JennieO Turkey Products-Any Opinions?

[RVAwino]

I've seen a few commercials and check out the website. Looks interesting but I haven't found any reliable reviews? I try to eat lean so I'm interested in trying a few...but there are so many choices.
I’m looking for opinions…good or bad. Which did you try? What do you like/hate the best?

[jessicav]

The chili recipe from the Jennie-o website is quick and quite tasty. It's a nice starter chili that you can incorporate your own flavors to make it spicier, etc.

[pikawicca]

A couple of years ago, out of curiosity, I tried one of their bake frozen in a bag turkeys. It was surprisingly good. Not as delicious as the local heritage breed bird I serve at Thanksgiving, but if you're having a roast turkey, gotta-have-it-now craving, this will fill the bill.

[westsidegal]

not one of their products is free of additives.
that, in and of itself, is enough to make me steer clear.

of course, the fact that they taste weird to me is another factor.

[Fairaday]

As we don't eat any mammal meat in my home, I am very familiar with Jennie-O turkey products, but the two best, I believe, are the frozen turkey burger patties, (Yummy !), and the turkey-ham I have sliced for sandwiches. I haven't tried Jennie-O turkey sausage patties, but I do occasionally buy the equivalent Jimmy Dean turkey sausage breakfast patties and I LOVE those.

[KristieB]

I love some of their products. A cousin-in-law gets the odd weight breast lobes at a ridiculously low price as an employee there and shares with the family. The cajun spiced on is fabulous in a salad, as a sandwich, thinly sliced on cheese and crackers.

[armny]

I eat a lot of Jennie-O frozen turkey burgers. They are one of the few available that are low in sodium. They had a nice aroma when cooking and a reasonable taste. I've been buying them for a year. Unfortunately, the last batch was a disappointment. They were darker in color, harder to separate, shrank about 15% more, produced a lot of water, smelled like boiled socks when cooking, and had a 'blah' taste to them! What a disappointment! Unfortunately I have not found another brand that is also low sodium.

[swisscharred]

Jennie O Turkey Breakfast Sausages are the BEST! I will not even eat pork sausages any more. These are the only non-pork sausages that come close to having the seasoning right. Also, they're lean, so I love them (I can't stand sausages that have lots of rubbery bits in them, so if you like that, you won't like these).

[mcf]

Here's the smoked sausage ingredient list. I wouldn't eat this stuff; it's got the worst kinds of added sugars and it's chemically cured.

Jones sausage, by comparison, has a 3 ingredient list, and none of it is corn syrup.

Made by Jennie-O Turkey Store Sales, LLC
Ingredients
Turkey, Mechanically Separated Turkey, Water, contains 2% or less of Corn Syrup Solids, Salt, Potassium Lactate, Dextrose, Seasoning (Dextrose, Spice, Mustard Seed, Onion Powder, Garlic Powder)Sodium Phosphate, Sodium Diacetate, Sodium Erythorbate, Sodium Nitrite. made with Pork Casings.

[MandalayVA]

Jennie-O stuff is mushy and bleh. On the relatively rare occasions I get turkey products I go with Shady Brook Farms--they make decent sausage, both breakfast and Italian, and the ingredients are okay.

[Jacey]

I think the products have a lot of additives and perservatives in the meat. TJ's turkety bacon is a lot better than JennieO IMHO.

[Firegoat]

I've made their "turkey loafs" before. Surprisingly, they do taste good and make a darn good open faced turkey sandwich, that and they are inexpensive.
Tried the turkey burgers, as another poster mentioned, these are bland, acceptable with seasoning, but no one is going to mistake it for a beef burger.

[FelafelBoy]

For lack of wanting to take time to make my own turkey burgers, I bought JO frozen turkey burgers (12/package), and found them to be passable. I cooked them on the George Forman grill (frying them in a pan caused too much spattering until I realized that it wasn't necessary to add more oil, since there was enough fat in the burgers to fry with). I liked to eat them with a baked potato. They are bland, so it's important to add some seasoning to them - for me, the simplest seasoning was black pepper and ... ketchup!

JO has a more premium version of the frozen turkey burgers consisting of all white meat. Haven't tried those, but if cost isn't a factor for you, I'd try those.

The turkey burgers I used from JO had a mild turkey flavor. It satisfied my craving for burgers made from "red meat."

