A frozen pizza is a compromise until you treat the box as a starting point instead of the finished product. The crust is already made, the cheese is already on, and the oven is already hot, which means the only work left is the work that makes it taste like something you would order: a few fresh things, added at the right minute.

I love pizza, basically any kind, and I could eat it every day. Some of that is probably psychological: the taste brings back Friday nights as a kid, when convincing my parents to order a pie was reason enough to celebrate. As an adult I still watch for the delivery car, and I still wince at what regular delivery does to a food budget. Whenever I go to a restaurant, I look carefully at the toppings they add, to get inspiration for my copycat version at home.

What I discovered is that the gap between a frozen pizza and a restaurant one is mostly toppings and timing, not dough. Heat it in the oven, add fresh ingredients at the right moment, and the difference is real. Here are nine upgrades, when to add each one, and a tool that times them to whatever box is in your freezer.

The base matters less than what you put on it

I start with a Trader Joe’s Four-Cheese frozen pizza. It cost $3.99 in 2018, and the style matters more than the brand: a plain cheese pie leaves room for whatever you add, while a fully loaded frozen pizza is already committed to someone else’s idea of dinner.

That is the whole logic of upgrading a frozen pizza. You are not making pizza from scratch, and you should not try. You are buying a decent crust and a base layer of cheese, then doing the part the factory cannot: fresh herbs, better cheese, vegetables that still have texture, and cured meat that has not been baked into leather.

Nine upgrades, and when to add each

Timing matters as much as the ingredient list. Put everything on at the start and the wet things steam the crust; put everything on at the end and the cheese never melts into the pie. The nine below are grouped by the moment they belong to, and the tool further down turns them into a schedule for your own box.

Before it goes in

1. Brush the rim with olive oil or garlic butter. A thin coat on the exposed crust gives you the buttery, salty edge that restaurant pizza has. Tasting Table makes this one of its own upgrades, brushing the crust with olive oil or a quick garlic butter and finishing it with sea salt, and it notes that olive oil does not turn bitter at high heat. A pastry brush is the only equipment you need.

2. Slice vegetables thin, then season them. Peppers, onions, mushrooms and zucchini should be sliced thin enough to cook through in the time the pizza bakes, and tossing them with a little olive oil, salt and Italian seasoning before they go on makes them taste like a topping instead of a garnish. Seasoning is the step that is easiest to forget in the rush to the oven.

3. Add cured meat, and add the soft kind late. Prosciutto and salami add richness to a plain cheese pie, which is The Kitchn’s second upgrade. A prosciutto that spends the full bake in a hot oven dries out, so drape it on after the pizza comes out. Harder cured meats and cooked bacon can go on before the bake.

At the two-minute mark

4. Pull it early and add more cheese. This is the core of my method: bake the pizza for almost the full time on the box, take it out two or three minutes early, add the cheese you want melted, and put it back to finish. A light sprinkle is plenty: Tasting Table, which recommends adding cheese partway through, warns that too much cheese or too many toppings weighs the pie down and stops the layers underneath from cooking. The Kitchn’s list uses the same late-add idea for burrata and for eggs, which go on in the last few minutes for that reason.

5. Add fresh mozzarella or ciliegine. When I want it richer, I swap the ricotta for ciliegine, the small fresh mozzarella balls, scattered over the top for the last few minutes. They melt into soft pockets rather than a blanket, which is a different and better texture.

6. Dollop ricotta into the gaps. Ricotta does not melt and spread like mozzarella, which is the point: spoon small dollops between the other toppings and they stay creamy against the sharper, saltier bites. It is the closest thing to a restaurant finish you can do with a tub of cheese.

7. Dust it with garlic powder and dried oregano. Both are pantry staples, both are in my list below for a reason, and both do more for a frozen pizza than another handful of cheese. Add them at the pull so they land on the cheese while it is still melting.

After it comes out

8. Finish with arugula or basil. Both wilt in a hot oven; put them on the pizza as it comes out and they soften just enough from the residual heat while keeping their color and bite.

9. Add a finishing oil, pesto or truffle oil. A small drizzle of good olive oil, a spoon of pesto thinned with a little oil, or a few drops of truffle oil gives the crust a glossy, aromatic finish. Go easy with truffle oil; a few drops season the whole pie and a tablespoon overwhelms it.

Two more from my own list did not make the nine: sun-dried tomatoes and pesto are both worth keeping in the rotation, and a little bacon, cooked first, adds smoke without adding water. The full pantry list: extra shredded cheese, basil, sun-dried tomatoes, fresh tomatoes, pesto, pre-sliced mozzarella, ricotta, dried oregano, dried garlic, bacon, arugula, prosciutto, pancetta, truffle oil and garlic butter for the crust.

Time it to your own box

Every box has a different total time, so the useful thing is not a fixed recipe but a schedule. Enter the minutes your box gives, tick the upgrades you are using, and the tool prints the minute to do each one. It times the toppings only; the package still decides the oven temperature and the total bake. If you are feeding a crowd rather than one pie, the pizza-party plan covers pan pizzas and a topping bar.

The mistake that makes it soggy

Water is the enemy, and most of it comes from the vegetables. Tomatoes, mushrooms and zucchini release liquid as they cook, and leafy greens release a surprising amount. If they go on raw and the pizza bakes for twelve minutes, that liquid ends up in the crust.

Three habits fix it. Slice watery vegetables thin so they give up their water quickly rather than stewing. Cook or squeeze the wettest ones first, and keep spinach and kale off the raw pile entirely. And do not overload the pie: a mountain of toppings insulates the crust from the heat, which is how you get a pale, limp slice under a hot topping pile. Tasting Table makes both points: slice watery vegetables thin, cook spinach and kale before they go anywhere near the crust, and expect soup if you skip it. The Kitchn's list handles the same problem from the other direction, sautéing greens with oil and garlic first.

If you are building the pie from a crust and a can instead, turning tomato paste into pizza sauce is the place to start.

One more, from the food-safety side: if you thaw a frozen pizza before baking, thaw it in the refrigerator, never on the counter. Bacteria multiply fastest between 40 and 140 F, and a kitchen counter sits right inside that band. A pizza left out for an afternoon is not worth the risk.

Oven, pan and the box directions

The package directions are the baseline, not a suggestion. They are written for that specific crust and that specific topping load, and following them is the difference between a pizza that is cooked through and one that is burnt on the bottom and cold in the middle. If you want a crisper base, preheat a sheet pan or a pizza steel and slide the pizza onto it; a preheated pan or steel does more for the base than a hotter dial.

Two guides take the opposite of that patient view. Tasting Table suggests taking the oven to its highest bake setting and baking for five to eight minutes, watching closely, and The Kitchn suggests turning the oven as high as it goes and cutting the time. On a thin frozen pie the rim can char before the center is hot, so the pan under the pizza plus the box's own time and temperature is the safer route. Try the hot oven once if you like a cracker edge, and watch it the whole time.

If you are serving mozzarella sticks alongside, as I sometimes do, the Trader Joe's breaded ones I buy list 425 F for 9 to 10 minutes on the box I have, which is close to the 400 to 425 F range The Kitchn gives for most frozen pizza boxes, so the two can share an oven without juggling settings. Read your own packages, though; the times differ by brand.

Watch seven upgrades in under a minute

If you want to see the idea in action, this 49-second short from the cooking channel ThatDudeCanCook runs through seven upgrades on a plain frozen pizza in under a minute, which is about the right length for it.

Leftovers and the two-hour clock

Cold pizza the next morning is one of the better arguments for making a bigger pie, and it has rules like anything else. The USDA says leftovers should be refrigerated within two hours of coming out of the oven, or within one hour if the room is above 90 F, and that they keep three to four days in the refrigerator or three to four months in the freezer.

Reheat to 165 F, whether in the oven, a skillet or the microwave, and cover it so it heats through without drying out. A covered skillet keeps the crust from going leathery; the microwave is faster.

Frequently asked questions

What is the best frozen pizza to upgrade?

A plain cheese pizza gives you the most room, because you are not fighting toppings the factory already chose. I use Trader Joe's Four-Cheese, but any thin-crust cheese pie works. A fully loaded frozen pizza is better left as it is.

How do you keep a frozen pizza crust from getting soggy?

Keep water off it. Slice watery vegetables thin, cook the wettest ones first, add greens after baking, and do not pile on so many toppings that the crust cannot crisp. A preheated sheet pan or pizza steel helps too.

Can you add toppings to a frozen pizza before baking?

Yes, for anything that needs cooking: seasoned vegetables, hard cured meat, or a drizzle of oil on the crust. Cheese and soft cheese go on two to three minutes before the end, and fresh herbs and greens go on after it comes out.

Do you have to thaw a frozen pizza before baking?

The box usually says no, and the package directions are the safest guide. If you do thaw one, do it in the refrigerator, never on the counter, and follow the cooking time the package gives for that case.

How long do pizza leftovers keep?

The USDA says leftovers keep three to four days in the refrigerator and three to four months in the freezer, refrigerated within two hours of baking and reheated to 165 F.

That's my take

Keep at least one frozen pizza in the freezer. It saves a late-night craving when everything is closed, and with a handful of fresh toppings it stops being a compromise and starts being dinner. Are you a pizza lover like me? Tell me which topping should be on my list next.

Sources

Where each claim comes from:

• Tasting Table, The 14 Absolute Best Ways To Elevate Frozen Pizza (Sara Klimek, January 5, 2023): crust brushing, seasoning vegetables, adding cheese midway, overloading, resting before slicing, and thawing in the refrigerator.
• The Kitchn, 15 Incredible Upgrades for Frozen Pizza (Lia Picard, updated August 17, 2020): the finishing olive oil, high-heat baking, the broiler finish, and adding soft toppings late.
• USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service, Leftovers and Food Safety (updated July 31, 2020): the two-hour rule, refrigerator and freezer times, and reheating to 165 F.
• USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service, "Danger Zone" (40 F - 140 F) (updated June 28, 2023): the temperature range where bacteria multiply fastest.

I'm Lily, a lawyer and aspiring Miami fashion entrepreneur sharing life hacks and my favorite tidbits on lifestyle, shopping, fashion, and beauty.

Featured photo: Thomas Schweighofer on Unsplash.

Updated November 2026 by Richie with the help of modern digital tools.

The post How to Make Frozen Pizza Taste Better: Nine Upgrades appeared first on The Rich Miser.

If you are hosting a holiday dinner and wondering how much ham per person to buy, the answer depends on something the per-person rules ignore: the label on the ham. Two hams of the same weight can feed different numbers of people, because one of them carries more added water than the other.

There is a second reason the question is slippery, and it is not a disagreement between the sources. The USDA publishes buying estimates, and the popular host rule lands at the top of both of them, then adds a pound or two for leftovers. The rules do not conflict. One is a range, and the other is where the range ends.

What follows is the range, the shopping rule, the label words that change the count, and a decoder that starts from the ham already in your cart.

What the USDA numbers actually measure

The USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service publishes two planning figures for ham, and both are buying estimates. The section they sit in is headed “Quantity to Buy,” and it opens by telling shoppers to “estimate the size needed.” The figures are “1/4-1/3 lb. per serving of boneless ham” and “1/3-1/2 lb. of meat per serving of bone-in ham.” The bone-in number is the larger of the two, which makes sense once you notice that a bone-in ham is the heavier package for the same amount of meat.

Food52, the recipe and food publication, publishes its own pair of numbers: about half a pound per person for a bone-in ham and a third of a pound for boneless. Read those against the federal figures and the numbers land on the same ceilings. Half a pound is the top of the bone-in range, and a third of a pound is the top of the boneless one, so the publication is not contradicting the government. It is landing on the generous end of it, then telling hosts to add an extra pound or two when they want leftovers. Both sets of figures are buying estimates, and the bone is part of the package either way, which is what the next section is about.

So the useful question is not which number is right. It is what moves you from the bottom of the range to the top. Four things do: appetite, seconds, leftovers and the label. A table of light eaters with three side dishes can live at the floor. A table where the ham is the event, with sandwiches promised for Monday, belongs at the ceiling plus Food52’s extra pound or two.

How many people a ham feeds

Food52 publishes a table for the guest counts people actually host, and it is the most useful shopping list in either source because it is already in purchase weight. Here it is. Food52 does not print its working, but each row runs from about the per-person rule to roughly a pound above it, which matches the extra pound or two they suggest when you want leftovers.

For a bigger table, Food52’s pattern continues at about half a pound per person for bone-in ham. Fifteen people is about seven and a half pounds, and twenty is about ten. If that pushes you past about ten pounds, you are into a whole ham, which changes the warming time more than the shopping.

Why the bone changes the number

A seven-pound bone-in ham is not seven pounds of meat. The bone, the fat cap and the trim all count toward the weight you pay for, which is why you buy more pounds per person when the bone stays in, and why Food52’s bone-in rule is higher than its boneless one. Neither source publishes a bone yield, so the exact meat weight of your particular ham stays unknown until you carve. Plan with the purchase figures, then carve and see.

The label words that change the count

Now the part that changes the arithmetic. The USDA grades ham labels by protein content in the lean portion, and the lower the floor, the more of the package can be something other than meat. These are protein floors, not a ranking of added water:

• Ham: at least 20.5 percent protein in the lean portion.
• Ham With Natural Juices: at least 18.5 percent protein.
• Ham – Water Added: at least 17.0 percent protein, with about 10 percent added solution.
• Ham and Water Products: the label states the percentage of added ingredients, and the product carries more than the water-added grade.

Two of those grades come with a published solution number: the water-added label carries about 10 percent, and a Ham and Water Products label prints its own figure. A plain “Ham” may still contain added water, which the USDA permits, and the ingredients statement on the package is where a shopper can see it. The arithmetic that matters is the one for the label in your hand: a ten-pound water-added ham has about nine pounds of non-solution weight. For a host counting half a pound of ham per person, not half a pound of package, that is the difference between feeding twenty people and feeding eighteen from the same size package.

The second label question decides how you cook it. A ham marked “fully cooked” is ready to eat from the package and only needs warming. A “cook-before-eating” or fresh ham must reach 145 F with a three-minute rest before anyone eats it. The USDA requires hams that are not ready to eat but look as if they are to say so on the front of the package, along with cooking directions. So look for “fully cooked,” or for a cooking instruction.

Decode the ham in your cart

This is the reverse of the usual calculator. Instead of starting with a guest list, start with the ham you are holding: enter its weight, what the label says and the cut. The decoder subtracts the added solution where the label states a percentage, turns what is left into servings at the published rates, and shows the USDA’s buying range as a cross-check.

Warming a cooked ham without drying it out

A supermarket ham says on its label whether it is fully cooked. When it is, the oven job is warming rather than roasting, and that changes the target: you are bringing the center to a safe serving temperature without driving more moisture out of meat that is already done.

Three numbers cover it, and the questions below use the same three. Set the oven no lower than 325 F. For a spiral-cut ham, cover it with heavy foil and plan about 10 minutes per pound; the USDA’s timetable gives a wider 10 to 18 minutes per pound for a 7 to 9 pound spiral, so start at the shorter figure and let a thermometer finish the job. Pull it at 140 F if it was packaged fully cooked in a USDA-inspected plant, or 165 F if it was repackaged in a store or you are reheating leftovers.

