That is one of my stranger titles, for sure. This is quite belated; posting about Turkey Day on Hanukkah is almost unfair (for Hanukkah, not the turkeys). I thought it was still worth mentioning the ways in which a ten dollar 20+ lb turkey--purchased the day after the holiday--can be cooked and boiled and turned into lots of different things. It might seem silly to buy a turkey that big for two people. We certainly can't finish all of it before it'd go bad, so we have to be creative. *Warning: vegetarians, vegans, and wimpy meat-eaters may want to skip the rest of this paragraph.* The first thing I did after baking and carving the bird was to dismember the carcass and split it between the roasting pan and a stock pot. I added an onion and a large garlic clove to each, and filled the containers up with water. I sprinkled liberal amounts of bouquet garni seasonings and pepper on top. Then I let them boil for a very, very long time until the turkey remants were a jumbled mess and the liquid had reduced substantially. Finally, I added salt to taste, strained the stock, and poured it into containers to freeze.
I used some of the stock to make a turkey soup with the leftover meat. I worked with a very simple Martha Stewart recipe and revised it to work for what I had in the kitchen. I simply let the stock simmer, and added chopped cooked turkey, egg noodles, and diced carrots. It made a satisfying and turkey-rich soup, perfect for warming cold hands and fogging up glasses! (I admit, that warm hands and foggy glasses thing is not completely accurate. If I recall, the day after Turkey Day was perfectly nice. It's right now, December 12th, that's so darn cold!)
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