Kirkwood Bone-In Turkey Breast
EDITOR’S NOTE: Updated for 2025.
Sometimes you want a traditional turkey dinner without so much … turkey. A turkey is a big bird, and unless you’re hosting a crowd or you have a good-sized freezer to store leftovers, you may not want to cook an entire turkey. Or, perhaps you only want to eat white meat and not dark meat.
Aldi offers some options. In anticipation of holidays such as Easter or Thanksgiving, the discount grocery store sells a variety of turkeys, ranging from whole Butterballs to, occasionally, antibiotic-free turkeys to — for those who want less bird or only the white part of the bird — turkey breasts.
You can purchase a bone-in turkey breast from Aldi that still has a good amount of meat, and it even still looks and feels a little like a whole turkey if you want that traditional aesthetic.
As of 2025, the Kirkwood Bone-In Turkey Breast cost $1.49 per pound. I bought a 6.46-pound turkey for $9.63.
The price is up slightly from $1.39 per pound when I first bought and reviewed it in 2020. Back then, I bought a 9.19-lb. turkey breast for $12.77.
You’ll find this frozen in the Aldi Find freezer section, although it doesn’t appear to be an Aldi Find. Rather, it’s a Seasonal Item that Aldi stocks during the Thanksgiving and Christmas holiday season and during the leadup to Easter. Outside of those seasons, you can’t buy this at Aldi, and Aldi won’t offer online ordering if it’s out of stock at your local store.
This is sold under the Kirkwood brand. That’s not a company. Instead, it’s the name Aldi puts on various poultry products it sells, which it may source from different suppliers. When I looked up this turkey on the Aldi website, it calls it a Honeysuckle White, indicating where Aldi sources it from.
This is an uncooked turkey breast with a portion of wing meat, neck skin, ribs, and back. It contains approximately 19% of a solution of turkey broth, salt, and spices.
Ingredients for the turkey are: turkey, turkey broth, salt, sugar, brown sugar, and natural flavor.
It comes with two concentrated gravy packets. Ingredients for the gravy are: water, modified corn starch, maltodextrin, salt, rice flour, cooked turkey, onion powder, caramel color, garlic powder, and spices.
One 4-oz. serving of turkey nets you 150 calories, 7 grams of total fat (12% DV), 2 grams of saturated fat (10% DV), 250 mg of sodium (10% DV), 0 grams of carbohydrates, 0 grams of sugars (sugar actually is listed in the turkey ingredients, but it must be a very small amount), and 23 grams of protein (46% DV).
A 28-gram serving of gravy has 15 calories, 250 mg of sodium (10% DV), and 3 grams of carbohydrates (1% DV). (The gravy in this turkey used to have nearly double the sodium back when I first reviewed it in 2020.)
How to Cook the Kirkwood Bone-In Turkey Breast:
The turkey breast should be kept frozen, and it should be thawed before cooking. The packaging states not to open the bag the turkey is in until it is defrosted. The turkey breast should be kept cold and should NOT be thawed at room temperature. Instead, the package says to place the turkey on a tray in the refrigerator for 24 to 48 hours to thaw. My 6.46-pound turkey thawed for 48 hours, and it still had some ice crystals in the inner cavity when I prepared it to go in my oven, so 48 hours was really the minimum thawing time for a turkey breast of that size.
To cook the turkey breast, the package says to preheat the oven to 325 degrees. Remove the breast from the bag, and remove the gravy packets from inside the breast. Put the gravy packet in a dish or container in the refrigerator while the turkey cooks.
The directions say to rinse the inside and outside of the turkey breast with cold water and drain well. I recommend not rinsing the turkey, as this is outdated advice. Rinsing raw meat can splash minute droplets of raw liquid around your kitchen that can contaminate other foods you’re preparing. Even Martha Stewart says don’t rinse raw poultry.
Once the turkey is out of the packaging, place it breast-side up on a rack in a shallow roasting pan. Brush the breast with vegetable oil. Roast at 325 degrees according to the chart below:
- 5-6 pounds: 2 to 2 1/2 hours
- 6-7 pounds: 2 1/2 to 3 1/4 hours
Cook until the interior of the turkey reaches 170 degrees. If the breast is golden browned before the rest of the turkey is cooked, cover it loosely with a tent of aluminum foil to prevent over-browning. Remove the foil after baking. For easier slicing, allow the cooked turkey breast to stand for 10 minutes.
My 6.46-pound turkey was done after just under 2 1/2 hours, so you’ll want to keep an eye on your turkey temperature.
While the cooked turkey breast is resting, you can make the gravy. To prepare the gravy, first wash the packages entirely with dish soap before opening, since the packets were packaged with the raw turkey. Then, pour cooked turkey juices into a measuring cup, being careful of hot juices. You will need 1 1/2 cups of liquid per gravy packet used. If you don’t have enough liquid with just the turkey juices, add water. Heat the turkey juices / water and contents of gravy pack in a pan. Bring to a boil while stirring. After boiling, cook over medium heat for 3-5 minutes, stirring as needed.
The two packages of concentrated gravy make a lot of finished gravy. I made both packages at once, but I only added 1 cup of water per gravy package to keep the gravy thicker. My turkey breast didn’t have many juices in the bottom of the roasting pan, so I just added water to the gravy. Even after boiling the gravy for about 10 minutes, it was still a bit thin, but it tasted good.