Other cuts follow the federal timetable’s bands, quoted with the page they come from. The USDA’s ham guide lists 18 to 24 minutes per pound for a 5 to 7 lb cooked bone-in half and 15 to 18 for a 10 to 14 lb whole; its holiday-meats guide lists 27 to 33 minutes per pound for a 3 to 4 lb fully cooked boneless ham. Those are wide because shape and packaging change how fast heat reaches the center.

Glaze late, and keep the foil on first

If you are glazing, brush it on near the end, after the foil comes off, and give it just enough time to set. The USDA’s spiral method keeps the ham under heavy foil while it heats, so the uncovered stretch at the end is where the glaze goes. Warm first, glaze last, rest before carving.

For cook-before-eating or fresh ham, everything changes: that is raw meat, and it must reach 145 F with a three-minute rest. The 140 F reheat target above applies only to a ham the plant already cooked.

Carving, holding and the two-hour clock

A spiral-cut ham is most of the way carved already: separate the slices with a fork and a thin knife, then cut around the bone when the easy slices are gone. The short video below, from Omaha Steaks, shows where the knife goes along the bone.

Once it is carved, the clock starts. The USDA’s guidance is blunt: never leave food out of refrigeration for more than two hours, and no more than one hour if the room is above 90 F. If the ham is going to sit out through a long dinner, keep it hot at 140 F or above in a warming tray or slow cooker rather than letting it drift down through the range where bacteria multiply fastest.

One more note specific to the spiral cut: the USDA says a spiral-cut ham is safe to eat cold and is best served cold, because warming a pre-sliced ham can dry the meat and melt the glaze off. If you want yours warm, that is fine, and the method above is how. Just do not treat a fully cooked spiral ham like a raw roast.

Leftovers: the math and the clock

Leftover ham is half the reason to buy the bigger one, and it is also where food safety gets decided. Cool it quickly in shallow containers, refrigerate within two hours of serving, and reheat to 165 F. A spiral-cut ham or leftovers from a ham you cooked keep three to five days in the refrigerator and one to two months in the freezer, according to the USDA’s storage chart.

For sandwich planning, one piece of arithmetic that is ours rather than a source’s: a pound of cooked ham makes about five three-ounce sandwiches. Count what is left on the board after carving, and that number tells you whether you have a week of lunches or a very good reason to invite people over the next day.

Frequently asked questions

How much ham per person for Christmas dinner?

Plan on about half a pound of bone-in ham per person, or a third of a pound if it is boneless. That is Food52’s purchase rule, and it sits at the top of the USDA’s buying range for the same cut, which is where a holiday table with seconds tends to land.

How many pounds of ham for 10 people?

For ten people, Food52’s table calls for 5 to 6 pounds of bone-in ham or 3 to 4 pounds boneless. The top of each range includes the extra pound or two the publication recommends for leftovers.

Is bone-in or boneless ham better?

Bone-in ham carries more flavor and gives you a bone for soup, but part of what you buy is bone you cannot slice, which is why the purchase rule for bone-in ham is higher. Boneless ham is easier to carve and portion. Neither is a bad buy; they are sized differently, and that is the part that trips people up.

How long does it take to warm a spiral ham?

Plan about 10 minutes per pound at 325 F, covered with foil, for a spiral-cut ham packaged fully cooked at a USDA-inspected plant. The USDA’s timetable gives a wider 10 to 18 minutes per pound for a 7 to 9 pound spiral. Pull it at 140 F, or 165 F if it was repackaged or you are reheating leftovers.

Do water-added hams feed fewer people?

Yes. The water-added grade carries about 10 percent added solution, according to the USDA, so a ten-pound ham of that grade has roughly nine pounds of non-solution weight, and the bone comes out of that. A Ham and Water Products label states its own percentage, which the decoder above uses.

Can you eat spiral ham cold?

Yes. The USDA says spiral-cut cooked hams are safe to eat cold and are best served cold, because warming pre-sliced ham can dry it out. If you prefer it warm, cover it with foil and heat gently at 325 F to 140 F, or 165 F if the ham was repackaged in a store or these are leftovers.

Where this leaves your shopping list

Pick the cut first, take Food52’s purchase number for it, then read the label for added solution and let the decoder adjust. Buy the closest size the store sells, and let the label also tell you whether you are warming a cooked ham or cooking a raw one. The ham is forgiving. The shopping is the part that rewards a minute of arithmetic, and now you have it.

If you are still sorting out the rest of the meal, our guide to how many cookies a cookie exchange needs uses the same label-and-math approach, and what to bring to a dinner party covers the other half of the planning. For the bird version of this question, see how much turkey per person.

Sources

All sources below were read in November 2026. The sandwich count and the decoder’s arithmetic are ours, not a source’s.

• USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service, Hams and Food Safety (updated January 15, 2025): meat-per-serving ranges, label grades, reheating temperatures, timetable and storage chart.
• USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service, Roasting Those “Other” Holiday Meats (updated December 5, 2024): the 325 F oven floor, the 3 to 4 lb boneless timing and cook-before-eating guidance.
• USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service, “Danger Zone” (40 F – 140 F) (updated June 28, 2023): the two-hour rule, holding temperature and leftover cooling.
• Food52, How Much Ham Per Person? (updated March 2022): purchase weights per person, the guest-count table and the extra pound or two for leftovers.

Researched and written by Richie with the help of modern digital tools. Images: AI-generated illustration.

The post How Much Ham Per Person? Read the Label, Then Buy appeared first on The Rich Miser.

ALDI and Walmart both sell themselves as the cheap place to buy food, and the choice is easier to make on feel than on arithmetic. One is a small store with almost no brands you recognize. The other is a big-box store where you can buy milk, motor oil and a birthday present without moving the car. The useful question is narrower, and it is the one in the title: is ALDI cheaper than Walmart, on the list you actually buy?

Three independent checks were run this year. In two of them ALDI came out cheaper. In the third it finished behind both Walmart and Kroger. No slogan survives that range. Here is what the 2026 checks found, why the two chains price things differently, and a way to test your own list.

Is ALDI cheaper than Walmart? The short answer

In the three checks below, ALDI comes out cheaper more often than Walmart does, and by less than its loudest fans claim. The two largest 2026 baskets put the gap at 1.74 percent and 9.4 percent. On the $95 basket the first one is $1.66. On the $120 basket the second is $11.38. Both figures are real, and neither is a rule. There is no cheaper store in this pair, only a cheaper list.

These are different baskets in different places, not three runs of the same test, so the percentages are not steps on one scale. What decides them is what you put in the cart. ALDI’s advantage is sharpest on produce and on dry pantry goods, and one 2026 study singled out its store-brand dairy as a strong value. Walmart’s shows up in the brands ALDI does not stock, in meat in the week it was checked, in drinks, where the package sizes differ, and in paper goods. A third check, on 15 store-brand staples, put ALDI third of four chains.

The backdrop matters, because grocery inflation is no longer the story it was. Food bought at home rose 1.8 percent in the 12 months to September 2026. Food eaten out rose 3.5 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The contest between these two chains is now a fight over a couple of percentage points, not over whether groceries hurt.

What my 2017 comparison found, and what still holds

I ran the comparison myself once, in November 2017, at an ALDI in Miami. I photographed the shelf prices and then looked up the same items on Walmart’s grocery site for a store near me. On the Walmart side I used the cheapest comparable brand, and I ignored anything on sale at either store. Walmart came out ahead in seven of ten categories. My note at the time: several of its items came in very large, warehouse-style packages. In ounce-for-ounce terms it still looked cheaper.

Two things about that method matter now. I compared item against item, not basket against basket, and I collected the two sets of prices on different days. It is the same question answered in a different unit, which is why a 2017 answer and a 2026 answer can both be honest and still disagree.

That piece also carried an answer to reader Julie, who wrote on Facebook that a price comparison has to weigh quality too. That answer still stands. I mostly kept the list to single-ingredient items so the quality gap would be small, and I suggested checking an ingredients list before deciding what to buy. ALDI’s own page still describes the same model, mostly its own brands at low prices. In 2017 I called the rest of the assortment most of what a normal supermarket carries, without the fancy end. What did not age well is the reassurance rather than the arithmetic. I half-joked that German ownership said something about quality, which was a stereotype standing in for evidence.

What the 2026 price checks actually found

The 30-item Arkansas basket

The closest thing to a controlled test this year was run on March 11 at Walmart Store No. 100 in Bentonville, Arkansas, and an ALDI about a mile away. The basket was 30 items a family might take to a lake house for a weekend. It held dairy, produce, meat, bread, soda, snacks, dry goods, paper plates and paper towels. Both carts were built from store brands, with one national label, Duke’s mayonnaise, in each, so the comparison was not a national label against a cheap imitation.

Walmart’s basket came to $95.43 before tax. ALDI’s came to $93.77. That is 1.74 percent, and Walmart had already banked $1.33 in rollbacks inside its total. The category detail is more useful than the total. ALDI won dry groceries by $1.87 and fresh produce by $1.70, though the bananas happened to be on sale that day. Walmart won meat by 55 cents, but only because of a 59-cent rollback on chicken legs. It took beverages by 24 cents, snacks by 4 cents and paper goods by $1.56.

Read that list again and the pattern is plain. ALDI wins where the store controls the product and the package. Walmart wins where the package is bulky, where brands matter, and where a run of rollbacks can move the number.

The two-person Pennsylvania week

The second check was a real weekly shop rather than a weekend bundle. It was published in April for a two-person household in northeastern Pennsylvania. Sale prices were counted on both sides. Walmart’s haul came to $121.20 and ALDI’s to $109.82, a gap of about 9.4 percent.

Produce told the story here: $40.87 at Walmart against $35.17 at ALDI. Meat and other proteins ran $30.32 against $24.42, the largest gap in the list. Walmart took dairy by ten cents and drinks by $1.34.

This is the basket that makes ALDI look like the obvious answer, and it is worth being precise about why. A household that buys a lot of produce and cooks its own protein will feel ALDI’s advantage every week. A household that buys soda by the case and paper goods by the pack will feel Walmart’s.

The 15-item study where ALDI lost

The third check ran the other way. A study reported on July 29, 2026 compared 15 store-brand staples, milk and eggs and bread and chicken breast among them, at Walmart, Kroger, ALDI and Albertsons. The reporting credits Southern Living for the basket and the study to Restaurant Furniture Plus, and it gives no date or place for the collection. Kroger came first at $30.00 and had the cheapest price on 10 of the 15 items. Walmart was second at $30.95. ALDI was third at $33.15, which is about 7 percent above Walmart, and Albertsons was last at $35.58.

The study left out Costco, Trader Joe’s, Piggly Wiggly and H-E-B. The reporting gives reasons for only two of them: Trader Joe’s did not carry some items to compare, and Costco’s bulk sizes made single-item comparison difficult. So the chain that wins on produce and pantry goods lost on a short list of store-brand staples, in a study that priced one small basket, once.

Why ALDI can be cheaper at all

The store model

ALDI’s own account of the model is two things. First, more than 90 percent of its products are ALDI-exclusive brands. Second, the stores are small. The rest is inference rather than the company’s account: fewer brands keep a national marketing budget out of the price, a small building needs less shelving and fewer staff hours, and there is less stock to spoil.

Its habits follow from that logic. You rent a cart with a quarter and get it back when you chain it to the rack. You bring your own bags and pack them yourself, and if you forget, the bags at the register run $0.55, $0.95 and $1.05 on the company’s own listing. In exchange, the own-brand products come with a guarantee. If you do not like an ALDI-exclusive item, the company says it will refund the money and replace the product.

How big ALDI has become

ALDI says it will open more than 180 stores in 2026, its 50th year in the United States. It expects to end the year with nearly 2,800 stores, toward a goal of 3,200 by 2028. The company also says 17 million new customers shopped its stores in 2025. It says one in three US households shopped there in the past year, by its own proprietary data. Treat the marketing with the usual discount and the direction is still clear: this is no longer a niche chain.

Which is why the company’s own savings estimate deserves a label. ALDI says a family of four can save nearly $4,000 a year shopping there, a number drawn from its own price leadership report. That works out to about $77 a week. It is a claim by a party with an interest in the answer, and the two independent baskets above put the real gap at $1.66 and $11.38.

Where Walmart wins

Walmart’s counterargument is not price. It is that you can get everything in one trip, including the branded things ALDI does not stock. Its rollbacks are also large enough to blunt a small percentage gap. The company ran about 6,200 price rollbacks in the quarter ending February 1, 2026, up 23 percent from a year earlier. It said most were in grocery and food.

The basket data backs the breadth claim. In the Arkansas check, Walmart took meat, beverages, snacks and paper goods. In the Pennsylvania check it took dairy and drinks. Both results point the same way: the categories Walmart won are the bulky, branded, multi-pack ones.

There is also the matter of what ALDI simply does not carry. A short assortment is the reason for the low prices, and it is also the reason a normal week’s list can turn into two stops. Some lists need a specific brand of cereal, a particular hot sauce or a pharmacy item. Then the second stop is not optional, and the second stop has a cost.

The costs that never make it onto the shelf tag

A percentage gap is only part of what a trip costs. Bags are the clearest example, because ALDI asks you to bring your own and sells replacements at the register. ALDI’s own listing puts the medium bag at $0.95. Someone who bought one every week for a year would pay $49.40, which is more than half of the $86 that a $1.66 gap is worth over 52 shops. Both are arithmetic on an assumption, not a finding. Remember the bags once and that line disappears.

The cart quarter is not a cost, since it comes back when you chain the cart. It is a habit, one the company designs into the trip. The store also runs limited-time finds and weekly price drops, which is a reason to read the ad before you go rather than at the door. What none of the three checks priced is the drive. No study paid for fuel or counted the minutes, so a $1.66 gap does not settle whether a second stop is worth your afternoon.

Package size is the quiet one, and it is where my 2017 list and the 2026 baskets measured different things. Big-box multi-packs can make Walmart’s unit price look unbeatable while leaving you with more soda than you will drink. A smaller ALDI package can cost less at the register and more per ounce. All three 2026 checks priced packages, not ounces. My 2017 list measured the opposite way, item by item and ounce by ounce. That is why the tool below asks for the price of the same package at both stores.

Test your own list against theirs

Every one of these studies has the same weakness: it is somebody else’s list. The three checks disagree by more than 16 percentage points. ALDI is 9.4 percent cheaper in one and 7 percent dearer in another. The reason is that baskets differ. So the only number that settles the question for your household is your own, and it takes one trip to each store.

Pick five things you buy every week. Write down the price of the identical package at both stores, not the price per shelf and not the price after a coupon you might not have. Put them in the box below. It will tell you which store wins your basket, by how much, and what that gap is worth over the number of trips you enter. It will not tell you where to shop, because that depends on the drive, the list and what you would rather not spend a Saturday doing.

What the two stores ask you to do differently

What differs is the work each store hands you. ALDI rents you a cart for a quarter and asks you to bring bags and pack them at a counter. A specific brand may simply not be there, which is the trade for the small store. Walmart offers a bigger store and a much wider assortment. Its rollbacks run to thousands of items a quarter.

