One of the most old-school things you can do after Thanksgiving is make soup out of the turkey carcass.
Please forgive the lack of photos to begin with. The Damsel hates, hates, HATES what she must do to start this, and she couldn’t bring herself to photograph it, either. She sternly reminded herself how delicious the end result is, and moved on.
The hateful thing that had to be done is “pick the bones”, or in other words, remove as much meat as possible from the sad-looking carcass, once everyone has finished feasting. The Damsel sits down at the table with Mr. Dead Turkey Bones, with a small sharp knife, and takes deep cleansing breaths while getting this over with. She regularly makes soup this way, and every time she becomes a vegetarian for a few minutes, getting totally grossed out by fiddling around with goobery animal parts.
ehh…
Once you’ve gotten most of the meat off, put it in the refrigerator in a covered dish. Refrigerate the carcass, too, until it’s soup day. (It’s safe to wait maybe three days, but the sooner the better.)
Today’s lesson includes a basic cooking skill: how to make broth. The process will be pretty much the same whether you are using Thanksgiving turkey bones, bone-in chicken, or even beef bones.
Stuff the carcass in a large stock pot, removing big hunks of fat if you come across them. Don’t stress. A big hunk of blubbery skin/fat isn’t going to add to the quality of the stock, but some fat is fine. Little bits of meat are fine as well.
Cover (or mostly cover) the bones with cold water and turn the heat on low. While that’s heating, gather up your loneliest vegetables. Leftover carrot sticks, celery, broccoli, etc. from a veggie platter are perfect. Put them right in, right in there with the bones. The Damsel realizes this looks disgusting and not a bit like food. You must persevere.
Add to this veggie catastrophe as needed, cleaning and cutting more vegetables if you didn’t have many to start with. Onion is especially good to add. Things need only the barest amount of prep. Remove onion skin, but other than that, just make sure things are clean. Hack them into a few pieces if they are ridiculously big, but keep in mind these veggies will be discarded, so don’t spend time making them pretty.
Some folks keep a container in the fridge with stuff to add to a stockpot…like veggie cooking water and leftover bits from salads. (Not lettuce!) If you have such, add it now. If you have whole peppercorns, add a couple tablespoons. A couple of bay leaves would be good too.
You can see this is not an exact science. The critical parts are bones and cold water, simmered over a low flame for several hours.
What you end up with is broth. Homemade broth from bones is a force of nature. It’s so much better than bouillon that it’s not even worth talking about. So it’s worth cooking up those bones even if you have no plans to make soup, because broth can be used a hundred ways. You can freeze it, too, until that blessed day comes.
But today, we’re pressing on, making this broth into soup NOW.
Three or four hours later, fish out the biggest part of the carcass and throw it away. Careful…it may break into pieces. Strain the rest of the yuck by placing a colander over a large bowl or pot. Pour the whole thing into the colander, letting it catch the smaller bones and veggies. Discard the stuff in the colander.
The Damsel stretched forth her hand to her Knight, and he stepped into the kitchen to help with this part.
Pour the broth back into the stockpot. At this point the broth is finished, and you can do several things with it. You can attempt to de-fat it. The easiest way is to chill it, (takes quite a while) and scoop off the solidified fat from the top. Or, you can throw ice cubes in, and try to get them back out again before they melt…fat will cling to them. Or you can decide the fat doesn’t bother you that much and press on.
Making soup from this point is easy as kindergarten, because you have a wonderful, flavorful broth for a base. Chop up some more carrots and put them in. It will seem strange that you’ve just strained out carrots and thrown them away, but everything will turn out okay. How many? Until there is enough orange.
Chop some onions and celery, same dealio. Put in a fresh bay leaf.
Chop the leftover turkey you put in the refrigerator into bite size pieces and add to the pot, along with plenty of salt and pepper. Let this cook until the vegetables are nearly tender.
Add several handfuls of egg noodles. Simmer about ten minutes, or until the noodles are cooked. Finally, add a couple of cups of frozen peas, or as many as seemeth good.
Sit down to one of the most comforting meals on the planet.
