Santa Rosa - Shaved Roast Turkey product reviews

Another great pack of shaved turkey meat. Each pack is designed to be split in half to give you two 50g packs, each one with 7 or 8 slices of turkey meat. Each pod would give me enough meat for one really decent meat-lovers sandwich, but for this one I decided to make myself a meat-lovers pizza so I ended up using the whole pack at once. After pulling a premade base out of the freezer I tore the turkey slices into smaller bits and scattered them over the base. After throwing on some sliced tomatoes, bell peppers, diced onion, chopped mushrooms and some leftover beef salami I had in the fridge, and of course some grated mozzarella cheese, I popped it under the grill on a medium heat for a while to cook, then turned the heat up to give it some love from above.

What I pulled out smelled amazing and tasted just as good. I was easily able to taste the turkey amongst all the other flavours but because its a subtle flavour and some of the ingredients were stronger, it wasn't the highlight of the meal and that was fine by me. I wanted it there more as the token protein than the star of the show.

Would I buy this? Probably not. It's more expensive than other similar meats I can buy at the deli but if I want something special I may consider it again.

I have often seen turkey suggested as an healthy meat option but I had never seen any in the supermarket, either prepacked or in the deli. I was delighted to see that Santa Rosa had put out a range of turkey products. The shaved roast turkey came in a 100g twin pack. It looked just like shaved ham. I was surprised it wasn't white like turkey.

I introduced my family to it when we were having homemade Subway for dinner. I laid out a variety of cold meats and other fillings so the turkey was an option. All of us chose to try it that night. No one made any comment about it (good or bad) but I noticed that half of the twin pack was all gone. The rest of the packet remained in the fridge and got snacked on (I suspect by everyone) over the next few days.

To be honest I wouldn't have known it was turkey that I was eating if I hadn't been told. It had a nice simple flavour that made it a good sandwich filling and was enjoyed by all the family. I was surprised to see how affordable the shaved turkey was as I think of turkey as being an expensive meat. It is certainly something I will be buying again in the future.

I don't usually go out of my way to buy thinly shaved meat as I find it does not have the flavour or the chew quality of larger chunks. However, when I tasted this turkey product, I was surprised at just how flavoursome it was. This is the first time I have tried turkey prepared this way and I was impressed by how good it was.

I thought about sandwiches but decided that might be a waste of a unique flavour hit. Two slices of bread with a tiny little sliver of meat in between would probably result in the meat being lost altogether. We had two teenagers in the house, and I could imagine the meat disappearing into their perpetually ravenous mouths before I had a chance to evaluate it, so I made sure that it was hidden in the back of the fridge. To make extra certain that it would survive a predator attack, I snapped the packet in half and hid the unopened half in the freezer as backup.

In the end, I decided on open sandwiches. I had some pumpernickel which is quite a heavy bread but I thought it might go well with the slices. I made one each, adding a scrape of unsalted butter first, and decorating them with a slice of tomato. I did not add anything else although there was a grinder with freshly cracked pepper for anyone who wanted to add some more flavour. The boys were, as usual, more than willing to be my testers and it was a contest to see who would finish his first.

My friend (the boys' mother) and I then ate one each, a little less speedily so that we could taste the meat; we are not growing boys so we can take more time to enjoy our food. We both thought the pumpernickel was a good choice because it was filling but surprisingly, although it does have its own nutty flavour, it did not detract from the full roast flavour of the meat. We also thought the tomato was a good move as the pumpernickel/turkey combination was fairly dry so this added balance to the food.

Pricewise this is quite expensive - if the plan is to have the meat on its own with just a salad or as an item on a plate of hors d'oeuvres, I could easily eat the contents of the half-pack on my own. It contains only 50g of meat which is just enough for one person if eaten as a main. However, by preparing it as we did, we made it stretch to four people as a substantial snack. Flavourwise it held its own and generally got the thumbs up from all of us.

Up until I received these Santa Rosa products for review, turkey wasn't a meat that I had ever tried before, to me turkey is something that you don't really come across in New Zealand very often, but something which I know is a very big deal in America especially when they are celebrating special occasions such as Christmas and Thanksgiving, they always seem as though there is a turkey on the table! I love chicken, and as I have heard that turkey is quite similar in taste to this I was sold on giving it a go.

The shaved roast turkey comes in a pack with 2 separate 50gram tubs which is great as it means you can open only what you need at one time rather than having to open up 100 grams of turkey in one go, which would leave me questioning several things, how was I going to store it so that it didn't dry out and go crusty on the outside and secondly how could I quickly create 2 tasty turkey dishes? Each of the tubs were easy to open with a pull back section on the plastic top, and they also had a perforated strip down the middle making it easy to separate the 2 tubs. With a 3 star health rating it's obviously not the healthiest thing on the market, however a little goes a long way and as I served this alongside a stack of vegetables I didn't have any real concerns with eating this at all.