That is the whole trade. At ALDI part of the saving is your labour: you carry, you bag, you walk the cart back. At Walmart part of the saving is somebody else's timing, because the rollbacks rotate and the same item is cheap one week and ordinary the next. If the two stores are close together, splitting the list is not cheating, because each chain wins a different half of the basket.

Frequently asked questions

Is ALDI cheaper than Walmart?

In the three 2026 checks, ALDI came out cheaper twice, by 1.74 percent and about 9.4 percent. A third, on 15 store-brand staples, put ALDI third behind Kroger and Walmart.

How much cheaper is ALDI than Walmart?

On published 2026 baskets the gap runs from $1.66 on a $95 basket to $11.38 on a $120 one. That is roughly 1.7 percent to 9.4 percent, and the size of your own list decides which end you land on.

Why is ALDI cheaper than Walmart?

ALDI says more than 90 percent of its products are its own brands, and it sells them in small stores with a bring-your-own-bag checkout. That is the company's own explanation for its prices.

Do you need a quarter for an ALDI cart?

Yes. You put a quarter in the lock to release a cart and get it back when you chain the cart to the rack.

Does ALDI charge for bags?

You bag your own groceries, and bags are sold at the register if you forget. On the company's own listing they run $0.55, $0.95 and $1.05. Bringing your own costs nothing.

A short video on how the discount model works

The Wall Street Journal's six-minute explainer is the clearest account of why a store with so little on its shelves can undercut the big-box store next door, from the private-label strategy to the layout. It makes the trade-offs visible in a way a price tag cannot.

What the numbers add up to

ALDI wins two of the three 2026 baskets and loses the right to brag about it. The chain is cheaper on produce and pantry staples. It is not cheaper by enough to justify a long drive or a second stop. Walmart wins on breadth, on brands, and on the weeks when its rollbacks are pointed at what you need.

My own conclusion has only partly held since 2017. One trip still beats two, and I would rather not go hunting for the thing the short aisle does not carry. On price, the 2017 answer did not hold, and the 2026 baskets say so in dollars. What survives is narrower than a slogan: know your list, and check it against the shelf.

For the other end of the same question, two of our guides work on a bigger list: one on building a weekly grocery budget, and one on who brings what to a potluck. If you are feeding a crowd, our turkey-per-person guide starts where this page stops: with a number you can check.

This article is for general information and entertainment, not financial advice.

Sources

All sources below were read in November 2026. The published percentages and totals are the sources'. The $1.66 and $11.38 gaps, the 7 percent, the 16-point span, the weekly and annual figures and the comparison between studies are my arithmetic on those totals.

• Talk Business & Politics, "The Supply Side: Aldi food, pantry prices competitive with Walmart," March 27, 2026.
• Tasting Table, "I Priced Out A Week's Groceries At Aldi And Walmart," April 26, 2026.
• MLive, carried by Yahoo Life, "Aldi fans, take note: it didn't win the grocery price war this time," July 29, 2026, reporting a Restaurant Furniture Plus study as relayed by Southern Living, with no collection date given.
• ALDI US, "ALDI US Doubles Down on Growth in 2026," January 12, 2026.
• ALDI US, "ALDI Gives Fans What They Want with Its Largest Packaging Refresh Yet," September 24, 2025.
• ALDI US, "About ALDI."
• US Bureau of Labor Statistics, "Consumer Price Index Summary, September 2026," released October 14, 2026.

Updated November 2026 by Richie with the help of modern digital tools.

The post Is ALDI Cheaper Than Walmart? What the 2026 Price Checks Show appeared first on The Rich Miser.

It is also the drink that makes ordering out expensive. A Manhattan is a heavy pour of whiskey with a splash of wine in it, and a bar charges accordingly. Made at home from a bottle you already like, the same drink costs a fraction of that, and you can build it the way you want it rather than the way a busy bar does.

Why a Manhattan works with only three ingredients

Whiskey gives the drink its backbone, sweet vermouth softens the edges and adds a dark, herbal sweetness, and bitters keep the whole thing from tasting flat. Change the proportions and you change the drink: more whiskey makes it drier and sharper, more vermouth makes it rounder and sweeter. There is no single correct answer, which is why two bars a street apart make slightly different ones.

What there is, is a ratio worth starting from. Miguel’s is two parts whiskey to one part sweet vermouth, which lands on the sweeter side of the range and is the one this page follows.

How to make the ideal Manhattan cocktail

1. Gather your ingredients. Bourbon or rye whiskey, sweet vermouth, and bitters. A brandied cherry or a strip of orange peel is optional, and he would not skip the cherry. He has heard very good things about Antica Formula vermouth if you want to treat yourself.
2. Fill a mixing glass with ice. Plenty of it. The ice chills the drink and adds the small amount of water that makes it drinkable rather than hot.
3. Add two ounces of bourbon or rye whiskey.
4. Add one ounce of sweet vermouth.
5. Add three or four dashes of bitters. The exact number is a matter of taste, and four is not too many.
6. Stir until the mixing glass is cold to the touch and the drink is well mixed.
7. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Add the cherry or the orange peel now. For the love of good drinking, do not serve it over ice: strain it and serve it straight up, in a glass with a rounded bottom rather than a sharp cone.
8. Sit back and enjoy.

What the IBA’s spec says, and why his pour is different

The International Bartenders Association lists the Manhattan as fifty millilitres of rye whiskey, twenty of sweet red vermouth and one dash of Angostura bitters, stirred with ice and strained into a chilled cocktail glass, garnished with a cocktail cherry. That is a drier drink than Miguel’s, roughly two and a half parts whiskey to one part vermouth, and with a single dash of bitters rather than four.

Both are correct Manhattans. The IBA number is the published reference point, and if you are making the drink for someone who likes whiskey neat, start there. Miguel’s is for people who want the vermouth to be part of the conversation, and it is the version to hand a guest who says they do not usually like whiskey.

How to make a pitcher for eight or twelve

Multiplying a Manhattan is easy because the drink is measured, not built by feel: 60 ml of whiskey and 30 ml of vermouth per serving before dilution, plus your bitters. Here is the whole thing for a party, with the bitters counted in dashes so nobody has to measure them.

Those numbers line up with the bottles you buy. A standard 750 ml bottle of whiskey at 60 ml a drink makes twelve and a half servings, and a 375 ml bottle of sweet vermouth at 30 ml a drink covers the same twelve with 15 ml left, which is the most satisfying way to plan a party: one bottle of each, twelve drinks, and a half pour left for the cook.

To make the batch, stir the whiskey, vermouth and bitters in a large pitcher with plenty of ice until the pitcher is cold to the touch, then strain the whole thing into a chilled bottle or carafe and keep it cold until the first guest arrives. Do not leave it sitting on the ice: the dilution you want happens while you stir, and a drink that rests on ice keeps taking on water.

Pour each drink into a chilled glass, add a cherry, and you have done in one pitcher what a bar does one order at a time. If you are also handling the rest of the drinks table, the punch volume math answers the same question for a bowl, and the host gift guide covers what to carry in the other hand.

Serving twelve without a shaker

For a party you need four things: a large pitcher, a long spoon, a fine strainer, and a bottle or carafe to hold the finished batch in the fridge. None of them is special equipment, and none of it is difficult.

Stir the batch in the pitcher with ice until the pitcher is cold, strain it into the chilled bottle, and put the bottle back in the fridge. Then set the pitcher aside rather than leaving the drink in it. When guests arrive, pour from the bottle into chilled glasses and add a cherry to each, and the last pour is still cold.

The pace matters more than the technique. Twelve drinks made one at a time is a lot of measuring, stirring and straining while your guests watch, and a batched bottle is twelve pours. Choose the bottle.

Getting it cold without watering it down

A Manhattan is a cold drink served without ice, which means every bit of chilling has to happen before it reaches the glass. Two things get you there: cold glassware and enough ice in the mixing vessel. Put the glasses in the freezer while you set up, or fill them with ice water and tip the water out at the last second.

Use more ice than looks necessary, and use the biggest cubes you have. Small cubes melt faster, which is one reason a bar keeps a tray of two-inch cubes: the same chilling with less water in the drink. Fill the glass, stir until it is cold to the touch, and stop there.

Stir rather than shake. Shaking a Manhattan works, in the sense that you end up with a cold drink, but it aerates it and leaves it cloudy, and a Manhattan should be clear enough to see the cherry through. Stirring also gives you more control: you can stop when the dilution tastes right rather than when your arm gives out.

The glass, the cherry and the orange peel

Chill the glass. The drink is at its best cold and undiluted, and a warm glass works against both. A coupe is the right shape: a rounded bowl holds the drink and looks right on a table.

For the garnish, a brandied cherry is the classic and the one Miguel recommends, and two is not a crime. A strip of orange peel, expressed over the top so the oils land on the surface, suits a drier pour. Do not shake it: shaking a clear drink clouds it, which is the one thing a stirred drink should not be.

Extra tips that make a difference

• Use ingredients you would drink on their own. Cheap whiskey or tired vermouth will ruin the drink, and there is nowhere in a three-ingredient cocktail to hide.
• Experiment with the ratio. Some people like a drier Manhattan with more whiskey and less vermouth, and some like it sweeter. Whichever camp you are in, the ratio is yours to set at home.
• Use good ice. Bigger cubes melt more slowly, which keeps the drink cold without watering it down, and the large cubes sold for Old Fashioneds fit a mixing glass.
• Play with the bitters. Angostura is the standard, and Peychaud’s is worth trying if you want a different layer of flavour. Neither is a mistake.
• Play with the sweetness, too. Some people add a little cherry liqueur or a splash of grenadine. That is a sweeter drink than a Manhattan usually is, and there is nothing wrong with wanting it.

When it does not taste right

Almost every Manhattan problem is a ratio problem, and the fix is the same: adjust one ingredient at a time and taste as you go.

• Too sweet. Add a quarter ounce more whiskey, or cut the vermouth slightly on the next one. If it is still sweet after that, your vermouth is doing more work than the whiskey, which usually means the bottle is a heavy one.
• Too strong. Add vermouth, or a teaspoon of water if you want the whiskey to stay in front. The water is what the ice would have given you anyway.
• Too warm. Chill the glass, chill the vermouth, and stir for longer than you think.
• Cloudy. You shook it, or you poured the ice into the glass with the drink.
• Flat and sweet at the same time. Not enough bitters. Four dashes is a legitimate number.

What to put out with them

A Manhattan is a big-flavoured drink and it does not need much beside it. Salted nuts, a bowl of good olives, a hard cheese cut into pieces, and a little dark chocolate cover the whole table and take ten minutes to put out. Anything strongly smoky or pickled will fight the vermouth, and anything sweet will make the drink taste drier than it is.

Keep the food where people can reach it without standing over the drinks, and put the cherries in a small bowl with a spoon rather than letting guests fish them out of the jar. Small things, but they are the difference between a drinks table that works and one that needs a host standing next to it all evening.

Frequently asked questions

Can you make a Manhattan ahead of time?

Yes, and it is the best way to serve them at a party. Stir the batch with ice, strain it into a bottle, and keep the bottle in the fridge for a few hours. Pour into chilled glasses when guests arrive. What you should not do is leave the drink sitting on ice, which keeps diluting it.

Rye or bourbon?

Both work. Rye is the spicier and drier of the two, bourbon is the sweeter and rounder one, and either makes a proper Manhattan. The IBA spec calls for rye, and Miguel’s own recipe says either will do.

What if I have no bitters?

Make it anyway, then buy bitters for the next one. A Manhattan without bitters is whiskey and vermouth, which is a pleasant drink but a flatter one: the bitters are what keep the sweetness from taking over. Angostura is the standard bottle.

How many drinks does one bottle make?

At 60 ml of whiskey and 30 ml of vermouth per drink, a 750 ml bottle of whiskey makes twelve drinks, and a 375 ml bottle of sweet vermouth covers those twelve with 15 ml left. That is sixty millilitres of whiskey per serving, twelve times over, with a splash left in the bottle.

Watch it made

If you would rather watch the pour than read it, this is the version worth four minutes: a shaker, plenty of ice, a proper stir, and a cherry at the end.

That is it: how to make the ideal Manhattan cocktail. Get good ingredients, experiment until the ratio is yours, and enjoy. I leave you with the video recipe, for your drinking pleasure.

Sources

Every source below was read in November 2026.

• International Bartenders Association, “Manhattan”: 50 ml rye whiskey, 20 ml sweet red vermouth, 1 dash Angostura bitters, stirred and strained, garnished with a cocktail cherry.
• Carpano, Antica Formula: the vermouth Miguel mentions by name.
• Preppy Kitchen, How to Make a Manhattan Cocktail: the video embedded above.

This article is for general information and entertainment, not financial advice.

Updated November 2026 by Richie with the help of modern digital tools.

The post How to Make the Ideal Manhattan Cocktail appeared first on The Rich Miser.

A cookie exchange invitation asks one practical question, and it is not which cookie to bake. It is the question of how many cookies for a cookie exchange to bring, and the answer Robin Olson calls the norm is six dozen per guest, 72 cookies, from a set of rules she wrote in 1997. That number is a house rule with a date on it, not a law of December, and it is worth checking against your own recipe before you preheat the oven.

The answer is a division problem wearing an apron. Work out how many cookies the table needs, divide by what one recipe actually produces, and round up once. Everything else, from the size of your take-home box to whether the host ends up with a platter of leftovers, follows from that number.

What follows is the arithmetic, the six-dozen convention Olson’s rules made standard, and a planner that does the division for your kitchen rather than an average kitchen. It is written for the person who has to bake this week, not for the person collecting cookie recipes. If you are also in charge of drinks, the punch quantity math uses the same logic for the bowl.

How many cookies for a cookie exchange?

Multiply the number of people by the number of cookies each one brings, and you have the size of the swap. Eight people bringing six dozen each put 576 cookies on the table. Each of them then takes home about 72, which works out to nine cookies from every one of the eight varieties.

That is the whole model: in a fair swap, what you take home is roughly what you brought, spread across everyone else’s baking. The number you bring is the number you carry out, divided into shares.

Those figures are my own arithmetic on the counts, not a rule handed down by anyone. The useful part is what the table exposes. A sixteen-person swap does not need anyone to bake more. It simply gives every guest a thinner slice of a much wider table, which is usually the point of a big swap and sometimes a disappointment if you were hoping for a serious stash of one favorite.

A party of eight, worked through

Say eight friends, each bringing six dozen, and a 36-cookie recipe. Two batches make exactly six dozen, so nobody has spare. The moment you want twelve cookies out on a plate for people to nibble while they swap, the numbers stop being tidy: two batches give you nothing to nibble, so someone has to bake a third. That single plate is why the honest answer for the host is three batches, not two.

The odd guest count

Seven friends, six dozen each, is where the tidy example falls apart. The table still holds 504 cookies and everyone still brings 72, but 72 divided by seven varieties is ten cookies each with two left over. Those two are not lost: every guest takes home ten of each variety plus two extra, and the host decides whether the extras go to whoever arrived first or into a plate for the neighbors.

Odd counts happen. Decide the remainder rule before the party, say it out loud at the table, and nobody has to do arithmetic with their coat on.

The office-swap version

Offices run on a different scale, and the convention that suits a neighborhood party is absurd in a conference room. Six colleagues bringing two dozen each produce 144 cookies, four of each of six varieties per person, and that is plenty for a Friday afternoon. One batch of a 36-cookie recipe covers your share with twelve left over for the break room.

