat for flavor. Even frozen turkey skin has to make some nice crispies.

Tim

Thawing is no problem, but properly refreezing meat may be a little difficult for the home cook.
Here's why:
When thawing we want to thaw as slowly as we can. The refrigerator is the usual method, but it takes a couple to several days, depending on the mass involved. Thawing too quickly causes different rates of thermal expansion resulting in shear stresses over regions of meat. This disrupts the cell membranes so they start to loose their liquid resulting in less flavor and moisture. Proper thawing can be done, provided you have ample time.

Grinding the meat is something that I can't talk about. No experience.

Refreezing is the main problem you will have. As opposed to thawing slowly, we want to refreeze as QUICKLY as possible. This makes for smaller ice crystals. Slow freezing makes big crystals and these tend to rupture the tissue cells; hence loss of moisture and quality. There is the obvious argument that you've just torn the meat to shreds via the meat grinding process, yea, I know, but presuming the cell walls are intact, refreezing needs to be very rapid. The process is usually to refrigerate and get the meat temp down to just above freezing, then hit it hard with a sub-zero blast to minimize crystal growth.

Maybe a top notch butcher shop can do the honors?
In the past we had 10,000 gallons of LN2 at our disposal, so if you can get a bucket of that, it's 350 degrees F below zero.
More realistically, dry ice is about -110 deg F.
Either way -- WEAR GLOVES.

Fridge and freeze if you're not too concerned with it, but don't go from room temp to the freezer - that would be bad.

Actually, grinding should be done at as low a temperature as possible. I think you could do your grinding when the meat is still slushy and have very good results.