I served this turkey breast and gravy this year alongside some Aldi instant mashed potatoes and some sauteed frozen veggies. This time around, I thought this turkey was just okay but not great. It was a little on the tough side and not the easiest to slice, though it was still edible. My family thought it was fine and happily ate it.
When I first wrote about this turkey breast back in 2020 and then again in 2022, it was tender and flavorful, and my family all liked it. However, we’ve received a lot of comments from readers over the years who have complained that this turkey breast is fatty, tough, game-like, or otherwise inedible. That had not previously been our personal experience.
2025 is the first year I’ve felt like this turkey breast was underwhelming. I thought it was tough enough that it was best eaten with mashed potatoes, gravy, and other sides to help moisten and soften it. I might make soup with the leftover turkey. It was not bad, but there are probably better options out there for your Thanksgiving dinner.
Being longtime Aldi shoppers, one thing we have learned is that your mileage may vary with certain Aldi products depending on what region you live in. Since I’ve previously had good experiences with this turkey, it’s possible Aldi may source its bone-in turkey breasts from different regional suppliers, so what kind of turkey you get might depend on what kind of stock your local store receives.
The Verdict:
The Kirkwood Bone-In Turkey Breast might be an option if you don’t want to cook a whole turkey or if you want to stick with white meat over dark. We’ve liked this turkey over the years, but the one we bought in 2025 was a bit tough and hard to slice. It was just okay.
WE are cooking our turkey breast today and we also did not have a gravy pouch.
You might want to contact Aldi about that.
anyway to know if this is a gluten-free product?
If you’re looking for more detailed information about the ingredients than what’s listed in this post, you’ll need to contact Aldi: https://www.aldireviewer.com/contact-aldi/
Thank you!
We purchased this product at Aldi’s Chardon Ohio
For Thanksgiving dinner. We used an oven thermometer
And followed the instructions exactly. It looked perfect when removed from the oven. We sliced thin and
Served it hot. It was not eatable. It was as tough as shoe
Leather. We are returning it for a refund.
Delicious, moist turkey breast. Very flavorful and not salty. Cooked a 9 pound turkey breast at 350 degrees over indirect heat and with hickory chips on a Webber grill. Beautiful golden brown after three hours.
Worse turkey breast ever. Embarrassing to serve on thanksgiving. Tough no flavor turned us off turkey.
I wonder if they’ve changed something about this turkey breast. It was great when we made it last year.
I think they have a purveyor that supplies poor quality product to save money. Ours tasted more like wild Turkey. Very tough and dry with a game-like flavor despite brining and using moist cooking methods. We thawed and made two for Thanksgiving and one for Christmas Eve 2021. All three breasts were awful. Worst Turkey breast I ever had.
We purchased 3 Kirkwood frozen Turkey breasts for Thanksgiving and Christmas 2021 in November 2021. Package said they were brined but this was not true. We made two for Thanksgiving and the meat was dry and very tough even though we cooked using an Intant Pot to insure moisture and tenderness. The third Breast I thawed in the refrigerator, brined, and then rinsed before pressure cooking….moist heat method. Again, VERY TOUGH AND DRY. Also had a “game-like flavor. It reminded me of the wild turkeys my son in law hunts. Will never purchase these again. Surprised about this because the Kirkwood whole chickens are fantastic.
The one I had was totally inedible. I cut it into chunks and froze. I made soup with one of the chunks in the crockpot…8 hours…the meat as so tough and stringy it was still inedible. It also made the soup taste weird. I can’t explain it and have no idea what a wild turkey tastes like, but this was honestly the worst thing I’ve ever tasted. I still have 3 chunks in the freezer that will more than likely be thrown out since I can’t even make edible soup with them. What a waste of money.
I was very disappointed in the Turkey Breast that I purchased. Packaging says with gravy packets and there were none.
I just purchased one for thanksgiving and now I’m terrified to make because of all the negative comments!!
I’ve made this Turkey before and it came out really good. I did NOT follow the directions it came with and instead used a recipe I found on Pinterest (lots of butter for moisture). Making it again this year! I think it really just depends on how you cook it.
My family had this turkey for today’s thanksgiving meal. I prepped it by covering it in olive oil and a rub that we use when we smoke whole chickens. I roasted it in a large cast iron pot with the lid on, it was 6.5 lbs, cooked for a little over 3 hrs. We all liked it very much! If anything it was a just a tad tough but not a bad bird overall, we’ve had waaaay worse! We have some left over that should make a very nice creamy Turkey Wild Rice Soup.
Unfortunately, I wish I had looked for reviews for this bone in turkey breast before cooking it for Thanksgiving dinner this year. We could hardly slice it because it was so tough. Also, it did not taste like turkey. No strange taste, it was tasteless. Good thing we baked a ham also.
I bought a Kirkwood Bone in Turkey Breast and put in in the oven and roasted it. It turned out great. I followed the instructions on the package and did not use the gravy packet instead I made my gravy from the juices. The bird was good and so was my gravy. I would buy this product again. Very tasty!
I did mine in a slow cooker and even my husband who typically doen’t prefer white meat liked it. Served with baby carrots cooked in the same slow cooker with the turkey and slow cooked green beans and potatoes with bacon and onion. It was a delicious meal.
That sounds really good!