Run the batch planner

Set the guest count and paste in the yield from your own recipe. The planner keeps the swap pool and a tasting plate separate, because mixing them is where most hosts either overbake or run short, and it tells you the spare that rounding up to whole batches leaves in your kitchen.

The 6-dozen convention, and when it is too much

Six dozen per guest is Olson's default, and her page reads like a host who has watched a few swaps go wrong. Her rules were written in 1997, posted that October, and carried today at Cookie-Exchange.com, copied and adapted and often miscredited ever since. Her list is blunt and practical: bring six dozen total, tell the host what you are baking, bring a container, and expect no duplicate recipes. It also rules out plain chocolate chip cookies, mixes, no-bakes, meringues and bars, which is worth knowing before you copy the classic chocolate chip yield below.

Her own explanation is the interesting part. Six dozen exists so the table looks like a feast instead of a plate, and so nobody drives across town for twelve cookies. She also writes, plainly, that the host decides what the right amount is for the party. It is a convention with a host attached, not a law of December.

Where the number comes from

Six dozen is 72 cookies. That is two batches of a 36-cookie recipe, which is what King Arthur Baking's classic chocolate chip cookie recipe produces at standard size, or one batch of a large-yield recipe.

Not every host runs that format. Summer & Cinnamon's cookie exchange calculator states its own standard as one dozen cookies per person attending, and its table scales the ask with the guest list: six guests means 72 cookies each, eight means 96, fifteen means 180. Its separate tasting-party format asks for two or three dozen. The two conventions cross at six people, where both ask for 72, which is worth knowing if your invitation does not spell the number out.

When to run a smaller swap

Scale the ask to the room. A neighborhood party with sixteen people and a long table earns the full six dozen. An office lunch, a book club, or a first-time swap among four friends does not. Two dozen each is generous at that size, and a single batch of a standard drop-cookie recipe covers it.

Whatever you choose, put the number in the invitation and put it in bold. The disappointment at a cookie exchange usually starts with guests guessing a different number than the host had in mind.

One variety per person, and how many you need

One variety per guest is the whole rule, and the guest list then sets the variety count: eight people take home eight kinds, sixteen take home sixteen. Everyone bakes one thing well, nobody duplicates, and every take-home box holds a proper spread.

So the host's job at the invitation stage is to collect one cookie name per guest and settle collisions before anyone shops. Olson's rules put it as no duplicate recipes allowed, and her reason is social rather than mathematical: nobody wants to discover that a neighbor bakes their family recipe better.

For a group that cannot agree, assign categories instead of recipes. One chocolate, one spice, one shortbread or sugar cookie, one fruit or jam cookie, one nut cookie, one wildcard. People keep their own recipe and the table stays varied.

How many batches is that?

Here is where most hosts go wrong, and it is not their fault. Recipes usually print the yield just above the ingredient list, and the number is a promise about that recipe at that size, not about cookies in general. King Arthur's classic chocolate chip recipe makes 36 standard cookies; the same dough scooped bakery-size, about the size of an adult palm, makes nine to eleven.

So the yield you feed into the planner has to be the yield of the cookie you are actually making, at the size you are actually scooping. Change the scoop and you change the batch count.

Where the yield appears on a recipe page

Look above the ingredient list, not in the headnote. Reputable recipe pages state servings or yield there, and some state both a count and a size. If a recipe says "makes about 4 dozen" with no size, assume small cookies and check one tray before you commit the whole batch.

A practical test: bake six cookies first, measure the spread, and count how many fit on your sheet with room between them. King Arthur's own instructions ask for about two inches between cookies on all sides, and that spacing, not the pan's area, is what sets your real capacity.

Doubling without ruining the batch

Which is the same arithmetic from the other direction: six dozen is two batches of a 36-cookie recipe, or one batch of a large-yield one. That fits a home kitchen: two bowls, one after the other, keep the dough at the consistency the recipe was written for.

If your dough spreads more than you expected, chill it for 30 minutes before baking: King Arthur's bakers measured a clear difference in spread after half an hour in the fridge. That also makes a tidier box at the end. Bake in the order you will pack: the prettiest batch goes on top of the tin, the homely ones go on the tasting plate.

Pick cookies that survive the trip

A swap is a logistics problem disguised as a party. Your cookies have to survive a car, a crowded table and a take-home box, and the ones that taste best straight from the oven are often the ones that arrive as crumbs.

Drop cookies, shortbread, biscotti and firm cut-outs travel well. Anything with soft icing or a custard filling does not, and Olson's rules make the same point for icing: cookies with it need to air dry and harden before they go to a swap. Her list also leaves meringues off the table entirely. If you love a gooey cookie, bake it for the tasting plate and bring something sturdier for the boxes.

The video is worth watching for the packing segment alone. Erin McDowell, who hosts Food52's Bake It Up a Notch, treats transport as part of the recipe rather than an afterthought, and the packing segment is the part to watch before you load the car.

Then bring a container. Olson's rules ask guests to bring a large one, or the host to supply tins and trays, so it is worth its own line in the invitation. A sturdy box with parchment between layers beats a decorative tin that crushes the top row. If you are new to the guest side of hosting season, the guide to what to bring to a dinner party covers the same instinct in a different room.

Label every plate

Every plate at a swap should carry a small card naming the cookie and its ingredients. This is ordinary courtesy, and it matters more than most hosts assume, because nine ingredients account for the major food allergens recognized in United States labeling law: milk, eggs, fish, crustacean shellfish, tree nuts, peanuts, wheat, soybeans and sesame. Sesame joined the list on January 1, 2023. That law covers packaged foods sold with labels, not a plate a guest carries into a living room; the list is useful because it is a sensible checklist of what to write down.

Flour, butter and egg already put three of the nine on the card, and a butter cookie made with pure almond extract adds tree nuts to the list. A card listing flour, butter, sugar, eggs and any nut or seed tells a guest what they need without anyone interrogating the baker. The FDA's own guidance to consumers is to read labels and avoid what they are allergic to, so give them something to read.

Two practical details. Write the cards at home, not at the party, and write them large. And keep the nut cookies at one end of the table with their own tongs, so a guest with a nut allergy can serve themselves from the other end without navigating a shared platter.

Copy-ready rules for the invitation

Send these with the date, and adjust the numbers to your party. They are short on purpose, because a rules list nobody reads is worse than no list at all.

• Bring [number] cookies, all one variety, homemade and baked.
• Tell me what you are baking when you RSVP, so we do not double up.
• Bring a container big enough to carry your share home.
• Bring a small card with the cookie's name and its ingredients.
• Arrive with the cookies cooled and packed, not warm from the oven.
• We swap at [time], so come a little early to set up your plate.

Rules adapted from Robin Olson's cookie exchange guidelines. Some content courtesy of Robin Olson, Cookie-Exchange.com.

Add one line about allergies if you know your guest list: a note asking people to flag nuts, dairy or gluten in advance turns an awkward table conversation into a solved problem. It is also the kind of sentence that makes guests trust the rest of the invitation. For a swap that doubles as a meal, the potluck planner handles the same who-brings-what question for the savory side of the table.

The week-of timeline

Cookie exchanges fail in the last forty-eight hours, not in the planning. Here is the order that keeps the week calm.

1. Ten days out: send the invitation with the number and the rules, and collect what each guest is baking.
2. One week out: settle duplicates, assign categories if needed, and check you have twice the ingredients on hand.
3. Three days out: bake the cookies that keep well. King Arthur advises storing its chocolate chip cookies well wrapped at room temperature for up to five days, and freezing them for longer, which is the window a swap needs.
4. The day before: pack the cookies in their layers, write the ingredient card, and find the container.
5. The morning of: bake anything delicate, set the table, and put out the cards before the first guest arrives.

That last point is worth repeating: set the table before people arrive, with a card at every place and a stack of containers at the end. A swap where the logistics are already solved is a party. A swap where eight people are hunting for tins is a committee meeting with cookies.

Frequently asked questions

How many cookies should each person bring to a cookie exchange?

Six dozen, or 72 cookies, is Robin Olson's 1997 convention and it is still widely copied. Four to six guests can stay at two dozen each, and some groups scale the ask with the guest list instead, so the host sets the number in the invitation.

How many cookies do you take home?

Roughly what you brought, spread across every variety. Eight people bringing six dozen each take home 72 cookies, which is nine from each of the eight plates. Six people bringing two dozen each take home 24, or four of each of six varieties. With seven people the split is uneven, so each guest gets ten of each variety and two extra cookies.

How many types of cookies should there be?

One per guest. Eight people take home eight kinds and sixteen take home sixteen, because the variety count follows the headcount rather than a separate rule. Assign categories when two guests want to bake the same thing.

Can I bring store-bought cookies?

The traditional answer is no. Olson's rules require homemade baked cookies and send anyone who runs out of time to a real bakery instead. If you want a more relaxed swap, say so in the invitation and call it a cookie and treat exchange, so nobody arrives expecting a baking contest.

How far ahead should I bake?

King Arthur says its chocolate chip cookies keep about five days well wrapped at room temperature, so check your own recipe for anything richer or softer. Iced cookies need to air dry and harden before a swap, which Olson's rules say plainly, so bake those last.

How should I label cookies so guests with allergies can choose?

Ask about allergies when people RSVP, and have every baker write an ingredient card. Name the nuts, dairy, eggs, wheat, soy and sesame plainly, and keep nut cookies at a separate end of the table with their own serving tongs. A guest with a serious allergy can then decide for themselves what to take.

Sources

All sources below were read in November 2026.

• Cookie Exchange.com, "The Rules of the Cookie Exchange" by Robin L. Olson (1997).
• King Arthur Baking, "Classic Chocolate Chip Cookies", recipe by PJ Hamel, page updated April 7, 2026.
• King Arthur Baking, "Chilling cookie dough: Does it make a difference?" by PJ Hamel, May 17, 2015.
• U.S. Food and Drug Administration, "Food Allergies", including the nine major food allergens and the FASTER Act change effective January 1, 2023.
• Summer & Cinnamon, "Cookie Exchange Calculator (How Many Cookies to Bring + Easy Chart)", the source for the one-dozen-per-guest convention and its swap formats.
• Food52 on YouTube, "How to Host a Holiday Cookie Party | Bake It Up a Notch with Erin McDowell", published December 11, 2022.

Researched and written by Richie with the help of modern digital tools. Images: AI-generated editorial illustrations.

The post How Many Cookies for a Cookie Exchange? The Batch Math appeared first on The Rich Miser.

An empty window makes a room feel unfinished, and a landlord’s lease rarely lets you drill. The IKEA SCHOTTIS is the cheapest serious answer for a bare window: a pleated polyester shade that sticks to the window frame with tape and costs $4.99. I bought my first batch years ago, while my wife Lily and I were finishing a renovation of our house.

The short answer, before the details: this is a very good shade for a window nobody touches much, and a disappointing one for a window you open every day. It is not blackout, it is not pretty from a foot away, and the little clips go missing. For a rental, a guest room, a basement, or the last window in a renovation you have already paid for, it does the job for the price of a coffee.

What follows is what the shade is today, what three years of use in our house showed, how to measure and cut it once, and what the next fifteen dollars buys if this one is not enough.

What $4.99 actually buys

The SCHOTTIS is a single pleated sheet of 100% recycled polyester with a polypropylene plastic part, and that is the whole object. It arrives folded into a slim package 35 ½ inches long, 1 ¾ inches wide, and ¾ inch deep, and it opens into a concertina that you stretch down over the glass. There is no headrail, no cord, no mechanism, and no bracket. The top edge carries adhesive tape. The bottom edge carries one half of a hook-and-loop strip, and the frame gets the other half so the shade can be fastened shut.

Two plastic clips hold the shade open at whatever height you choose. That is the operating system: you push the shade up, put a clip on each side, and the pleats stay put. To close it, you peel the bottom free and let the pleats drop, then press the hook-and-loop strip shut. It takes a few seconds more than a roller blind and it never feels mechanical.

The white version filters light rather than blocking it. IKEA says the fabric dims daylight, reduces glare, and gives a comfortable sense of privacy because people cannot see in. At night, when the room is lit, silhouettes can be perceived from outside. The shade is also sold in one size, 35 ½ inches wide by 74 ¾ inches long. Longer windows will be left bare at the bottom, which is the single biggest limitation of the design.

Care is a dust cloth or a vacuum with the soft brush attachment. The fabric is not washable, and IKEA says not to bleach, tumble dry, or iron it. The last instruction matters more than it looks: a hot iron will flatten the pleats the shade depends on.

What three years in one house showed

We bought ours at $2.99, and the price has since moved to $3.99 and now $4.99. We were finishing a renovation with no curtains and no budget left, so the appeal was simple: each shade cost $2.99, and nothing had to be drilled into new trim.

Three years in, the split was clear. The shades in the guest room, which were almost never touched, looked and felt like new. The one in the home office, which was opened and closed nearly every day, had lost some stiffness in the pleats after about nine months, and the edges had begun to fray where the clips grip. That is the whole wear story: this shade does not fail on the calendar, it fails on use.

Two smaller annoyances showed up along the way. The clips are small, loose, and easy to misplace, and losing one turns a two-clip shade into a one-clip shade that sags on one side. And up close, the material looks like what it is: a thin folded polymer sheet. From across a room it reads as a plain white blind. From a foot away, it reads as a $4.99 solution, which is fine in a spare bedroom and less fine in a living room you actually decorate.

Where it works, and where it looks cheap

It works in rooms with low expectations and low traffic: a guest room, a basement window, a dorm, a first apartment, a house being staged for sale, a laundry room, or the back of a garage. It works especially well in a rental, because nothing in it is screwed into the frame, and it works behind a curtain, where nobody inspects the frame.

It disappoints in four situations. A window you open every day will wear the pleats and the clip edges, as ours did. A bedroom that needs darkness will not get it, because the white fabric filters light and the sides are not sealed. A tall window will show bare glass below the 74 ¾ inch drop. And a window on show in a main room will look improvised, because it is.

The blackout version costs one dollar more

IKEA also sells a SCHOTTIS blackout pleated blind in dark gray, 39 ¼ inches wide by 74 ¾ inches long, for $5.99. It uses the same tape-and-clip design, its material list adds PET plastic, and it blocks light rather than filtering it. The width is nearly four inches greater, which matters if your window falls between the two sizes.

The trade is that you get darkness in exchange for a darker color in the room. A white filter disappears into a bright wall; a dark gray blockout panel is a visible object. If the job is a bedroom and the goal is sleep, the extra dollar is easy arithmetic. If the job is a hallway window you want to look neutral, the white version is the better match.

How to measure, cut and hang it once

Measuring the glass instead of the frame is the mistake that ruins a cut, and measuring once in the middle of the window is the second one. The measuring method that blinds sellers use is worth copying, because it costs a minute and saves a return trip. Measure the width inside the frame at the top, the middle, and the bottom, and use the smallest of the three. Measure the height on the left, middle, and right, and write those down too. Lowe’s guide says to work to the nearest eighth of an inch, and to decide first whether you are mounting inside the frame or over it, because the two ask for different numbers.

