Rotten turkeys spark Christmas fury as Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Lidl and Asda are blamed

https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/latest-news/rotten-turkeys-spark-christmas-fury-36456807

Posted by dailystar_news

29 comments

  4. 1. NOT news.
    2. Every year some people don’t store the Turkeys correctly and seek to blame others.

  6. At least they admit this is an annual trend. Surely for one meal a year which you find so incredibly important, it’s not hard to have a reserve option. I can appreciate people being upset their giant bird or joint is unfit to eat, but even on a limited budget you can have a back up plan. A cook-from-frozen turkey crown or Wellington, compared to the entire cost of Christmas, could sensibly save the day, or become another festive meal for New Years.

  7. Didn’t check the date, family get angry, blame supermarket.

    Though, to be fair, who cooks a turkey two days before Christmas?

    Contributory negligence I believe.

  8. Every bloody year.

    Honestly stop buying turkey unless you actually know how to cook and have the equipment to store one safely.

    My Facebook and local news will be full of this tomorrow. People who live on takeaways or ready meals deciding they can whip up a roast. They buy a supermarket turkey and then store it poorly at the wrong temperature. Best case is it’s overcooked and dry, often it’s a stinking mess and has rotted.

    Go with a frozen crown, get an easier meat to store/cook or just practise throughout the year if you really want it.

  9. Only takes a batch to accidentally be defrosted then frozen again before being sold. Or incorrectly stored at home.

  10. Why is this a story every single year? Surely somebody would have figured out refrigeration and logistics by now.

  11. This happened to me one year. Bird was in date etc. realised we couldn’t do anything at that point and honestly all the trimmings were more than enough to feed everyone as we always have too much food anyway. It actually wasn’t a bad Christmas meal at all.

  14. A lot of people simply don’t keep their refrigerator cold enough for storing meat safely over the 24 hour line and that’s why half these cases happen. Red meats need to be somewhere in your fridge that won’t rise above 4°C and poultry needs 2-3°C. Anything warmer they will start to spoil after a day.

  16. I wonder how much of this is down to faulty or damaged packaging: over the last few years, I’ve become much more observant of it, and have entirely stopped buying sous vide meats in boxes because I’ve had so many products from different supermarkets that weren’t actually sealed.

    “A family-run butchers says supermarket turkeys are particularly prone to going bad because they are slaughtered sometimes one month in advance of Christmas Day. According to the independent business, some supermarkets typically bag the birds, have carbon dioxide pumped into them to replace any oxygen that would lead to a bacteria bloom, and they are then cool to just above freezing.

    But Tomlinsons Farm Shop, which is near Nuneaton, Warwickshire, says when bags containing individual turkeys are damaged, oxygen can leak inside, causing the turkey “to rapidly go rancid”.”

    https://www.bristolpost.co.uk/news/uk-world-news/shoppers-complain-supermarkets-after-discovering-8997804

    “Once you receive your order please make sure that all seals on Gas Flushed & Vacuum-Packed items have not been broken. The expiry dates on these items are based on an unbroken seal. Once the seal is broken please use this product within 2 days or before the expiry date shown, whichever comes first.”

    https://meatmachine.co.uk/pages/important-packaging-information

  17. Think we got one, chicken saved the day, no more messing about with turkey

  18. Get your turkey from a butcher. Why people give their money to these corporations who couldn’t give a fuck about you, over a butcher who lives by their product, is beyond me.

  19. Freeze on day of purchase defrost 48 hours before cooking, people are dumb.

  20. Again. I got beef was half price in Sainsbury’s. Saves the turkey shanigagans year on year

  21. Bought mine fresh on the 19th from lidl

    Cooked today and was perfect

    Stored in fridge at right temperature

  22. One question that needs to be asked is how many of these are actually unique, current stories. And how many are people reposting what they’ve seen from someone else. As in same story is now hundreds of people with an issue because everyone is posting it again and again.

  23. We once had an issue with a frozen turkey.

    It looked perfect until we carved it.

    One side of the breast had a huge yellow cyst.

    Nobody could have known.

    I took it back to the shop and they couldn’t do enough to make things right.

  24. Had a call from my bro this afternoon “have you any turkey I can have” his bought from Aldi was rotten…he’d picked up one for me to mine was fine but cooked differently soooo🤷🏻‍♂️

  25. Add Morrisons to that list. I went to my local one on Monday and there were piles of turkeys near the butcher’s counter and the stench of rotting meat was very noticeable. Luckily, I was there for lamb as I don’t do turkey. Told my husband about it when I got home, I’m shocked.

  26. The last 2 years I have screwed up the leg of lamb.

    These things are big and the instructions stated ‘ defrost for 24 hours ‘ , which I do in our less than packed fridge.

    The last 2 years we had dinner at around 2pm, and the lamb in sandwiches around 8pm.

    So this year, I figured it out.

    I got a half leg of lamb, defrosted it from fucking MONDAY in the fridge and cooked it today.

    We also have a new oven, so the seals etc are working.

    It was still bloody.

    I give up.

    Next year it’s either chicken (yum) or beef (yummer).

    Fuck lamb.

  27. Buy your meat from the big supermarkets…..this is the chance you take.

  28. I don’t know why so many people on Reddit are quick to shift the blame away from supermarkets, and to just assume that people don’t store a frozen turkey in the freezer, or a chilled turkey in the fridge.

    Sometimes the turkey is bad. Sometimes the packaging is what leads to the spoiling. In my case from a few years back the package had burst and it stank by the time I’d got it out on Christmas Eve. It’s put me off turkey for life.

  29. I buy a fresh turkey every year and in 2023, it happened to me. It was a nice free range bronze turkey, but when I got it out on Christmas Eve to prepare it, it had gone bad – green slime and an awful smell.

    I took a video of the turkey, then me chucking it in the bin (to show I wasn’t trying to scam them), then sent an email to Tesco. A few days later, they refunded me + sent a £40 voucher, which was good of them.

    It was too late in the day to get a replacement turkey, but I had a chicken and a lamb leg in the freezer which I defrosted overnight, so it was fine.

    I think it’s normal that it’ll happen to a small % of Turkeys each year, for one reason or another. The lesson I learnt was to prep the Turkey in the morning so I can get a replacement if it happens again.

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