I first decided to use the turkey in some wraps for my partner and I's lunches at work. I spread the wraps with some bbq sauce and mayonnaise and then added some lettuce, diced tomatoes, cucumber and cheese and lastly the turkey, I was going to chop this into smaller pieces but decided instead to keep it whole, there were 8 slices of turkey in the 50gram tub so 4 slices per wrap was a nice ammount I found. I was impressed with the flavour of the turkey which I felt did taste similar to chicken but with a much stronger taste, it was certainly a meat that packed in a lot of flavour and it stood out even amongst the other ingredients in the wraps. My partner who is normally fussy when it comes to lunch meats even came home and said "whatever you put in my wrap today, it was really nice", which is high praise coming from him.

With the remaining tub of the shaved turkey I decided to try it out in a hot dish to see how it would go heated. I had planned to make a risotto for dinner and instead of adding my usual chicken to this I decided to chop the turkey into small pieces and use this in it's place. Once again the flavour of the turkey stood out in the crowd even amongst the stock and the vegetables, Miss 4 seemed to really enjoy the dish and liked the "little chicken with no chewy pieces" in it. The turkey tasted just as great heated as it did cold and was a welcome addition to the risotto, I loved that it was already cooked as this saved me a heap of preparation time.

I feel that for the price of the turkey it is well worth purchasing this again as it costs at least the same as the ham or chicken we would usually buy each week. A tasty meat which we will happily buy and eat again.

As with any review items the family are told they can not touch them until I have tried first. However, on this occasion I went to the fridge and found one of the 50 gram tubs had been used. My husband had taken it upon himself to make sandwiches for his lunch and he used the whole lot so my meal creations practically went out the window right then and there. Instead I followed suite and also opted to use the remaining Turkey as sandwiches also.

He had told me how great it was to have Turkey instead of the normal ham or chicken and how tasty he had found it. He had made two with salad and one with just lettuce and cheese and he found that it did not require the sauce he usually put on them as there was enough flavour in it alone. Opening up the tub it had the same colouring as the luncheon I used to have as a kid so I was automatically expecting it to taste the same. But I was pleasantly surprised by how much flavour it contained.

Turkey is one of those things you hear about on American TV all the time and is associated in my eyes to Thanks Giving and Christmas Dinner. We occasionally have Turkey only at Christmas time and this is exactly what it tastes like. If I am honest I actually prefer Turkey to Chicken as I find it has more flavour. It is also something that has a really nice after taste and lingers for quite a while, maybe that is because I am not used to it but either way it was a welcome surprise.

I also followed suite with what my husband had done, made one with salad, one with cheese and lettuce and one just by itself. I cut into triangles and shared with the girls. I had already tasted it so knew what to expect but both girls were a little unprepared. However, after the initial 'this chicken tastes weird' they both agreed they liked it but could not decided if it was better than chicken or if it was just different. I found it was a nice change and I think I preferred it with the cheese and lettuce because it brought out more of the flavour. Before I knew it, all the sandwiches had disappeared and both girls were asking for more.

For the price it will definitely have a place in our fridge and like I have said before its a really nice change to the normality. The potential to use this in dishes that we would otherwise use chicken is huge and is something I plan to play around with in the future.

Having tried the Smoked version as well, I have to be honest and say I couldn't pick which I prefer more... this one still tasted great. Being a processed meat - compressed into a chubb to even out the flavour and texture then thinly sliced - it's not quite as healthy a meat as it can be. Still, it's a very lean meat and so packed with flavour it's worth giving a try. "Go on, it's only wafer thin."

Roast turkey is a meat that, having tried it fresh myself as a child, can only be described as "What chicken wishes it could be" - the flavour is a dense as the meat itself is, providing a lot of kick in every bite. Despite being wafer thin, each 50g tub provided more than enough flavour for my taste buds, and I felt I was eating healthier simply by needing less as well as it being naturally a very lean meat.

For the first trial, I folded up 6 slices on a freshly-toasted crumpet, with some cheese and sweet chilli sauce mixed in amongst the slices. This proved to be a wonderful snack and I found the flavour to be smooth and very even. The rest was used to make another crumpet because it was just so tasty! The second 50g tub, I used in an omelette for breakfast this morning. Thankfully, I was awake enough to stop before it was all gone and grabbed a photo.

Overall, this is a wonderful meat, and leaves chicken in the dust as far as I am concerned. Still, it is also a lot more expensive than chicken due to the higher rearing costs, and that puts it off my regular buying list. Still... it sits proudly at the top of my 'treat meats' list for when my budget allows me to splurge on a little something special in the shopping trolley.