TheBanyanTree: Cooking the carcass

[Janice Money]

What do you put in your soup, Russ?  We always have a turkey breast (wrapped in bacon to keep it moist) for Christmas and last year I added potato, borlotti beans, leeks and a bit of garlic to the stock.  That was good, but I'm always up for ideas from those more experienced in the uses of turkey stock.

Janice 

-----Original Message-----
From: TheBanyanTree [mailto:thebanyantree-bounces at lists.remsset.com] On Behalf Of Russ Doden
Sent: Monday, 30 November 2015 4:08 AM
To: The Banyan Tree
Subject: TheBanyanTree: Cooking the carcass

Ahh, Thanksgiving.  The time of feasting on turkey - and a table full of other goodies.  It is so easy to overdo everything.  As I have done for a number of years now, I spent my Thanksgiving with my "adopted family".
They don't want me to be sitting home alone on Thanksgiving (or any other "family" holiday for that matter).  It isn't that they don't want me sitting here eating a bologna sandwich because they know I can cook.  Man, can I cook.  I can cook only too well - and as a result have to be careful to keep from really expanding my girth as my metabolism slows down as my age goes up.  Well, that must be the reason because I'm eating less, but not dropping any pounds.  I guess what they say about becoming really friendly with my fat cells, making it really hard to part as we get older is true.

Back to Thanksgiving.  My host family ALWAYS makes enough for 3 times more people than are there.  I understand why.  Many years ago, especially for my friend Susan, things were very tight growing up.  Food was often scarce to even non existent.  Having an overflowing pantry and freezer is part of her makeup.  So is really going over the top on big meal days.  I've learned to take a bunch of freezer bags with me when I go over, in addition to what ever small offerings I'm taking over to make the table groan.  This year was no exception.  I figured I'd bring home enough for 2 or 3 days.
Hah, As if.  Every time I would think I was finished putting something in the freezer bag, as I was reaching over to get another bag, Sus was stuffing more in the bag just finished with more of whatever that bag contained.  It was embarrassing - but her family doesn't like leftovers!
Maybe one meal of leftovers, but that is it!  How can a person not like leftovers?  I grew up looking forward to leftover meals.

OK, so back to the subject.  I seem to have a bad case of distraction today.  I have one big freezer bag I call my "carcass bag".  It is a two gallon or more freezer bag.  I can fit most turkey carcasses in it, after doing a bit of disassembly.  Every year, Sus and I seem to flip a coin to who gets the carcass.  This year she said I get it by default because her freezer is full.  I think she may just want me to be sure and have plenty of soup stock.  People watch us fussing over the carcass and when we tell them we "cook the carcass" the usual response is "ewwwww gross"!  Well, it doesn't look pretty, but oh the goodie a person gets!  This year as we were "bagging the bird" she kept tossing bits of odd pieces of turkey meat that was still laying on the cutting board into the bag.  Like I hadn't taken enough already!  Sheesh.

Friday I did the "first cooking" of the carcass, after picking out the big chunks of meat and putting them in a second container for leftover turkey sandwiches.  Some friends of mine stopped by to drop off a tool they had borrowed and when they came in the house, the aroma of something yummy cooking filled the house.  She took the lid off the pot to see what I was cooking - and started to laugh.  He came over and looked visibly shaken.
She's the strong one of that family - I always have questions about him anyhow.  A nice person, but  strange.  They are a nice young couple that have begun to look to me as a mentor for how to do things around the house (they never learned) as well as metaphysical stuff.  They had fun teasing me about cooking a turkey skeleton.  They asked why I was doing that because they knew I had a reason.  She had never cooked a turkey carcass or even chicken carcass before!  After most of the meat was off, in the trash it would go.

When I told them that I was making soup stock you could see the light start to glimmer.  When I explained that the yummy soups I make are made from home made stock that results from cooking the carcass, they started to connect the dots.

Soooo, after the carcass cooled off Friday, into the fridge it went.  I didn't think it would thicken up when I first put it in the fridge because it was still so "liquid".  Well, when I pulled it out of the fridge this morning to start getting the small bones removed from the "liquid", I found I didn't have any liquid.  It was like jello.  YEA!  Good stock!  After removing all the small bones and pulling any remaining meat out of the nooks and crannies of some of the bones, I have a HUGE bowl of jelly like soup stock.  Then I cracked the bones of the remaining large bones and tossed them back in the pot with fresh water to cook a bit longer.  Getting that goodie out of the bones adds more to the stock!  Yeah, it looks pretty disgusting when making, but it is soooo good when it turns into soup stock.

As a sidelight, I talked to a couple medical types about this, and they all say that everyone should do this because the stock you get is not only rich in nutrients, but it also has a lot of glucosomine and other needed things that are missing in the commercial stocks a person buys!

After I let things cools a bit, I'll mix the "jelly" from Friday's cooking with the new liquid from the second cooking and then package it all up in quart freezer bags.  I'm thinking I'll have 4 or 5 quarts of soup stock when I'm all done.  Into the freezer it will go.  One quart of stock is so rich and thick, and has so much meat in it, that I have to add 2 quarts of water to it when I make soup!  I'll enjoy some good eating on the cold winter days that are coming - all thanks to taking a little time to cook the carcass of the Thanksgiving bird!

Soup anyone?

Russ


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Enjoy Life By Living In Joy

Well Being Consultant
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