Skip Cooking A Whole Turkey: Try Trader Joe's French-Style Alternative For Easier Holiday Meals

The visual most associated with Thanksgiving is a happy family around a dinner table, with a large turkey in the center and dozens of sides and trimmings around it. What doesn't tend to make this image is all the hours spent slaving in the kitchen, prepping, chopping, basting, and baking. So, if you want to skip cooking a whole turkey, not only do we get it, we've also got a great alternative: turkey & Stuffing En Croute from Trader Joe's. The limited-time frozen entree is available at Trader Joe's through December.

En Croute means "in a crust," and this product is a French-style alternative to a whole stuffed turkey. Trader Joe's version features turkey breast and cornbread stuffing baked in an all-butter puff pastry. The turkey breast itself is seasoned with rosemary, oregano, sage, ginger, marjoram, thyme, and black pepper, while the stuffing has cornbread croutons, yellow cornmeal, carrots, and celery, among other ingredients. Add Trader Joe's Creamy Corn, Turkey Gravy, and Cranberry Sauce to your cart, and you've got yourself a delicious holiday meal that's super easy to cook.

Compared to making a whole turkey, which can take hours (with many potential mistakes), plating up Turkey & Stuffing En Croute is a breeze. All you need to do is take it out of the freezer, thaw it for 24 hours, and then bake it for an hour until the puff pastry is golden brown. The product weighs 40 ounces and can feed six to eight people for $16.99, at the time of this writing. 

Holiday meals may have evolved over the decades, but they've always looked gorgeous. Unfortunately, one common complaint when it comes to packaged food is that the meal looks nothing like the beautifully framed, softly lit image on the box. This Trader Joe's turkey bucks that trend. "Looks way better than the box, for once!" one customer wrote on Reddit, with another echoing their view: "That really does look just as good, if not better, than the packaging!"

The price point's accessibility resonates with shoppers, as well. "I'm a college student and this seems like the perfect budget Thanksgiving meal," one student wrote. Another felt the item's cost increase of only a dollar over four years was "pretty incredible for something in this price range."

When it comes to taste, online opinions are split. There were a few who felt the turkey was too dry. Others pointed out that because the teardrop-shaped turkey breast tapers towards one end, there were slices of the dish that had mostly stuffing with barely any meat. 

Still, many feel it's a winner, especially for those who don't enjoy cooking. "I'm hosting my mom and sis for Thanksgiving and none of us like to cook, so today I made the Turkey en croute in advance of having them over," they wrote. "The crust is flaky and flavorful. The turkey breast is a bit dry but I think gravy will help with that [...] I will definitely buy another one and serve it for Thanksgiving dinner."