Low-salt Easter turkeys are scarce in 2024

One of the most popular posts on my blog this time of year deals with making turkey for Easter dinner to cut down on your salt intake at the holiday table. You can read it by clicking Low-salt Easter dinner: how to enjoy the holiday meal.

Sarra Lee reduced sodium oven roasted turkey — *Beware self-basting turkeys, they are loaded with salt. Always read the nutrition label before buying.*

In the post-Covid food retailing environment, however, finding a fresh, low-sodium turkey has been tough. Two mainline supermarkets I went to had only one turkey brand, Jennie-O or Butterball, in freezer and refrigerated cases crammed with high-salt hams. Those turkeys come with self-basting fluids that are loaded with salt.

I finally turned to Whole Foods which thankfully had fresh turkeys, although even those had more salt, 125 mg a serving, than truly fresh turkeys which have about 75 mgs per serving. And I had to pay up, around $3 a pound, for the fresh turkey.

Another issue, stores are no longer carrying low-fat turkey gravy. During and after Covid, supermarkets cut the number of products they carried to simplify their supply chain management, and to increase profits. Low-salt, low-fat and low-sugar items suffered as a result.

Shop carefully this Easter, always read nutrition labels and enjoy a peaceful Sunday dinner.

March 27, 2024 0

A classic use for Thanksgiving left-overs — low-sodium turkey soup

I always hate throwing away my turkey skeleton after Thanksgiving because I would think about using it for soup. This year, I took the extra effort and made the soup, low-sodium of course.

I started with a recipe I found online, but then generally winged it, adding what I needed to give it flavor in the absence of salt.

I had two boxes of low-sodium chicken broth (see photos here) in my fridge, having opened them to use for basting my turkey on Thanksgiving. What was left went into a soup pot after I had sauteed some celery and onion bits. I was lucky enough to get those already cut at a local supermarket that was selling big boxes of celery and onions for only a dollar after Thanksgiving. They were packaged for making stuffing.

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November 29, 2022 0

2022 low-salt turkey update for Thanksgiving

Low-salt turkeys seem a bit more widely available in 2022 than they were in 2021. That means you might actually spend less per pound on a turkey this year than last, like I did, despite inflated food prices.

Whole Foods has low-salt turkeys, the same farm that I bought from last year, for $3.99 a pound. A little steep I thought, especially considering that mainline supermarkets often offer high-salt turkeys for 69 cents a pound as a loss leader to get you to buy other things.

So I checked a local Jewel supermarket and found a low-salt turkey for $2.19 a pound. At just over 15 pounds, that meant a considerable savings compared to what I would have spent at Whole Foods.

I look for turkeys with only 60-70 mgs of salt per four-ounce serving (I normally eat a lot more than four ounces). Turkeys at Jewel and elsewhere can have more than 200 mgs of salt per serving because they’re injected with a salt solution that self-bastes the turkey, making it unhealthy in the process.

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November 22, 2022 0

Thanksgiving leftovers recipes: Turkey naan’wich with cranberry sauce & curry mayo; curry stew with naan

I recently received a giant box of samples from two food companies, Atoria’s Family Bakery and Spicemode, along with some ideas for using their products with Thanksgiving leftovers.

Before accepting the samples, I did what I usually do when food company public relations people approach me about trying samples — I asked if the products are low-salt, low-fat, low-sugar. A lot of companies never respond to those questions. But I received a very nice response from the owner of Spicemode through the PR person.

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November 17, 2022 1