Soup

I made delicious turkey soup without trying.  I put the carcass in the crockpot, along with a couple wing and thigh pieces still heavy with meat, added water and leftover drippings (about half the total from the turkey) about 2/3 or so up, and cooked for six hours.

Then I picked out bones, which brings me to a question: When cooking down a bird carcass, is there an easy or preferred way to get the bones, even the small ones, out once most of the meat and meat-like substances have departed the bones?  I used a pasta spoon and a fork to scoop up meat and pick bones and intact hunks of skin or fat out.  I got everything large, but there remain little pieces of bone.  Which is annoying more than a problem, since they have cooked to the point of softness.  Still, it seems like there ought to be a better, more thorough way.

Anyway, I added a couple cups more water, about five sliced up carrots, and just under a cup of brown rice, then cooked another eight hours.  This morning it was soup.  I just had a bowl, and it was fantastic, bordering on too salty.  Apparently the secret ingredient is the beef boullion cubes used on the turkey along with the spices.  Those contain stuff like MSG.  Last time I did this, it was bordering on bland, despite spicing it and using drippings.  This time I used nothing.  In the back of my mind I had the idea if it was bland I would spice it and cook just a little longer after it was otherwise done, since the problem before seemed to be that the flavor of the spices cooked away after so long.  No need this time.

1. I take much the same approach to dealing with the turkey carcass some years, but I have found that it is needful that I remove every bit of skin when doing it with a turkey which has been smoked. Otherwise I wind up with smoke soup - the flavor is that water soluble.

   Posted by triticale  on  11/25  at  12:49 PM

2. You’ll probably need to pour the stock through a fine strainer to catch all of the bits you don’t want to eat.

   I recommend that you add a couple chopped carrots, celery stalks, and a chopped onion to the pot with the bones to fill out the flavor of the stock. Once you’ve cooked that off, pour it through the strainer into a finishing pot. Take whatever meat you want and put that into the stock, then add the veggies and rice. At this stage you probably only need to cook it long enough to heat the veggies and until the rice is done. Too much longer and your veggies/rice will be too water-logged.

   Posted by jen  on  11/25  at  03:03 PM

3. Hi - read out recipe posted yesterday !

   Bird Dog

   Posted by bird dog  on  11/26  at  07:43 AM

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