Turkey Soup
 

Thanksgiving's going to be good this year. My wife went shopping yesterday, and the turkey's were on sale. Picked up a 20 pounder.

Back in leaner times, I used to make turkey noodle soup out of the carcass. We'd have enough to last a week. I didn't mind it, but the wife and kids complained so much that I stopped.

Well, when she brought home that turkey, I said, "I'm making turkey soup this year and I'm going to can it." She said that was fine - as long as she didn't have to eat the stuff for two solid weeks. This will be my first shot at pressure canning - looking forward to it. Oh, and my soup is pretty danged good, if I say so myself....

Re: Turkey Soup
 

Lets hear your turkey soup recipe.

Here's my homemade chicken noodle soup recipe, I'm sure turkey would be just as good, in fact, I might just try it with left over turkey (and carcass) after Thanksgiving.

I first take carrots (5 or 6), celery (5 or 6 stalks), onion (quartered) , garlic (1 whole bulb cut in half), bay leaves (2 or 3), thyme (fresh or dried...small bunch or small palm full of dried) and small palm full of whole peppercorns and put it in a large pot of water (I try to use older vegetables that might be past their peak for eating fresh) and boil it for 1 1/2 hour or more...then I put in the whole chicken for another 1 1/2 hour. Remove the chicken and set aside....strain the vegetables and discard. Now you have a very flavorful broth.

Separate the chicken from the bones and skin...then I hand shred the cleaned chicken.

Then I take the same assortment of vegetables and herbs (minus the pepper and garlic...use ground pepper and minced garlic to taste) in about half the quantity and dice it up and saute in olive oil or clarified butter. Add the broth (now is the time to salt the broth...I use Realsalt and it takes quite a bit for a large pot... palm full or to taste). I have been adding dried shiitake mushrooms, but it is not traditional, but it's good. Then add the shredded chicken. Make the noodles out of flour, eggs, milk, butter, and salt (or your favorite method) and add to the soup for about 15 minutes. Sprinkle a little chopped parsley on each serving and enjoy.

Re: Turkey Soup
 

Anytime we have chicken or turkey we make stock out of the leftover carcass.

We always have a lot of soup stock around. Use fish heads, shrimp shells in the seafood base and bones for beef. Usually throw in spices, celery, carrots, onions, and what ever herbs look sound and smell good at the time. Coriander is common for us to use.

No sense in wasting anything. Plus it tastes good. I like to use stock for rice instead of plain water. We freeze our stock batches in ice cube trays so we can pop them out as needed.

Kind of off topic, my wife harvested the last of the basil before the freeze last night. WOW! Just a few plants, produced a lot all year and now we have surplus. All of this reminds me that I need to go and deal with some other gardening issues. lol

Re: Turkey Soup
 

My chicken soup is

Have a baked chicken for supper, seasoned with olive oil, seasoned salt, and pepper

That leaves some breast meat and lots of dark meat and carcass.
Strip the meat from the bones and put in the fridge.
Put the rest in the pressure cooker with a tsp of salt, some pepper, poultry seasoning, parsley, onion scraps, celery scraps, carrot scraps, and a few bay leaves.
Cover with water and pressure cook at 15 lbs for 75 min.
Turn off heat and wait till pressure gone.
Pour through strainer into large bowl to get broth.
Rinse pressure cooker.
Skim off the fat from the broth, return a few tbsp to pressure cooker to saute veggies in.
Chop small onion up fine add to pot.
Slice 3 carrots thin add to pot.
Slice 3 celery stalks thick add to pot.
Cook onion, celery and carrots till tender.
Chop reserved meat add to pot.
Add broth to pot.
Add 1 tbsp parsley.
Season to taste (salt, pepper).
Add water if too thick.
Bring to boil, then lower heat to simmer 20 min.
Add noodles, bring to boil, slow boil till noodles done about 10-15 min.

Serve with home made matso balls

Basically I triple the recipe for turkey soup figuring the chicken as 3 lbs vs 10 lb turkey.

Never tried home made noodles... maybe some day. Matso balls are the ultimate.

