My favorite Holiday is Thanksgiving. You get to be around friends and family without the stress of gift-giving PLUS you get a fabulous meal. If you're like me and typically cook enough food for double the guests, you're wondering what you can do with leftovers. My favorite thing to do with leftover turkey is to make turkey soup. Basically chicken and rice soup, but obviously made with turkey.
This is such an easy thing to do, but it is very time-consuming. Not in the sense of having to watch it every minute, but you will need a few hours to be at home.
Enough blabbering lets get into it.
So first, take your leftover turkey carcass and remove any big pieces of turkey meat left on it. You can use this for sandwiches or whatever you normally do with turkey meat, OR you can be like me and set it aside to make your soup extra meaty.
After you've removed the meat you want to put the carcass in an extra big pot. Like, you want to be able to fill enough water in it to cover the carcass. I don't measure this, I just add enough to cover the bones. Next, you want to throw in some celery, carrots, onion, garlic, and a couple tablespoons of salt. When I say throw in, I literally mean you don't have to cut the celery or carrots just put them in whole. The garlic I just smash and peel then throw in the chunks. With the onion, I just peel it and cut it in half then toss it in. Your turkey will add a little extra flavor from any seasonings you used while baking it. When you get everything in the pot, put it on the stove and bring it to a boil. I let mine boil for a good 3 hours at a rolling boil. This will cook down your liquid by at least a quarter, and that is a good thing.
Once you're satisfied with your boil time, take the pot off the heat and let it cool down. You want to strain the liquid into an extra large bowl. Place it in the fridge until your ready to use it. The worse part of this whole ordeal is now picking off the rest of the meat from the bones in the pot. Since we left our veggies large, it will be easy to discard them from the pile. Pick through all the bones and get any meat left behind. This meat will be so tender and juicy, you want to get it all out for the soup!!! Once you have all the meat off the bones you are ready to make your soup!
You will want more celery, carrots, onion, and garlic. This time you will dice everything up into medium size pieces. Except for the garlic, mince that as fine as you can get it.
In my dutch oven I added 2 tablespoons of olive oil and sauteed the celery, carrots, and onion until soft; add the garlic and let that saute for just about one minute. Add your homemade stock to the pan plus all the meat you want to add. In my opinion, the more meat, the better! Bring this to a boil and let it cook for at least 30 minutes before eating.
While your soup is boiling, cook some rice. I like to add my rice to each individual bowl instead of adding it to the soup. If you have leftovers, the rice just swells and turns your soup into moosh.
You are now ready to enjoy your HOMEMADE turkey and rice soup. You won't need to add extra salt, at least I didn't, but adding a little pepper won't hurt.
Let me know in the comments down below if are going to try this, or if you have a turkey soup recipe you'd like to share with is!!
Goodnight my lovies, thank you SO much for stopping by!
Recipe break down:
Turkey Stock:
1 leftover turkey carcass
5 stalks of celery
3 whole carrots, peeled
4 garlic cloves
2 onions cut in half
2 tablespoons of salt
Lots of Water
Place the turkey carcass in a large pot. Fill with water. Add all the veggies and salt and bring to boil. Allow to boil and cook down for 3 hours.
Strain out liquid -- set aside.
Pick meat off of turkey carcass -- set aside.
Turkey soup:
Homemade turkey stock
1 cup of diced celery
1 cup of diced carrots
1 medium yellow onion diced
3 cloves of garlic minced
leftover turkey meat.
In a large dutch oven, saute celery, carrots, and onion in olive oil until soft. Add garlic and saute for one more minute. Add your homemade turkey stock plus turkey meat and allow to simmer for at least 30 minutes before eating. While soup is simmering, cook some rice. Add as much rice you want to your bowl and fill with soup. Enjoy!
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