[Kathleen M]

ok, disclaimer here: I live in Sonoma County, where Willy Bird Turkey products are available in many stores. The JennieO turkey products are so vastly inferior that I would very rarely buy them. I buy Willy Bird turkey bacon often, and I agree that it does not taste at all like pork bacon, but it does taste really good. And perhaps equally importantly, the texture is wonderful because it is made from slices of turkey thighs, not pressed, formed and colored meat. I bought JennieO turkey bacon exactly once, a couple of years ago, and was actually shocked at how bad it was compared to Willy Birds. I would never buy it again. Occasionally when I need something right away and have to shop at Safeway, I have purchased JennieO ground turkey, and it's ok if you are using it in a recipe with a lot of other ingredients such as lasagne, but in a burger it really doesn't have any appreciable flavor. As I say, we are spoiled here, but I think that if you think that JennieO turkey tastes like turkey, you probably haven't eaten real, fresh turkey in a long time.

[ParsleySage]

The JennieO products I have tried so far:

Ground Sausage 8/10 - very tasty and well seasoned excellent to use in pasta dishes and on pizza
Meatloaf w/gravy 7/10 - just ok--I wasn't crazy about the gravy
Spicy Italian sausage links - 8/10 - excellent to throw on the BBQ
Breakfast sausage rounds & links 9/10 - delicous--tastes like real sausage
Bacon 8/10 - you can fry it to crispy or soft consistency--tastes and texture like real bacon.
Burgers 7/10 - you really can't tell the difference..nicely seasoned patties that cook best on the BBQ.

[AHan]

I agree these products are OK, but I never got the "tastes just like..." thing. Turkey bacon does not taste like pig, and ground turkey burgers do not taste like beef. They may resemble them, and textural similarities help, but I could distinguish in a blind taste test 100% of the time.

[kchurchill5]

I like the product and have nothing bad to say. Real bacon, Real fat is always great but ... yes, nothing wrong with Jenni O. Very good

[tracylee]

My ex always ate (and probably still does) eat the turkey bacon. It was nothing like real bacon, and perhaps should have a different name. Pretty bad.

[amyzan]

Yeah, but for people who can't eat pork, it's that or beef bacon, which is even more odd tasting than turkey bacon.

[Jaytizzle]

The JennieO Turtkey meatballs are one of the best meatballs I've eaten. It's not fatty or greasy but full of flavor. I love both the Italian and Original.

[DiningDiva]

I've used a lot of non-commercial (i.e. for food service not retail) Jenni-O products for a lot of years, before it was readily available in grocery stores. They've been consistently reliable and quite good. I've used raw and precooked products, whole muscle, sliced, ground, you name it, I've used it. It's a good brand.

[Neta]

I often buy the pre-cooked Jennie-O turkey breast and slice off what I need for sandwiches etc. It tastes so much better than the pre-packaged thinly sliced pressed turkey breast.

[annagranfors]

Huh...I'm heartened to see that 'Hounds are in agreement about JennieO...I've been buying the ground turkey (either just ground or formed into patties) to make turkeyburgers over the last year or so, and have quite liked them. (Try using the "Italian-spiced"--it makes a mighty fine burger!) But I hadn't, until last week, taken the ultimate JennieO plunge...they make a bag of frozen quarter-pounder patties that are often on deep sale, and even those were quite good, albeit not as good as the fresh version.

[Samalicious]

During the holidays we tried a put-a-frozen-turkey-in-a-bag-right-into-the-oven Jennie O turkey that was on sale. It was moist, tender, delicious and super convenient.

[foufou]

ditto...I cooked their turkey in a bag during the summer and was surprised at how good it was

[AHan]

Not sure which products you are referring to, but I have had their frozen whole turekys and they are on par with other similar brands. The cranberry-sage turkey at the deli counter is quite good.

[Val]

I recently purchased a bag of their frozen turkey breakfast sausage patties, mostly for my son, but I did try one and they are quite good...much less fat & sodium than our usual beloved Jimmy Dean (but I still would buy the JD for our biscuits and gravy...which I only make on rare occasions! LOL!)

[sheilal]

IMO, JennieO turkey bacon is THE best turkey bacon out there. I stumbled upon it in the fall and have never looked back at Louis Rich or Butterball. It has a great texture and flavor, plus it have fewer calories per slice compared to others.

[mschow]

I would never have bought these, but Wednesday night, I stopped at my sister's for dinner. She had made some homemade tomato sauce, and had just bought a bag of JennieO turkey meatballs. I have to say, we thought they were pretty good. She bought them for the kids, but we liked them as well. They were surprisingly good.

[mpalmer6c]

I recently tried tried the turkey breast
(not pre-coooked) and found it very good.