If I was going to can it, I think I'd leave the noodles out, and make them when reheating the canned soup so they don't absorb all the liquid.

Re: Turkey Soup
 

Yeah, broth makes the difference.

Just saving the ends (keep a bag in the freezer until you have enough) from preparing other vegetables dishes, plus leftover bones and it makes an economical broth. Broths make gravy's and sauces extra good. Like you said, add it rice and it adds lots of flavor...same with pastas.

The ice cube tray idea sounds like a good way to have it easily available...I'll have to try that.

Re: Turkey Soup
 

That sounds like some delicious soup Thrifty Bob...nothing wasted.

Making noddles is easy and you can't beat it for quality and economy. I make a lot at one time and keep them in a paper grocery sack...I don't know how long they keep, not long with us.

Re: Turkey Soup
 

Better than any restaurant, I guarantee, especially with the matso balls.

If you don't have any matso crackers, I bet you could make a meal out of salt free saltines with a flour grinder set very coarse, or just use saltines and eliminate or reduce the salt added when making the matso balls. Usually, right after passover they have huge 5 packs of matso crackers for silly cheap prices. I paid $1.79 for 5 lbs of matso's in 2006, and I run them thru the grinder a pound at a time any time I run low on matso meal. 5 lbs lasts a long time, LOL, still have 2 left. There is a large Jewish population around here, so finding matso crackers here is no problem, but I doubt that is true everywhere.

Matso balls

1/2 cup + 2 tbsp matso meal
2 eggs
1 tsp salt (or less)
2 tbsp parsley flakes
2 tbsp chicken fat skimmed off the broth
1/4 tsp white pepper
1/4 tsp onion powder or 1 tbsp finely diced onion

mix in small bowl, should be a little bit wet, but gloppy, put in freezer 10 min to chill
boil water in small covered saucepan, wet clean hands with cold water and scoop out 2 tbsp sized hunks of mix into hands and roll into small balls, then drop in boiling water
cover and slow boil for 35 min covered. Should make at least 8 or 9 or you made them too big.

I usually just add the matso balls, water and all to my soup if the broth needs thinned because the noodles sopped it all up.

Yes, I believe in "waste not, want not". I pick thru the scraps of chicken left in the strainer after it cools to take out any meat to make a bowl of treats for the dog, too, LOL.

I'll give the home made noodles a try next time. I had them once whe I was a kid and do remember how delicious they were. What is the recipe and how do you dry them?

Re: Turkey Soup
 

You can make a fine turkey soup base that you can freeze afterwards and use to flavor soups.

After you roast and carve the turkey gather everything left and simmer in simmering water at such heat that a bubble breaks surface every second or so for two hours.

for a carcass of a 20 lb turkey get 2 pounds of onions peeled and quartered, one pound of celery (no leaves) and one pound of carrots. these should be cut into 1.5 inch pieces. get a 1/2 tea spoon of dry thyme and a 10 parsley stems. do not salt. at all.

skim as surface covers with stuff. after two hours take the solid parts out slowly as not to raise too much particulate matter.

keep all the solid stuff (about that later)

keep the stock simmering until you get about 2-3 cups of it out of a gallon of initial liquid. use a few table spoons to flavor soups. keep in the freezer.

about solid stuff.

I usually submerge the onions in this stock inside gauze or cheese cloth. i do it because onions are poisonous to dogs. everything else I grind into fine mash in the blender. then I dry it in the oven on a baking sheet. my dog loves it.

Re: Turkey Soup
 

Wow! Sharing my recipe with you guys would be like the cook from Waffle House sharing dinner ideas with Emeril. Lots of good stuff here, especially the details in making the broth.

The recipe I use is from an old Betty Crocker cookbook, the one my mother used to use when I was a kid. It's super simple. The broth prep is just the carcass and half an onion for about 1.5 hours - that's it. Then strain and add around half dozen each carrots and celery stalks and dice up the other half of the onion. I like to use thin carrots and just cut them into round slices - toward the thick end I'll halve those.