Cutting is the easy part. Mark the width you need, add the tiny allowance you prefer for clearance at the frame, and cut with sharp household scissors along a straight edge. Because the shade is a pleated sheet, a wobbly cut shows at the edges; take the extra thirty seconds. Then peel the backing from the top tape, press the shade along the top of the frame, and smooth it down. Finally, stick the hook-and-loop half to the bottom of the frame so the shade can be fastened closed.

Two things about the tape. IKEA’s own wording is that the blind sticks best on smooth surfaces, so a clean, dry, flat frame is the one to aim for, and a rough brick or textured plaster surround is the wrong place to expect it to hold. And press the full length of the tape rather than the middle.

The video below shows the whole install on a real window, including where the clips go. It runs under five minutes and is worth watching before you cut anything.

What the next fifteen dollars buys

The cheapest shade is not always the cheapest answer, because a shade that annoys you gets replaced. IKEA’s own shelf shows what the money buys as you move up, and the differences are worth knowing before you commit to four windows.

Read the table as a ladder of problems solved. At $4.99 you solve privacy and glare on a window that stays put. At roughly $20 to $40 you buy a mechanism, which means the shade opens and closes like a blind instead of being clipped. From about $40 upward you also buy length, insulation, or top-down light control. Nothing in the ladder changes the fact that the SCHOTTIS is the only one here under $10 that goes up without a drill.

If the rest of the room is still coming together, the lesson from a bigger renovation holds here too: a window you open daily is where a $40 roller earns its price, and a window you open twice a year is not.

What buyers complain about

The product page carries a 4.2 average across 4,678 reviews, which is a good score for a disposable object. The complaints are consistent, and the clip problem is the one we saw at home. The clips are a common target: buyers describe them as flimsy, easy to knock off, and prone to flying across the room while you are trying to hold a shade up. One reviewer gave up and used hair clips instead.

The second cluster is the hook-and-loop strip. It holds very well, which is the problem: more than one buyer reports tearing the fabric while pulling the shade free, because the strip grips harder than the pleated sheet can take. Pull on the strip, not the fabric, and open the shade slowly along its length rather than from one corner.

The third is the tape. It is strong on smooth surfaces and indifferent on rough ones, and one reviewer suggests pressing a strip of painter’s tape onto the frame first so the adhesive comes off cleanly at moving time. That is a reasonable precaution for a rental. Finally, one reviewer measured the blackout at closer to 65 inches of usable drop than the stated 74 ¾, so measure the actual panel before you plan around its length.

The verdict

At $4.99 the SCHOTTIS is the right buy for one specific job: covering a window that nobody opens, in a room that nobody inspects, without drilling a single hole. Two of them cover a 60 inch window for $9.98, and neither needs a screwdriver. Renters get the most out of it, and so does the spare room nobody opens.

It is a permanent solution for a window nobody opens and a temporary fix everywhere else, and pretending otherwise is how people end up disappointed. If the window is on show, if you open it daily, if you need darkness, or if the frame is rough, a roller or a cellular shade is the better fit. The honest summary after three years is the one I would give a friend: it earns its keep on the windows you ignore, and it will not survive the ones you use.

Frequently asked questions

Is the IKEA SCHOTTIS blackout?

The white version is light filtering, not blackout. IKEA sells a separate SCHOTTIS blackout pleated blind in dark gray, 39 ¼ by 74 ¾ inches, for $5.99, which blocks light.

Does the SCHOTTIS need drilling?

No. It attaches with adhesive tape along the top of the window frame and a hook-and-loop strip at the bottom, so no drill and no screws are needed. The tape holds best on smooth, clean, dry surfaces.

Can you cut the SCHOTTIS to fit?

Yes. IKEA sells one width per color, and the fabric is designed to be cut to size. Measure the frame at the top, middle, and bottom, use the smallest width, and cut along a straight edge with sharp scissors.

How many shades do you need for a wide window?

Divide the window width by 35.5 inches for the white shade or 39.25 inches for the blackout, then round up. A 60 inch window takes two white shades, each trimmed to about 30 inches, and the two meet in the middle with a visible join.

How do you keep the SCHOTTIS open?

Two plastic clips are included. You push the pleats up to the height you want and put a clip on each side. The clips are small and easy to lose, which is a common complaint in the product reviews.

Will it cover a tall window?

The drop is 74 ¾ inches, so taller windows will be left bare at the bottom. For a full-height window, a roller or cellular shade in a longer size does the job the SCHOTTIS cannot.

Sources

• IKEA: SCHOTTIS pleated shade, white, 35 ½ x 74 ¾ inches, product page with price, materials, care and review count
• IKEA: SCHOTTIS blackout pleated blind, dark gray, 39 ¼ x 74 ¾ inches, product page
• Lowe’s: How to Measure and Install Blinds, updated October 27, 2026, for the three-point measuring method
• IKEA: SCHOTTIS assembly instructions, 904.313.78

The shades-needed figure in the tool is arithmetic on IKEA’s stated widths, not a manufacturer figure. The two SCHOTTIS lines were read from their product pages, and the related-product prices came from the related-items list on those same pages.

This article is for general information and entertainment, not financial advice.

Updated November 2026 by Richie with the help of modern digital tools.

The post IKEA Schottis Review: Is the $4.99 Pleated Blind Worth It? appeared first on The Rich Miser.

Buying a Thanksgiving turkey starts with one number: how much turkey to buy, in pounds, for the people coming to dinner. Everything else moves out from that figure, from the thaw date to the roasting time to what is left on Friday, which is why the wrong number is so expensive to fix.

The rules are simple enough to quote and easy to misapply. The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service, the federal agency that runs the meat and poultry hotline, says to allow 1 pound of turkey per person, and most hosts have heard some version of that. But the rule counts the whole bird as it sits in the store, bone and all, and it says nothing about leftovers. Change that assumption and the pound count moves, which is where oversized birds come from.

So this page sizes the bird the way a host actually shops. One weight per guest, with its scope stated next to it. Worked examples for the crowd sizes people search for, from six at the table to twenty. The ceiling that splits one bird into two. And a folded calculator that turns your guest list into pounds and a thaw date. The safety numbers appear in the text and again inside the tool, so you can check them without scrolling.

Turkey per person at a glance

Every cell in that table is desk arithmetic on the per-person rules, all of it whole-bird weight as it sits at the store: 1 pound each in the middle column, and the 2 pound leftovers rate of Bon Appetit’s test kitchen in the right. Past 15 pounds that rate turns into more than one bird, which is what the last column names. And the table is arithmetic, not shelf reality: the USDA roasting chart starts at an 8 pound bird, so the 4 and 6 pound answers fall below every timed row.

At the small end the test kitchen’s own number for four to six people with leftovers is 11 to 13 pounds, so read the 8 pound cell as the chart floor: when your arithmetic lands under 8 pounds with no leftovers, buy the 8 pound bird the chart starts at, and when it lands there with leftovers at a table of four to six, buy in that 11 to 13 pound range instead.

Three numbers, three different questions

Start with the fact that the guidance you have already seen is not one rule. There are three, and each answers a different question.

The first is the federal one. In its public Q&A, the Food Safety and Inspection Service answers the question “What size of turkey should I buy?” with a single line: “Whether you are buying a fresh or frozen turkey, allow 1 pound of turkey per person.” That 1 pound is bird weight at purchase, bone and skin included. The agency says nothing about leftovers, so this page treats 1 pound as the dinner-sized number.

The second is the general rule from Bon Appetit, the cooking magazine: “The general rule is 1 to 1 1/2 pounds of turkey per person.” Same whole bone-in bird, same purchase weight, but a wider aim, and the range exists because a whole bone-in bird carries parts nobody eats. If your crowd is known to go back for seconds, the top of that range is the honest end of it.

The third is the leftovers rule, and it is the biggest of the three: 2 pounds of whole bird per person. It comes from Bon Appetit, which reports that recipe developer Jessie YuChen, a former staffer, recommends scaling up “to 2 pounds per person to guarantee extra turkey for leftovers” for smaller gatherings. Past the 15 pound ceiling that rate turns into two birds, or a bird and a second main. This one buys turkey for the fridge as well as the table.

One decision, three questions: what feeds the table, what feeds it with slack, and what also stocks the fridge for the weekend.

Why a pound of bird is not a pound of meat

The confusion comes from treating the two as the same thing. They are not. Bon Appetit is blunt about it: “Buying a pound of turkey per person doesn’t mean it’ll yield an equivalent amount of meat.” A turkey is not a bag of protein with a wrapper. It has a skeleton.

The math shows up as soon as you buy a breast. Bon Appetit puts it this way: “most of the breast is 40 to 50-percent bone and cartilage,” which is why the same page says you will “realistically get around half a pound of edible meat per guest” at 1 to 1 1/2 pounds of breast per person. Roughly half is bone. That is the shortcut to remember for a breast: the pounds at the store are about twice the meat that reaches the plate.

The same idea shows up in the individual cuts. The Food Safety and Inspection Service’s cooking chart lists a whole bone-in breast at 4 to 6 pounds or 6 to 8 pounds, a single breast half at 2 to 3 pounds, and drumsticks and thighs at 3/4 to 1 pound each. Those are raw weights for the cuts as they leave the butcher counter.

How much turkey for 6, 10 and 20 people

Here is the whole calculation. For six at the table with no leftovers: 6 people x 1 pound = 6 pounds of bird, except that 6 pounds is under the 8 pound floor of the USDA roasting chart, so buy the smallest bird the USDA chart covers, 8 pounds, or a bone-in breast. For leftovers on Friday: 6 x 2 = 12 pounds. And here is the room to breathe: YuChen’s range for a small gathering is 11 to 13 pounds for four to six people.

For ten at the table: 10 x 1 = 10 pounds for dinner alone, 10 x 1 1/2 = 15 pounds at the top of the general range, which leaves some to spare, and 10 x 2 = 20 pounds to guarantee leftovers. That last figure crosses into the band where one bird stops cooking evenly.

Twenty at the table is a different kind of meal: 20 x 1 = 20 pounds with nothing to spare, 20 x 1 1/2 = 30 pounds, and 20 x 2 = 40 pounds to guarantee leftovers. That last rate is Bon Appetit’s advice for smaller gatherings, so at this size it is arithmetic to steer by rather than a promise to buy in one piece.

With 20 people, Bon Appetit’s rule for crowds comes first: “Aim for 1 to 1 1/2 total pounds of protein per person, including your supplementary main.” Spread the work across two moderate birds, or a bird and a second protein. The turkey becomes one of the plates instead of the entire meal.

The 15-pound ceiling, and the two-bird plan

There is one structural limit in this whole calculation, and it is the reason people end up with two birds. Amiel Stanek, a contributing editor at Bon Appetit, is direct about it: “you’re going to get the best results from a 15-pound turkey, max.” Not a safety limit. A cooking one, because past that weight the bird roasts unevenly.

The answer is two moderate birds side by side instead of one giant one, and it works better than most hosts expect. Bon Appetit’s advice is to buy two or more moderately sized birds and roast them side by side, or to roast one a day or two early and reheat it on Thanksgiving Day. Two birds also give the table two of everything, so the white-meat seekers and the dark-meat loyalists both get what they came for.

If you are buying breast instead

A breast is a different cut from a whole bird. A bone-in breast is 40 to 50 percent bone and cartilage, so the whole reasoning above holds: a part of the weight goes to the bone, and the meat that reaches the plate is less than the number on the label.

The practical figure is Bon Appetit’s: “Plan on 1 to 1 1/2 pounds of turkey breast per person.” Take the bone out and that becomes around half a pound of edible meat per guest. On a good day it is half a pound of meat.

USDA lists whole bone-in breasts at 4 to 6 pounds or 6 to 8 pounds, and breast halves at 2 to 3 pounds. Roast a 4 to 6 pound breast for about 1 hour and 30 minutes to 2 hours and 15 minutes at 325 degrees Fahrenheit, and a 6 to 8 pounder for 2 hours and 15 minutes to 3 hours and 15 minutes.

A boneless breast skips the bone arithmetic entirely. So the practical rule is smaller: allow about 1/2 pound per person for a dinner with nothing left over, 3/4 of a pound for a round of extras, and a full pound for a crowd that plans on sandwiches Friday. That math is this desk’s, derived from the cooked-meat figure above, not a published rule: the USDA chart lists whole birds and bone-in breasts, and prints no time for boneless.

The calculator

Give the calculator your guest list and it returns pounds to buy, the bird split when you cross the 15-pound ceiling, a thaw date, and the oven basics. The note underneath gives the working, so you can check it against the arithmetic above.

From the number to the thaw date

The pound count has to cover two things: the grocery list and the calendar. Turn the weight into a start date. The Food Safety and Inspection Service is generous with timing: let the bird thaw in the refrigerator, "allow approximately 24 hours for each 4 to 5 pounds in a refrigerator set at 40 F or below."

The agency publishes the same thing as bands, which is what to clip to the refrigerator: a 4 to 12 pound bird takes 1 to 3 days, 12 to 16 pound birds take 3 to 4 days, 16 to 20 pound birds take 4 to 5 days, and 20 to 24 pound birds take 5 to 6 days. Then "a thawed turkey can remain in the refrigerator for 1 or 2 days before cooking," so the timeline has slack.

If you are running late, the agency has a second path. Cold water: submerge the wrapped, leak-proof bird in cold tap water, 30 minutes per pound, changing the water every 30 minutes. A 20 pound bird runs about 10 hours this way, and the agency's band for a 20 to 24 pound bird runs 10 to 12. The safety rule, stated once here: the refrigerator stays at 40 F or below, meat sits at room temperature for no more than 2 hours, and the bird never thaws on the counter, no matter how frozen it looks. Cook immediately after a cold water thaw.

In the store and in the pan

The whole bird goes from the store to the refrigerator or freezer right away: the Food Safety and Inspection Service's storage table allows 1 to 2 days in the refrigerator for fresh whole turkey from purchase, and 12 months in the freezer at best quality. A frozen turkey is safe indefinitely; 12 months is the quality limit.

And read the wrapper on the way out. Basted and self-basted birds carry an added solution. The USDA allows "the maximum added weight of approximately 3% solution before processing is included in the net weight on the label." That solution is folded into the net weight on the label, so the pound count you buy already includes it.

Now the pan. Set the oven no lower than 325 F. Place the bird breast-side up on a flat rack in a shallow pan 2 to 2 1/2 inches deep: deep enough to catch the juices, shallow enough to roast rather than steam.

The bird is done when a thermometer reads 165 F in the innermost part of the thigh, the wing, and the thickest part of the breast. The clock at 325 F: a 14 to 18 pound bird takes about 3 hours and 45 minutes to 4 hours and 15 minutes when unstuffed.

Then "let the bird stand 20 minutes before removing the stuffing and carving." The agency's reason is quality: the juices set, and the bird carves more easily. For the timing of every pot on the stove with it, see the Thanksgiving dinner timeline.

What to do with the turkey that is left

The turkey you carved is the part of the purchase most worth not wasting, and the clock is short. The Food Safety and Inspection Service puts cooked turkey at 3 to 4 days in the refrigerator and 4 months in the freezer, and the same for broth and gravy: 3 to 4 days cold, 2 to 3 months frozen.

Pack the bird in serving-size containers before dessert, and using it up stops being a chore. Turning those containers into meals is what the guide to Thanksgiving leftovers is for.

