Turkey Soup with Noodles

This soup marks the end of Tom Turkey–well, almost, I still have some of that great turkey gravy in the freezer. There are biscuits and gravy in our future for sure, but tonight, it's Turkey Soup with homemade noodles. After defrosting the turkey stock and the bag of leftover cooked turkey, I just added some herbs, carrots, celery and noodles. In virtually no time at all, it was a soup. A simple, good tasting, nourishing soup.

Play dough for grown-ups
Initially I was going to just make my regular pappardelle noodles and cut them into short pieces, but wouldn't some other shape be more fun? And wouldn't a different shape of pasta just taste so much better too? Without an extruder however, options are somewhat limited. Without years of experience hand-shaping pasta at an Italian grandmother's side, my options dwindled even further. So, after making up a batch of my favorite go-to pasta recipe, I sort of followed the instructions found here for hand-shaping pasta. I say "sort of followed" because I off-roaded just a bit. Okay... I played. A lot. Try it yourself and see if you don't too.

Meet My Friend Tom

A lot of assumptions get made when someone gives you an 18.64 lb. frozen turkey... It's assumed that: (1) you like to eat turkey...  (2) you have a freezer large enough to house the big bird... (3) you have a roasting pan big enough... (4) you even know how to roast a turkey. Of course, if the first assumption is correct, the others will take care of themselves one way or another. Today it all fell into place. I have to say, it was a pretty good feeling.

Crock, Stock and Two Smoking Hot Loaves Of Bread

Yesterday was the day I dirtied up just about every pot, pan, mixing bowl and measuring cup I own. Two big kitchen projects (plus a few small ones) converged and aligned and generally bumped into each other at every opportunity. I never intend to have days like this. I certainly don't plan them this way, but they sometimes happen. Hey, you do what you gotta do when you gotta do it, right? Well, the lovely turkey carcass in my fridge desperately needed to be dealt with, and I couldn't put off baking the bread another minute. I'd gone far too long without toast.

Turkey Vegetable Soup

Two weeks ago the Hubs & I watched some Jacques Pépin episodes for the first time. It was one of those head-shaking, "Where have we been all this time?"-moments for us. The man is a total rock star! Well, the next day I was out "thrifting" with a friend and she finds a Jacques Pépin cookbook on the rack. Of course I bought it. It was all of a dollar I think. How could I not?

Yesterday I made turkey stock with that big carcass from Thanksgiving, and today I went looking for a turkey soup recipe. Imagine my surprise when I found the perfect one in my new Jacques Pépin book! Coincidence? Maybe... maybe not. Using some of that fantastic turkey stock from yesterday and armed with my rockstar cookbook, I made up a batch of turkey soup, packed with vegetables...

Turkey Vegetable Soup

Adapted from: Cooked Turkey Carcass Soup, page 16, Cooking With Claudine by Jacques Pepin, 1996

2 quarts Turkey Stock

1-1/2 cups carrots, sliced into coins

1-1/2 cups celery, diced

2 small zucchini, diced

3 cups baby spinach, roughly chopped

1 leek

8 oz. mushrooms, sliced

1-2 cups cooked turkey meat, chopped or shredded

2 cups egg noodles

3 big pinches of salt
ground black pepper

Put everything into a stockpot or dutch oven, except the noodles, salt and pepper. Bring to a boil, drop heat to low and cook for 20 minutes, covered. Remove lid, add the noodles and salt and pepper to taste. Cook for 10 more minutes. Serve with buttered sourdough toast. If not serving it right away, let cool before dividing it into containers. Will keep for a few days in the fridge, or a few months in the freezer. If you are not planning on serving it right away, do not add the noodles. Cook them separately and add them before serving. Otherwise, they will break down too much during the freezing/re-heating process. It will still be edible and probably taste o.k. but it won't look very good, and if you like your noodles whole... they won't be. Yield: approximately 7 cups of soup.

My Notes: The original recipe says to pick any meat off the bones after making the stock, but we picked the usable meat off the carcass before we made the stock. The meat was already cooked to perfection and I didn't want to cook it twice. Went a little nuts with the amount of veg in this soup. May have to add more stock to it when serving, to you know, make it "soupier".

The Ultimate Thanksgiving Leftover

The other night, we drove home after having spent a wonderful Thanksgiving with our friends. We were fat, happy, warm, and fuzzy... and we were toting the carcass of a 19-pound bird in a plastic bag. It is without a doubt, the ultimate leftover. It is also a very welcome and a generous gift. Wanna know what we did with it? We made turkey stock of course! Lots and lots of gorgeous golden rich turkey stock. It's so good, I may just have to start roasting turkeys... they really are so versatile (and much more flavorful than chickens). In the meantime, I'll just have to rely on the kindness of friends who know how much I value a roasted bird carcass, or to use the more genteel phraseology... a "turkey frame".

My Basic Turkey Stock Recipe

1 turkey carcass

1 bay leaf

2 tsp peppercorns

1 large onion, quartered

1 green apple, quartered

1 Tblsp dried rosemary

2 tsp dried thyme

1-2 pinches of other dried herbs

2 Tbsp apple cider vinegar

enough water to cover

Put all the ingredients into a large pot on the stove and simmer for 3 hours or... put in a crock-pot on low for 10-12 hours (or high for 6-7 hours). Take off heat and skim off fat and any floating bits. Remove large pieces with a slotted spoon and/or tongs, discard. Let cool some more and then pour through a mesh sieve. Optional: line sieve with 2-3 layers of cheesecloth or a flour-sack cloth. Pour stock into storage containers, label and refrigerate or freeze for later use.

My Notes: I planned to do this all in the slow-cooker, but once I got the cut-up carcass in the pot, I realized that there was no way anything else would fit (that was one big turkey!). Dumped everything into my big spaghetti pot with 4.5 quarts of water to cover, simmered it on the stove for 2 hours, then put half in the slow cooker. I continued to simmer the remaining half for another 3 hours on the stove and set the slow-cooker on high for 6 hours. By the time it had cooled down, it was late at night, so I combined it all into one pot, covered it and put it in the fridge, then skimmed and strained it in the morning. Yielded 3.25 quarts total.