Then I just pick off the turkey, cutting and shredding as necessary. I also tend to use lots of noodles - it gives it a thicker consistency like the chicken pot pie they used to make in SE PA when I was a kid.

As far as spices, I use my Dad's rule - which is there are no rules. I use pepper and just a little salt, since I then like to throw in some Goya Adobe spice, Season All, oregano, garlic salt, thyme, and whatever else strikes my fancy. I do have some garlic, so I'll use that this year in the broth and cut back on the garlic salt. I also like to throw a dash of curry in there for a little zing. I remember my mother using bay leaves - I'll need to get some of those, too.

The homemade noodles sound good - I didn't realize they were easy. I'll have to check that out. I also never thought about adding the noodles later - I already prep them in mylar bags, so I just might experiment and set aside a quart or two of noodle-less soup and see how that works.

Thanks for the ideas, everyone! :coolbeer:

Re: Turkey Soup
 

Thanks thrifty, I made the matso balls for my turkey soup, they're darn good. I added the matso balls on the side since I made the soup with noodles.

Wellll, I made matso balls and I'm circumcized , I'm half way there ! I should be on Wall street instead of this brush pile in the middle of no where.....it's Tel Aviv or bust . :biggrin:

Re: Turkey Soup
 

I made 11 qts of turkey stock and canned 7 of them (1 batch in my pressure canner). I'll make turkey noodle soup out of the other 4 tomorrow night. They had 10 lb turkeys for $.79 and 18+ lb birds for $.59, so I got the smallest of the $.59 ones and canning what won't be used quickly. I may can some of the soup, too if it turns out to be too much to eat up. Its a lot nicer having something once every few weeks than it is to eat the same things over and over again to avoid wasting it.

I'm not Jewish, but have always loved matso balls added to my chicken and turkey noodle soup.

I did try making home made noodles the other night, but they came out too thick and rubbery. I used my pasta maker. I didn't dry them, though. If I try again I'll make the sheet thinner and try running it through the fettucini cutter so I get more consistent noodles. Who has a recipe for the perfect noodles? If I get desperate I'm going to use Ramen noodles stolen out of the soup packages.

Re: Turkey Soup
 

Oy vey! Such a deal....you should be so lucky.

There - now you can talk the talk.

Re: Turkey Soup
 

I just made the turkey stock today (8 quarts)...I'll make soup tomorrow.

Here is my egg noodle recipe:

2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
pinch of salt
2 eggs- beaten
1/2 cup of milk
1 tablespoon of butter

In a large bowl...mix flour and salt, add the beaten egg, milk, butter...knead until smooth (5 min.). Let the dough rest covered for 10 minutes. Roll out to 1/8" or 1/4" and cut into lengths.

Let them dry before cooking...I use cooling racks to dry them on.

Re: Turkey Soup
 

Thanks for that! That sounds so easy a Scandinavian can do it! We'll see - next weekend maybe....

Re: Turkey Soup
 

Turkey soup is not turkey soup without BARLEY!

Re: Turkey Soup
 

LOL on the barley. Perfect for the person that bought 50 lbs of it and realizes they don't make their own beer. Limit to a few tablespoons or it takes over the world. I will have to try a bit in my turkey soup though just for fun.

I fixed my noodle problems on the 2nd try here. It was one of the highest rated recipes for noodles on allrecipes.com. Recipe as follows:

1 cup flour
1 ex-large egg
1/2 tsp salt
2 tbsp milk
1/2 tsp baking powder

I just put the dry ingredients in the food processor and mixed it, then added the wet and pulsed it a few times. Then i took it out and made 4 lumps to run through the pasta maker, and after thinning it real thin, I floured them and put it through the fetuccini cutter, and laid them out (what a hassle) on a towel to dry for a few hours. They were excellent flavor and texture. I just need to find a better way of getting them off the cutter so I don't need to separate and lay them out individually. I saw one recipe where they said to roll the sheet into a roll and then slice off noodles 1/4 to 1/2" thick off the end. I may try that next time instead of the cutter.