This article is for general information and entertainment, not financial advice.

Frequently asked questions

How much turkey per person?

Allow 1 pound of whole bird per person, the figure the USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service gives; it does not mention leftovers. The general rule at Bon Appetit is 1 to 1 1/2 pounds per person. For guaranteed leftovers, the magazine's figure is 2 pounds per person, which it gives for a smaller gathering.

How much turkey do I need for 10 people?

Ten pounds buys enough for dinner without leftovers, 15 pounds at the top of the general range, which leaves some to spare, and 20 pounds to guarantee leftovers. Past 15 pounds one bird cooks unevenly, so 20 pounds is two birds of 10 pounds each. The table at the top of this page lays out 4 through 20 people the same way.

Does the one-pound rule include the bones?

It counts the whole bird, bone included. Bon Appetit puts a bone-in turkey breast at 40 to 50 percent bone and cartilage, so 1 to 1 1/2 pounds of breast per person gives about half a pound of edible meat.

How much turkey breast per person?

For bone-in breast, plan 1 to 1 1/2 pounds per person, which is Bon Appetit's guidance. From there, boneless breast is a lighter lift: about 1/2 pound per person for no leftovers, 3/4 of a pound for extras, and a full pound when a crowd wants plenty, which is this desk's arithmetic from the half pound of edible meat figure.

Is a 20-pound turkey too big?

A 20 pound bird sits past the 15-pound ceiling Bon Appetit works to. That ceiling is where Amiel Stanek, the magazine's contributing editor, says a bird stops roasting evenly. Roast two moderate birds side by side instead, each one with its own rack and pan.

How long does a 20-pound turkey take to thaw?

Count 5 to 6 days in the refrigerator at 40 F or below for a 20 to 24 pound bird. In cold water, a 20 pounder takes about 10 hours at 30 minutes per pound, and FSIS's band for a 20 to 24 pound bird runs 10 to 12 hours, with the water changed every 30 minutes.

The whole decision is one weight and a date. Buy once and the thaw, the pan and the roasting time all follow. If the bird is one dish among many at a table full of friends, the group version of this dinner has its own arithmetic: the Friendsgiving potluck planner.

Sources

All sources below were read in October 2026.

• U.S. Department of Agriculture, Food Safety and Inspection Service: Public Q&A, "What size of turkey should I buy?". The 1 pound per person figure, updated February 4, 2025.
• U.S. Department of Agriculture, Food Safety and Inspection Service: Turkey from Farm to Table. The storage table, part weights, and the added-solution note on basted birds, updated July 2, 2024.
• U.S. Department of Agriculture, Food Safety and Inspection Service: Turkey Basics: Safe Thawing. The refrigerator and cold-water thawing times, updated October 24, 2023.
• U.S. Department of Agriculture, Food Safety and Inspection Service: Turkey Basics: Safe Cooking. The oven temperature, roasting times and 165 F doneness check, updated October 22, 2019.
• Bon Appetit: How Much Turkey Per Person Is Ideal for Thanksgiving?. The general rule of 1 to 1 1/2 pounds, the 2 pound leftovers figure, and the 15-pound ceiling.

Researched and written by Richie with the help of modern digital tools. Images: AI-generated.

The post How Much Turkey Per Person? Size the Bird Once appeared first on The Rich Miser.

You are standing in the Costco aisle holding a bottle of Kirkland Signature bourbon, and the price on the shelf label is the first thing you notice. Costco sells everything from wine to toilet paper under that label, and a house label on whiskey invites a fair question: is this any good, and is it worth your money?

The short answer is yes. I graded the bottle I drank 4 out of 5: a surprisingly good bourbon whiskey, malty and sweet with hints of vanilla and smokiness, best with a neutral mixer such as club soda or in a whiskey cocktail. But the bottle on the shelf now is not the bottle I drank. Costco sells four Kirkland bourbons today, none of them the 103-proof bottle I reviewed, and they run from 92 to 120 proof. Knowing which one you are holding is half the trick.

These are my Caveman Liquor Reviews. I like to drink liquor, but I know only the basics and have no refined palate, so I grade bottles on price and on what they look, smell and taste like to me. Read the tasting notes as one caveman’s honest impressions, and the sourcing as the checked part.

What Kirkland bourbon really is

Kirkland Signature is Costco’s own label, and three of the four bottles sold now name the distillery that made them. A store label on bourbon means the whiskey was made somewhere else. Mostly good quality, in my experience, but the question has always nagged at me: where does it come from?

The reporting has caught up with that question. The Whiskey Wash, a whiskey trade publication whose editor in chief is Mark Littler, wrote up the whole Kirkland bourbon range in September 2026. Its account is that Costco sells four Kirkland bourbons now, that three of them are made by Barton 1792 in Bardstown, Kentucky, and that the fourth names no distillery at all.

Whoever bottles it, the word bourbon does legal work in the United States. The Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau, the federal agency that writes the spirits labeling rules, requires bourbon to be distilled from a mash of at least 51 percent corn, distilled at 160 proof or less, and aged in charred new oak barrels, with no coloring or flavoring added. It also reserves the word bourbon for whiskey distilled and aged in this country. So a cheap bottle can still be real bourbon. What changes at this price is whose whiskey sits inside and how strong they bottled it.

The bottle I bought in 2017

I bought mine because I get an occasional masculine hankering for bourbon and like to have a bottle in the house. What I brought home was the Kirkland Signature Premium Small Batch bourbon, bottled at 103 proof (51.5% alcohol) and costing, by my reckoning, about $25.41 for 750 mL.

That price needs a confession attached. I had trouble finding the price online, since this is a Costco brand, so I extrapolated the figure from a Costco alcohol price list someone had collected on the web. It was my best estimate of what the bottle cost me in 2017, and nothing prettier than that.

Curious about its origin, I did some online research and found out that, at least in 2011, it was apparently made by the Jim Beam company, according to Rowley’s Whiskey Forge, the blog that looked into it. My bottle said it was bottled by Tennessee Distilling LTD of Columbia, Tennessee, whoever that may be. That was the picture in 2017, and it has grown clearer since.

What has changed since

Start with the plainest change: the 103-proof Premium Small Batch I bought is not among the four bottles The Whiskey Wash covered in September 2026. Costco now sells four different Kirkland bourbons, and from the shelf they look like four versions of one thing. They are not. What separates them is mostly strength: two are bottled at 92 proof, one at 100, one at 120, and that number decides which bottle is worth buying for what.

Here is the lineup with the figures The Whiskey Wash published in September 2026. The prices are approximate shelf prices from that report, not quotes from Costco.

My bottle stood at 103 proof, which is 51.5 percent alcohol. Today’s four run from 92 to 120. Proof is twice the alcohol percentage, so the four bottles are 46, 46, 50 and 60 percent alcohol by volume: the Single Barrel is the strong one, and the two 92-proof bottles sit below the proof I knew.

Who makes it now

The maker question has moved along too. The Whiskey Wash attributes three of the four bottles to Barton 1792 in Bardstown, Kentucky. The fourth, the Kentucky Straight, does not name its distillery: its label says the whiskey was distilled, barreled and aged in Bardstown and bottled by DC Flynt MW Domaines & Estates in Columbia, Tennessee, and Costco names no distillery for it. So the 2011 trail I followed pointed toward the Jim Beam company, while the range on shelves now is built around Barton 1792. Both readings are dated observations of labels and trade reporting, so the label on the bottle in front of you is the one that counts.

The bottled-in-bond promise

One bottle in the range wears a promise written into federal law more than a century ago. The Bottled-in-Bond Act of 1897, as The Whiskey Wash lays out its terms, requires the whiskey to come from one distillery, one distiller and one distilling season; to rest at least four years in a federally supervised warehouse; and to be bottled at exactly 100 proof. The Kirkland version is distilled at Barton 1792’s DSP-KY-12 plant, with Barton’s own name on the front of the bottle. That label answers the question my 2017 bottle never could.

Here is a blind tasting of the Kirkland Bottled-in-Bond against 1792’s own, which is as close as a video gets to the maker question:

What the 2017 bottle looked, smelled and tasted like

The bottle is a nice wide one, with a white-and-dark-brown label and some cursive writing on it. It’s got a cork-and-plastic top, and I don’t understand the purpose of the cork, and I don’t like it much, because I might get tipsy and try to pick up the bottle by grabbing the top, then wind up dropping it on the floor like some drunken fool.

What comes out of it smells nice, sweet and strongly of malt. The taste is sweet and malty too, with hints of vanilla and smokiness and a somewhat strong ethyl alcohol aftertaste. The texture is relatively thick but quite easy to drink, for whiskey.

Being a high-proof whiskey, it does burn your throat after it goes down, especially if you drink it neat or on the rocks, as I’ve done. In fact, I even felt a burn in my ears once. Surprisingly, however, it burns less than other liquors, despite being 103 proof (51.5% alcohol).

How to drink it

I think the Kirkland bourbon is better enjoyed with a neutral mixer like club soda, or in a good whiskey cocktail. That is how the bottle has gone down best with me. I once had a big whiskey-and-soda glass of it and enjoyed it very much, with no ill effects. If a proper cocktail is what you have in mind, the site has a recipe for the ideal Manhattan cocktail elsewhere on this site.

Proceed with caution on the morning after. Having learned from my experience with The Glenmorangie, where I felt like the Sixteen Men of Tain beat me up, I drank this one with club soda to make it easier on my stomach. It seemingly worked, since I woke up fine the next day. For whatever it is worth: I am a male in reasonably good health, born in 1983.

Is it worth it?

The verdict is the score: 4 out of 5. A surprisingly good bourbon whiskey, malty, with hints of vanilla and smokiness, and very alcoholic at 103 proof. If you like having bourbon in the house the way I do, it cleared the bar easily and asked little in return, which is exactly what I want from a house bottle.

How readers ranked the four

The four bottles at Costco now each answer the question a little differently, and The Whiskey Wash put the range to its readers as well, in a survey of 2,724 people. More than half placed the 120-proof Single Barrel somewhere in their top three, and it finished first. The 100-proof Bottled-in-Bond drew 501 first-place votes, more than any of the nine Kirkland whiskies in that survey, and the 92-proof Small Batch drew 250 firsts and a place on 41.6 percent of the readers’ ballots. The 1.75-litre Kentucky Straight does the volume work at 92 proof.

My old glass cannot speak for bottles I have not tasted, and a caveman palate is a poor instrument for re-grading four whiskeys at once. What I can tell you is the shape of the choice. The bottle I reviewed sits beside a family of four at three strengths; The Whiskey Wash’s own conclusion is that the Bottled-in-Bond is the cocktail bottle of the bunch. The character I loved at 103 proof is still worth chasing in the aisle. You are simply choosing the proof and the bottle rather than taking the one I happened to buy.

If you want one line of buying guidance from that report, it works like this: the Bottled-in-Bond is the cocktail bottle, the Single Barrel is the one to sip with a splash of water, and the Kentucky Straight does the volume work when you want a lot of bourbon for the money. That is The Whiskey Wash’s judgment of the four, not mine. My own verdict was written over one bottle in 2017, drunk with club soda, and 4 out of 5 is what it earned.

This article is for general information and entertainment, not financial advice.

Frequently asked questions

Who makes Kirkland Signature bourbon?

Costco’s label is bottled by somebody else, and the names have changed over the years. The research I did for my own bottle found that, at least in 2011, it was apparently made by the Jim Beam company, while my bottle said it was bottled by Tennessee Distilling LTD of Columbia, Tennessee. The Whiskey Wash reports that three of the four Kirkland bourbons on sale now come from Barton 1792 in Bardstown, Kentucky.

What proof is Kirkland Signature bourbon?

The bottle I bought was 103 proof, which is 51.5% alcohol. The four bottles on shelves now run from 92 proof for the Small Batch and the Kentucky Straight, to 100 for the Bottled-in-Bond, up to 120 for the Single Barrel, according to The Whiskey Wash.

How much does Kirkland Signature bourbon cost?

My bottle cost about $25.41 for 750 mL in 2017, on my own estimate, because I had trouble finding the price online for a Costco brand. The Whiskey Wash reports approximate shelf prices of about $25 to $40 a bottle for the four sold now, with the 1.75-litre Kentucky Straight around $27.

What does bottled in bond mean on the Kirkland bottle?

It is a legal promise that dates to the Bottled-in-Bond Act of 1897. Federal rules now require the whiskey to come from one distillery, one distiller and one distilling season, to rest at least four years in a federally supervised warehouse, and to be bottled at exactly 100 proof. The Kirkland one is distilled at Barton 1792’s DSP-KY-12 plant, and Barton’s name sits on the front of the bottle.

How do you drink Kirkland Signature bourbon?

I prefer it with a neutral mixer such as club soda, or in a good whiskey cocktail. I had a big whiskey-and-soda glass of it and enjoyed it very much, with no ill effects. Having learned from a Glenmorangie morning, I drank this one with club soda and woke up fine the next day, which is one evening’s experience and nothing more. If you take it neat or on the rocks, expect the throat burn of a high-proof whiskey.

Sources

The prices, proofs and sourcing details in this review come from these pages:

• The Whiskey Wash, “Every Kirkland Bourbon Ranked, From Worst to Best” by Mark Littler, September 2026.
• The United States Congress, the Bottled-in-Bond Act of 1897 (29 Stat. 626, chapter 379).
• The Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau, 27 CFR 5.143, Whisky, the federal standards of identity for bourbon.
• The Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau, 27 CFR 5.88, Bottled in bond, the current bottled-in-bond rules.

Updated October 2026 by Richie with the help of modern digital tools.

The post Kirkland Signature Bourbon Review: Is it Worth Your Money? appeared first on The Rich Miser.

If you are shopping for a used car and have landed on Hertz Car Sales, the used-car arm of the car rental company Hertz, you are weighing one question. Is a former rental car a smart buy, or a slow-motion repair bill? Hertz sells its own off-rental vehicles to ordinary shoppers, mostly late-model cars and SUVs, usually cheaper than CarMax and usually a little dearer than the cheapest private listings.

The trade-off is baked into the product: these cars were driven by dozens of strangers who had no stake in their condition. This review covers how Hertz Car Sales works today. It explains what the warranty and return policy say, what the fees look like, and where the real risk sits. A tool further down helps you size up any ex-rental car.

Note: This is a research-based review, meaning that it conveys the results of my own research-based analysis. I have no relationship with Hertz and have never done business with Hertz Car Sales.

Hertz Car Sales at a glance

What is Hertz Car Sales?

Hertz Car Sales is the retail used-car operation of The Hertz Corporation, part of the publicly traded Hertz Global Holdings. It sells former rental cars to the public, online and from 37 stores, according to its own location directory. They run across the continental United States and Honolulu. TestDrive+ cars can also be collected at more than 300 Hertz neighborhood rental locations. That is down from the 80 company-operated locations Hertz described in its 2018 annual report, and below the 45 CNBC counted in September 2025: the footprint has shrunk even as the online side has grown.

Two facts stand out. The first is no-haggle pricing, a fixed price with no negotiation: the number on the window is the number. The second is that Hertz is the whole chain behind the car. You buy from the outfit that rented it, maintained it and now warrants it, not a corner lot that picked it up at auction last week.

Where the cars come from, and why that matters

Most of the inventory comes from the rental fleets of Hertz and its sister brands Dollar, Thrifty and Donlen, though the company is open that it also sells customer trade-ins and cars bought from dealers, private sellers and auctions.

Hertz describes its retail stock as near-new and typically about a year old, and the wider numbers agree. When Hertz gave CNBC a look at its operations in September 2025, the company had about 560,000 vehicles on the road, roughly 80 percent of them less than a year old. Less than 10 percent went to wholesale auction. A sedan that left the rental line at twelve months old is a different proposition from a tired, high-mileage ex-fleet taxi.

The electric-car chapter

The electric-car side explains a class of cars you may well see on the lot. Hertz announced in October 2021 that it had ordered 100,000 Tesla vehicles by the end of 2022, alongside 65,000 Polestar electrics over five years. By January 2024 the company was selling about 20,000 electric vehicles out of its United States fleet and putting gas-powered cars back in their place, citing higher collision and damage costs and expecting roughly $245 million in depreciation charges. Some of those electrics turned up in the retail inventory as the fleet shrank, and they still carry a shorter warranty than the gas cars.

How buying a car from Hertz works

You start the way you would anywhere else: browse the listings showing each car’s location, mileage and exact price. Then the process goes online. Hertz lets you arrange financing, settle a trade-in and complete the paperwork from home in most states, and you can collect the car at a store or have it delivered. A handful of states still require you to sign at a licensed Hertz office.

Financing runs through a panel of lenders rather than Hertz itself, and the company says it works with buyers across a range of credit profiles. Pre-qualification uses a soft credit inquiry, so it does not ding your score; a hard check happens when a lender finalizes a loan. There is no published minimum credit score. How any lender reads your file is that lender’s business.

TestDrive+: the three-day try before you buy

The most interesting thing Hertz does is TestDrive+, its extended test-drive program, called Rent2Buy until October 2026. Rather than circle the block with a salesperson, you reserve the exact car, pay a special daily drive fee and live with it for up to three days. Buy it and Hertz waives the fee; decline and you hand it back and pay for the days you had it.

Gently disguising the rental business as a showroom is the whole idea, and it is a good one. The program has grown fast: Hertz reported it in more than 100 cities in August 2025 and in more than 300 Hertz neighborhood rental locations by October 2026. Most TestDrive+ cars are 2025 or 2026 models.

The minimum rental age is generally 25, or 21 with an Age Differential Charge that runs about $15 a day for most car classes and $25 for higher-end ones. And because TestDrive+ cars may still be out earning money, you cannot always inspect the vehicle before reserving; the reservation is the appointment.

The warranty, and what changed there

Warranty coverage is where the current program quietly parts company with what buyers found a few years ago. Under the banner 100K Mile Protection, Hertz includes a limited powertrain warranty of 3 years or 100,000 miles, whichever comes first, on eligible gas and hybrid vehicles, at no extra charge. That is a real extension from the 12 months or 12,000 miles that applied on older terms.

• What is covered: specified major components of the engine, transmission and transaxle, and drive axle. It is a powertrain warranty, not bumper-to-bumper.
• Eligibility: generally five model years old or newer, and fewer than 75,000 miles at sale.
• Deductible: $100 per covered repair visit.
• Extras: rental car reimbursement, towing reimbursement, and travel breakdown reimbursement on certain covered breakdowns.
• Transferring it: not transferable if you sell the car later.

Electric cars sit on the older, shorter tier: a 12-month or 12,000-mile limited warranty, again with roadside assistance and travel breakdown coverage. Separately, Hertz sells protection plans at three coverage levels, including gap-style total loss protection, prepaid maintenance, and technology coverage for driver-assistance and audio systems. Those are optional and priced apart.

What “Hertz Certified” actually means

On this lot, Hertz Certified is a specific program. The car passes a 122-point inspection that Hertz describes in detail. A vehicle history report is checked for open service recalls. A road test covers more than two dozen performance items, such as transmission operation. Safety items include brake pad wear and tire tread. Then come the frame, underbody and engine components, and finally a sweep of exterior and interior matters. A satisfactory rating on all 122 points is what makes a car Certified.

Certified vehicles carry the three-year warranty described above and the same buy-back guarantee. Certified and TestDrive+ cars differ mainly in how you buy: Certified cars you purchase outright on the spot, while TestDrive+ cars you take home first.

The buy-back guarantee: 7 days or 250 miles

Hertz Car Sales will take a Hertz Certified or TestDrive+ car back within 7 days or 250 miles of your purchase, whichever comes first. Its own FAQ is looser than its buy-back page, saying that many purchases include the guarantee and that terms vary by transaction, so confirm yours before you sign. You can swap up to a more expensive vehicle and pay the difference, or walk away for a refund.

It is not a clean refund. Hertz deducts a $200 cleaning and recertification fee unless state law forbids it, plus anything it bills for excess wear or damage.

Fees and how you pay

The advertised price is the price, but not the total. You still owe state taxes and title and registration fees, estimated at sale and trued up by your motor vehicle agency afterwards. Documentation fees vary by state. Hertz’s Certified page says the fee is included in the advertised price in some states. It then lists 25 states where it is payable on top, from $85 in California to as much as $999 in Florida. Ask for your state’s figure in writing.

At select locations Hertz lets you put up to $3,000 of the down payment on a credit or debit card; the rest is financed, certified check or wire transfer, and bank draft checks are not accepted. Hertz’s customer FAQ also notes that cars come with just one set of keys. As for service history, Hertz’s own pages are not wholly in step. The Hertz Certified FAQ says the company is not currently providing copies of maintenance records. Its warranty page says records can be provided on request. Ask at the store, and read the inspection sheet and history report on offer.

The real question: are the cars beaten up?

This is the fear that hangs over every ex-rental car, and it deserves an honest answer. Consumer Reports, the nonprofit testing organization, used figures Avis has published: a rental car is rented 55 to 65 times a year on average. Its reporting puts typical rental mileage at about 10,000 to over 50,000 miles, notes that most cars are no more than 18 months old at de-fleet, and credits the trade with inspecting and servicing cars regularly.

Set against that: people treat a rental car differently from their own, and I am one of them. I will eat in a rental car and not in my own. Nobody is gentle with a car they are handing back at the airport. So the mileage is usually modest, the age is young, the servicing is systematic, and the driving is careless. Both sides of that trade are real.

Which is why the handling is the same whatever badge sits on the seller. Consumer Reports has long recommended pulling an independent vehicle history report and having your own mechanic inspect the car first. Hertz is comfortable with that instinct; its own materials encourage buyers to bring a vehicle to their mechanic of trust, and TestDrive+ is built on giving you the time to do exactly that.

Are Hertz prices good? Where they sat in practice

I priced three comparable cars against Edmunds, the pricing and research site, and CarMax, the national no-haggle used-car chain, and the pattern was consistent. Edmunds was the cheapest of the three on every car. Hertz sat a step behind it. CarMax was the expensive end of the range.

The first was a 2019 Toyota Highlander LE carrying about 13,000 miles. Hertz wanted $26,587 for it Certified. Edmunds listed an uncertified one with a little more mileage at $25,940, and a franchise dealer had the same offer with room for haggling. The second was a 2019 BMW X3 at about 28,000 miles: $32,997 Certified at Hertz, $29,988 on Edmunds, $36,998 at CarMax. The third was a 2018 Toyota Camry LE: $16,700 at Hertz, uncertified and showing about 35,000 miles, against $15,995 on Edmunds for a car with about 22,000 miles, and $18,998 at CarMax.

Those were the numbers when I looked them up, and they have aged. Cox Automotive, which tracks used-car listings, reported an average listing price of $27,239 in August 2026. That was the highest since December 2022 and up 7 percent on the year, as stock under $15,000 thinned. Do not read those prices as today’s quotes. The ranking of the three sellers is the durable part, and it is worth testing on the exact car you want.

Hertz Car Sales versus CarMax

The two chains rhyme in a couple of ways and diverge in others. Both price up front and neither will haggle. But their core products are different creatures.

• Inspection. Every CarMax car is inspected and sold as CarMax Certified. At Hertz, the 122-point inspection is the hallmark of the Hertz Certified program, and not every car on the list carries it.
• Return policy. CarMax advertises a 10-day Money Back Guarantee. Hertz gives 7 days or 250 miles on Hertz Certified and TestDrive+ cars and takes $200 off the refund.
• Warranty. The wide gap. CarMax’s standard limited warranty is 30 days for most buyers, 60 to 90 in a few states. Hertz gives 3 years or 100,000 miles on eligible gas and hybrid cars. Longer cover from CarMax means buying its MaxCare service plan, up to 5 years, at extra cost.
• What the car lived through. CarMax does not specialize in ex-rental stock. If you would rather not buy a car that was driven by forty strangers, that difference is the whole comparison.

Ten things to do before you commit

1. Prefer a Hertz Certified car over uncertified stock where the prices are close.
2. Take the time to inspect properly, and give real weight to anything a mechanic surfaces.
3. Use TestDrive+ where it is offered. Three days of your own commute tells you more than any conversation on the lot.
4. Run the VIN yourself through the national recall check at nhtsa.gov/recalls and read a history report.
5. Favor lower mileage per model year over a cheap sticker with high mileage.
6. Ask how much of the manufacturer’s warranty is still live on that VIN, and how to confirm it.
7. Decide about protection plans before you arrive, so the decision is not made in the finance office.
8. Check tire tread depth and brake pad thickness yourself. Wear items are the first bill.
9. Price the same car at Edmunds, CarMax and a local franchise dealer before you commit.
10. Count the documentation fee for your state against the total, not just the sticker.

A candid verdict

I would be nervous about the life history of an ex-rental car, and I would want the price to be really, really good to go ahead. Against that nervousness, Hertz puts a long list on the other side of the ledger: young inventory, a genuinely long warranty, a real return window, fixed published prices, and a three-day TestDrive+. Hertz says that last one sets it apart among major used-car retailers.

The sweet spot is a low-mileage, late-model, Hertz Certified car taken out on the three-day program and put in front of a mechanic before any money moves. If a comparable car from a private seller or a franchise dealer comes in meaningfully cheaper once the doc fee is counted, the ex-rental badge is not buying you enough.

This article is for general information and entertainment, not financial advice.

Frequently asked questions

What is Hertz Car Sales?

Hertz Car Sales is the used-car arm of the car rental company Hertz. It sells former rental vehicles, and some trade-ins and auction stock, online and from 37 stores across the United States, at fixed, non-negotiable prices.

Is buying a former rental car a good idea?

It can be, because fleet cars are usually young, lightly worn by mileage and systematically serviced. The trade-off is that many different drivers have used one car without much care. Consumer Reports, the nonprofit consumer testing organization, recommends a vehicle history report and an independent mechanic’s inspection on any ex-rental car.

Does Hertz Car Sales negotiate on price?

No. Hertz Car Sales uses no-haggle pricing, so the listed price is the price. What you can usually move instead is your trade-in appraisal, and any optional extras being added at the point of sale.

How long is the warranty that comes with a Hertz car?

Eligible gas and hybrid vehicles include a 3-year or 100,000-mile limited powertrain warranty at no extra charge, with a $100 deductible per covered repair visit. Eligible Hertz electric vehicles include a shorter 12-month or 12,000-mile limited warranty instead. Exact coverage is set out in the warranty agreement you receive.

Can I return a car I bought from Hertz Car Sales?

On a Hertz Certified or TestDrive+ car, yes: within 7 days or 250 miles of the purchase, whichever comes first, with terms varying by transaction. Hertz deducts a $200 cleaning and recertification fee unless the law forbids it, plus any amount charged for excess wear or damage.

What is Rent2Buy, and what is it called now?

Rent2Buy was the name of Hertz Car Sales’ program for renting the exact car you were considering before you bought it, at a discounted daily rate that was waived on purchase. It is now called TestDrive+, and it runs to more than 300 participating Hertz neighborhood rental locations, giving you up to three days with the vehicle.

Sources and further reading

Hertz’s own pages and filings

• Hertz Car Sales. “Hertz Car Sales | Largest Used Car Selection.” https://www.hertzcarsales.com/
• Hertz Car Sales. “Hertz Certified | Used Rental Cars for Sale.” https://www.hertzcarsales.com/hertz-certified.htm
• Hertz Car Sales. “TestDrive+ | Take a Car Home for 3 Days.” https://www.hertzcarsales.com/rent2buy.htm
• Hertz Car Sales. “Hertz Warranty | 3-Year / 100K Mile Protection.” https://www.hertzcarsales.com/hertz-warranty.htm
• Hertz Car Sales. “Hertz Buy Back Guarantee.” https://www.hertzcarsales.com/hertz-buy-back-guarantee.htm
• Hertz Car Sales. “Hertz Car Sales Frequently Asked Questions.” https://www.hertzcarsales.com/frequently-asked-questions.htm
• Hertz Car Sales. “Locations.” https://www.hertzcarsales.com/locations/index.htm
• The Hertz Corporation. “Annual Report on Form 10-K for 2018.” U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/47129/000165785319000005/hghthc201810-k.htm

News, market data and comparisons

• Business Wire. “Hertz Car Sales is Redefining the Test Drive and Expanding its Rent2Buy Program to 100+ Cities Nationwide.” August 14, 2025. https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20250814267724/en/Hertz-Car-Sales-is-Redefining-the-Test-Drive-and-Expanding-its-Rent2Buy-Program-to-More-Than-100-Cities
• Business Wire. “Hertz Car Sales Introduces 100K Mile Protection, Raising the Bar for Confidence in Used Vehicle Ownership.” August 25, 2026. https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260825691956/en/Hertz-Car-Sales-Introduces-100K-Mile-Protection-Raising-the-Bar-for-Confidence-in-Used-Vehicle-Ownership
• Business Wire. “Hertz Car Sales Expands Three-Day Test-Drive Experience to 300+ Hertz Locations Nationwide.” October 15, 2026. https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20261015752606/en/Hertz-Car-Sales-Expands-Three-Day-Test-Drive-Experience-to-300-Hertz-Locations-Nationwide
• CNBC. Robert Ferris. “Exclusive: Hertz Takes All of Used Car Sales Process Online.” September 30, 2025. https://www.cnbc.com/2025/09/30/hertz-used-cars-online.html
• Reuters. “Rental Giant Hertz Dumps EVs, Including Teslas, for Gas Cars.” January 11, 2024. https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/hertz-sell-about-20000-evs-us-fleet-2024-01-11/
• Cox Automotive. “Used-Vehicle Prices Reach Highest Level Since 2022 as Inventory Tightens in August.” September 11, 2026. https://www.coxautoinc.com/insights/used-vehicle-inventory-august-2026/
• Cox Automotive. “Manheim Used Vehicle Value Index: Mid-October 2026 Trends.” October 19, 2026. https://www.coxautoinc.com/insights/manheim-used-vehicle-value-index-mid-october-2026-trends/
• Consumer Reports, via WISC-TV Channel 3000. “Consumer Reports: Beware Buying a Used Rental Car.” https://www.channel3000.com/features/consumer-reports-beware-buying-a-used-rental-car/article_8eff76bb-d260-5950-9d3f-56b5624359fc.html
• CarMax. “Warranties and MaxCare.” https://www.carmax.com/car-buying-process/maxcare-service-plans
• CarMax. “What is CarMax’s Return Policy?” https://www.carmax.com/faq/warranties/what_is_CarMax_return_policy
• National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. “Recalls.” https://www.nhtsa.gov/recalls

You might also like our look at how to save money on car repairs, our tips on maintaining an electric car, and our case for leasing your next car.

Updated October 2026 by Richie with the help of modern digital tools.

The post Hertz Car Sales Review: Should You Buy a Used Rental Car? appeared first on The Rich Miser.

A loaf of sliced bread is one of the cheapest fresh foods in most kitchens and among the fastest to turn on you. Leave it on the counter and the slices go dry at the edges long before the date on the bag. Push it further and you find green in the middle of a loaf that still looks fine from the outside. So you freeze bread, which is the right move, and then you meet the frozen brick.

Freezing is the obvious fix, with one catch that sends people straight back to the bread aisle. Pull a frozen loaf out and the slices are welded into a single block, so you either saw at it with a knife or thaw the whole thing, which defeats the point of freezing it in the first place.

Here is the method, why it works, how long a loaf actually keeps, and a planner that turns the USDA’s storage windows into a date on your own loaf.

Why frozen bread sticks together

Bread goes stale for two reasons, and only one of them is about drying out. The other is the starch. Flour starch gelatinizes in the oven, then slowly re-forms into a crystalline structure as the loaf cools. Serious Eats calls this return to the crystal state “retrogradation” and “recrystallization”, and points out the part that surprises people: bread sealed against every bit of moisture loss still hardens, because the starch is doing it, not the air.

Temperature decides how fast that happens. Warm is slow. Frozen stops it. In between, around refrigerator temperature, it speeds up. A 2021 study in the journal Foods held its pan wheat bread at 8.2 degrees Celsius, a fridge temperature, against about 21 to 22 degrees for the room-temperature arms. The refrigerated loaves firmed faster: 0.37 newtons per day against 0.26 for the same bread in a plastic bag at room temperature. The USDA FoodKeeper entry for whole wheat bread says the same thing flatly: “Refrigeration not recommended – bread will quickly dry out and become stale.”

So the freezer is the right shelf. The sticking is a separate problem. Every cut face of a slice carries moisture. Press a second slice against it, drop the temperature, and that moisture freezes across the gap as a thin bridge of ice. Do that to a whole loaf at once and you get one solid brick, the effect King Arthur’s page describes when it says breaking single slices from a frozen loaf “isn’t particularly effective at anything other than making your hands cold”. The fix is to break the contact before the cold arrives, one slice at a time.

How long bread keeps on each shelf

The numbers below come from FoodKeeper, the storage database the USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service publishes and FoodSafety.gov points readers to. Read the two paragraphs under the table before the days, because they change how you use them.

Two things about that table matter more than the exact days. The first is that these are quality windows, not safety limits. The FoodSafety.gov cold storage chart says food held “continuously at 0 F (-18 C) or below can be kept indefinitely”, and the inspection service puts it even more plainly: “Food stored constantly at 0 F will always be safe. Only the quality suffers with lengthy freezer storage.” Even so, a loaf at month seven is not a hazard. It is just tired.

The second is that published advice genuinely disagrees. King Arthur Baking says most bread freezes well for “as long as three months”. Cornell Cooperative Extension, reprinting Iowa State’s advice, says to use it “within 6 months”. Kansas State gives 6 to 8 months for yeast bread and rolls, and FoodKeeper says 3 to 5 months for commercial bread and 3 for whole wheat. In practice, treat 3 months as the point where a loaf is at its best, 6 months as the outer edge, and anything beyond that as safe but not worth saving for a sandwich.

Before you freeze bread, four things to have ready

None of this requires a vacuum sealer, and none of it takes more than a couple of minutes at the counter.

• A freezer at 0 F or below. Kansas State’s extension sheet opens with that number, and Iowa State makes the same point: keep the freezer at zero or colder, it says, to “freeze food fast and stay frozen solid”.
• A bag you can press flat, plus something to wrap the loaf in. A freezer-grade bag is the minimum. A layer under it is what buys the extra months.
• Parchment, if you would rather not work the slices apart by hand. King Arthur Baking suggests separating slices “with small squares of parchment paper”, which does the same job as the hand method with less mess.
• A marker. The date on the bag is the only thing standing between you and a freezer full of anonymous loaves.

One rule matters most for bread you baked yourself. Let it cool completely before it goes anywhere near the freezer. King Arthur’s Baker’s Hotline is blunt about the reason: wrap a loaf while it is still warm and “steam will be trapped and turned into condensation, prompting potential mold and bacteria growth on your bread.”

How to freeze bread: the method in six steps

The method was born out of frustration rather than a test kitchen: too many loaves frozen into one solid block. It has held up.

Step one: buy or make pre-sliced bread

Any bread is fine, so long as it is pre-sliced. Moist or dry does not matter. I really like the Alpine Valley Organic from Costco, which I used to have shipped to my door through Google Express. Any pre-sliced loaf from the warehouse does the same job, and so does whatever loaf you brought home, sliced at the bakery counter.

Step two: separate every slice

This is the innovation, and it is almost embarrassingly simple. Put your hand into the bag, and use your fingers to work each slice free of the one behind it, all the way down the loaf. Go sequentially. Do not skip, and do not leave the last two or three welded together, because those are the ones that will defeat you in February.

The two “butts”, the thin end pieces, are worth pulling out and eating while you work. They are thin enough that they stick hardest to the slice beside them, and they never separate cleanly once frozen.

If you would rather keep your hands out of the bag, King Arthur’s alternative is to divide the slices into groups of two or four, however many you use at a time, and slip a square of parchment between the groups. That is slightly slower and slightly tidier, and it solves the same problem.

Step three: get it into the freezer immediately

Immediately is the operative word. Close the bag the moment the last slice is free and put it in the freezer. Do not wait more than a minute. Leave the loaf on the counter while you finish unloading groceries and the cut faces settle back against each other, the surface moisture comes back, and the whole exercise is undone.

Step four: take out only what you need

When you want bread, pull the loaf out and separate the slices you are about to use. Done right, they come apart with a light pull instead of a knife, which is the whole payoff.

Step five: put the rest back right away

Same rule as step three, in reverse. A few minutes on the counter and the edges of the remaining slices begin to soften, and soft edges stick when they refreeze. Take what you need, close the bag, and put it back.

Step six: toast it

Toasting is the best way to bring a frozen slice back, and it is the only method that skips thawing altogether. King Arthur says slices “can be popped directly into the toaster from the freezer”, and that a slice left on the counter thaws in under half an hour if you want it soft. Set the toaster a notch or two higher than you would for room-temperature bread. The result is close enough to fresh that nobody at the table will ask.

Packaging decides how the loaf tastes in three months

Air is the enemy here, and the damage has a name. Freezer burn is what happens when the water at the surface of a frozen food turns straight into vapor without passing through liquid, a process Iowa State calls sublimation. The surface dries, goes grayish-brown and leathery, and the texture does not come back.

The reassuring part is that it is a quality problem, not a safety one. The inspection service says freezer burn “does not make food unsafe, merely dry in spots”, and Iowa State puts it just as flatly: “Freezer burn affects food’s quality but not its safety.” Cut the dried patches off, or use that loaf for toast and croutons where nobody will notice.

How to keep the air off a loaf

To slow it down, press the air out of the bag before you seal it. Iowa State’s tip is to push a straw into the corner of a zip bag and pull the air out before the final close. Cornell’s version is simply to suck the extra air out through a straw before sealing. A second layer does the rest. King Arthur’s bakers use “multiple airtight layers”, plastic wrap and then a bread bag, or foil first and then an airtight container. Cornell’s version is plastic first, then foil, then a freezer bag. Either way, the loaf that gets two layers outlasts the one that gets a twist tie.

This is also where the savings hide. A loaf that goes green is money in the bin, and food waste rarely shows up in a weekly grocery budget, because nobody plans for it. Two minutes with a freezer bag on shopping day is the cheapest fix in the kitchen.

A planner for your own loaf

The dates in the table are ranges, so here is the arithmetic done for your loaf. Pick the bread and the shelf, enter the date you bought it or froze it, and the planner gives you the window in calendar dates.

How to thaw and revive a slice

Toasting is the default, and it is fast enough that most loaves never need anything else. For sandwich bread you want soft rather than crisp, leave the slices in their wrapper on the counter for about half an hour, which is King Arthur’s figure for single slices.

A whole loaf, or a single slice

A whole loaf takes longer. King Arthur says to move the wrapped loaf to room temperature “for three hours or so”, and Cornell says about three hours. Kansas State says two to three hours and tells you to loosen the wrapping. King Arthur and Cornell both keep the loaf wrapped, and Cornell gives the reason: unwrap it while it is still cold and “condensation will form on the exterior compromising the texture”.

In a hurry, and reviving a stale loaf

For a crust worth hearing, King Arthur gives artisan loaves such as baguettes a quick refresh in a 350 F oven, tenting with foil to prevent over-browning. Cornell’s version for a whole defrosted loaf is 300 to 350 F for 10 minutes, and Kansas State reheats a foil-wrapped loaf at 350 F for 15 to 20 minutes. A hotter oven is quicker, and a baguette takes it well.

The microwave will do in a hurry if you are defrosting “a single roll or a couple of slices”. King Arthur wraps each piece in a damp paper towel and gives it about 30 seconds, 45 for a roll, and warns that a whole loaf in there dries out and turns hard. Use it for a sandwich emergency, not for the loaf.

And if you find a loaf that went stale before you froze it, it is not necessarily lost. Cornell’s revival is to flick a little water on the crust, wrap it in foil, and heat it at 300 F for 5 to 10 minutes. Serious Eats explains why that works: reheating can reverse the crystallization that made the bread hard, provided not much moisture was lost along the way.

When to throw bread out

Mold on bread is the one place where the frugal answer is the wrong one. The rule that lets you cut a one-inch margin around mold on hard cheese does not extend to bread. The inspection service’s mold table files “bread and baked goods” under Discard, with the reason spelled out: “Porous foods can be contaminated below the surface.” The green you can see is the spores; the root threads underneath run further than they look. Do not sniff it to check, either. The same page warns that sniffing a moldy item can cause respiratory trouble.

Two edge cases are worth knowing. Freezer burn is not spoilage, so a dry patch means trim or toast, not bin. And a thawed loaf can go back in the freezer safely if it thawed in the refrigerator, though the texture will have suffered. That is the inspection service’s general rule for perishable food, not a bread rule, and the refrigerator thaw is the part that makes the refreeze safe.

One habit prevents most of this. Freeze the loaf while it is still fresh, on the day you buy it if you can, rather than waiting for the first sign of spoilage. That is the whole argument: the freezer preserves quality, it does not restore it. The same logic, applied to a fridge full of turkey and mashed potatoes, is in what to do with Thanksgiving leftovers.

How do you freeze your bread? If you have a trick that beats this one, I want to hear it.

A one-minute video on why the fridge ruins bread

America’s Test Kitchen makes the case against the refrigerator in under a minute, and the title says it plainly: this is why you shouldn’t refrigerate your bread. The storage windows in this post come from the sources listed at the end.

Frequently asked questions

Why do my frozen slices stick together?

The cut faces of two slices touch, moisture on those faces freezes across the gap, and the slices fuse. Separating them by hand before the loaf goes in stops it. So does parchment between groups of slices, and so does getting the loaf into the freezer within a minute.

How long does bread last in the freezer?

FoodKeeper gives 3 to 5 months for commercial bread and 3 months for whole wheat. King Arthur Baking uses 3 months, Cornell and Iowa State say 6, and Kansas State says 6 to 8 for yeast bread. These are quality windows. At 0 F the bread stays safe indefinitely, and the only thing you lose is flavor and texture.

Can you freeze bread in the bag it came in?

You can, and many people do for short storage. For the months the freezer allows, add a layer: a freezer bag over the original wrapper, or plastic wrap and then foil, which is Cornell’s method. Press the air out before sealing, and write the date on the outside.

Should you refrigerate bread?

No. The refrigerator sits in the cold-but-above-freezing range where starch recrystallizes fastest, so it stales bread faster than the counter does. FoodKeeper marks refrigeration of whole wheat bread “not recommended”. Choose the pantry for a few days or the freezer for longer.

Can you freeze bread twice?

Yes, if it thawed in the refrigerator. The inspection service’s rule is written for food generally, not for bread: once food is thawed in the refrigerator it is safe to refreeze without cooking, with some loss of quality. What hurts is repeated thawing at room temperature, which dries the slice each time.

How do you thaw frozen bread without a toaster?

Leave the slices wrapped on the counter for about half an hour, or put a whole loaf out for three hours still wrapped, which is Cornell’s and King Arthur’s method. For a crust, King Arthur gives baguettes a few minutes at 350 F with foil tented over the top. A microwave works for one roll or a couple of slices in about 30 seconds under a damp paper towel, but it will dry out a whole loaf.

Sources

All sources below were read in October 2026. Storage windows are quoted from the sources’ own figures; the planner’s calendar dates are arithmetic done here from those windows.

• USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service. FoodKeeper data and its data.gov record. Commercial bread products, whole wheat bread and breadcrumbs storage rows, and the “Refrigeration not recommended” note.
• FoodSafety.gov. Cold Food Storage Chart, reviewed September 19, 2023. Freezer storage at 0 F or below, and the note that such food can be kept indefinitely.
• Serious Eats. Daniel Gritzer, Does Refrigeration Really Ruin Bread?, updated February 28, 2023. Retrogradation and recrystallization, why the fridge is worse than the counter, and why reheating revives a stale loaf.
• Alpers T. et al., Impact of Storing Condition on Staling and Microbial Spoilage Behavior of Bread, Foods 2021, 10(1):76. Fridge storage at 8.2 C against room temperature, and measured firming rates.
• King Arthur Baking. Annabelle Shippee, How can I freeze my bread? (And defrost it, too!), December 20, 2023. Cooling before freezing, parchment between slices, multiple airtight layers, thawing times and the microwave method.
• Cornell Cooperative Extension, Herkimer County. Tips for Storing Bread, May 2020, reprinting Iowa State University Extension advice. The straw air-removal trick, plastic then foil, the 6-month window, the 300 to 350 F refresh and the stale-loaf revival.
• Kansas State University Research and Extension. Freezing Baked Goods (PDF). The 0 F freezer rule, pressing air out, thawing times, the foil reheat and the 6 to 8 month window.
• USDA FSIS. Freezing and Food Safety, updated August 9, 2024. Freezer burn, packaging, refreezing thawed food, and the point that 0 F storage stays safe.
• USDA FSIS. Molds on Food: Are They Dangerous? The table row discarding moldy bread and baked goods, and the warning about sniffing mold.
• Iowa State University Extension and Outreach, AnswerLine. Freezer Burn and Food Safety, 2024. Sublimation, why freezer burn is a quality problem, and the packaging habits that prevent it.
• America’s Test Kitchen, YouTube. This is Why You Shouldn’t Refrigerate Your Bread (0:57). The refrigerator’s effect on bread, in under a minute.

Updated October 2026 by Richie with the help of modern digital tools.

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