Have Turkey? Make Soup – How To Make Stock
The first thing you should do when you wake up the day after Thanksgiving – when family is moving slowly because they are still full from the big feast or are out shopping on Black Friday – is use the turkey carcass to simmer a big pot of turkey stock for soup. I learned to make stock (albeit chicken, not turkey, but they’re basically the same) from one of my two Jewish grandmothers.
(There are subtle differences between stock and broth, but both can be used as the base to make soup when you add other ingredients. For a more detailed description of the differences between them, read this.)
My maternal and paternal grandmothers were very different cooks. Jeanette, my mother’s mother was an excellent cook. She made chopped liver and homemade knishes stuffed with potatoes or liver and kasha. She baked delicious, thin-crusted strudel, savory with rice or sweet with apples or plums. There were other desserts too; S-shaped cookies and mandelbrot, the Jewish equivalent of biscotti. She took great pleasure in cooking, and I make potato knishes, following her recipe, with the rolling pin she used to make hers. It is one of my most treasured possessions.
But this story is not about her. It is about my father’s mother, Dora, who was not much of a cook. Baked chicken with Lawry’s Seasoned Salt was her go-to dish. If we visited for lunch it was baked hamburgers with pickle relish and melted Velveeta cheese. I loved her sweet and sour meatballs, which I now know were a bizarre combination of meatballs, grape jelly, and Heinz chili sauce. The food wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t exactly gourmet; it was more 1970s back-of-the-box American than it was traditional Jewish fare. But Grandmom D, as my brothers and I called her, did know how to make a great pot of chicken soup with matzo balls, and it opened every meal she served. She made it fancy by serving it in a big porcelain soup tureen with a lid and porcelain ladle. It was Grandmom D who taught me to make chicken stock for soup and matzo balls.
Making stock is not at all hard. It takes only a handful of ingredients…and time. It then freezes beautifully so you have it available whenever you need a few tablespoons to flavor a sauce or a few quarts as the base for a soup, such as Tortilla Soup or Spicy Asian Noodle Soup. And homemade stock is far superior to that which you can purchase in the store.
The base of a good chicken or turkey stock is poultry bones, which should have at least a little meat on them. The bones can be raw or roasted; roasted gives the stock a heartier flavor, but raw is just as good. You could start with a whole cut up chicken or purchased parts like whole chicken legs or turkey wings. I save all unused poultry parts in the freezer – wing tips and the back, for example, if I break down a whole chicken, and the turkey neck I pull from its internal cavity – until I have enough to simmer a pot of stock. I also save and freeze the carcass whenever I roast a chicken, and I always make stock after I’ve roasted a turkey.
On Thanksgiving evening, after the meal, when you’re full and tired, but still have to clean up, ask a spouse or guest for a little help. Assign them the task of stripping the rest of the meat from the turkey that you couldn’t bother to remove when you were carving the turkey for the meal. Save that meat for sandwiches the next day. Also save that carcass. It will make an easy and excellent stock for soup.
Chicken or Turkey Stock for Soup
There is no hard and fast recipe to make a good stock. The ingredients themselves, as well as their quantities, will vary depending on what you have on hand. Adding additional vegetables – parsnips, turnips, or mushrooms, for example – will give you a different flavored stock, but a delicious one none-the-less.
When you are doing your shopping for Thanksgiving, make sure to pick up any extra items you will need to make stock. Because if you don’t, you’re not going to go out on Friday morning to pick up an extra onion or those few stalks of celery, and you won’t end up making stock.
Makes 5 to 8 quarts, about 15 minutes active time, 4 hours total, plus overnight cooling
2 to 4 lbs. chicken or turkey parts (with bones) or carcasses, raw or roasted
2 onions, quartered
3 carrots, peeled and cut into ½-inch chunks
3 celery stalks, cut into ½-inch pieces
2 Tbsp. kosher salt
20 whole black peppercorns
- Place all ingredients in the largest stockpot you own. Add enough cold water to fill the pot.
- Place the pot over a high heat and bring to a boil. When it reaches a boil, reduce the heat to low.
- Use a spoon to skim off and discard all the bubbles and foam that rise to the surface. You may have to skim a few times over the course of the first half hour after the stock begins to boil.
- Simmer for three or four hours over a low heat, stirring occasionally.
- After removing the stock from the heat, allow it to cool until it can be strained. Strain the stock by pouring it into another large pot or container through a fine mesh strainer or a colander lined with cheese cloth. Discard all the solids that are strained out. (You could save some of the cooked carrots and celery or chicken that has fallen off the bone for soup, but they have been cooked for so long it is often better to start fresh depending on the soup you will be making.)
- Place the pot in the refrigerator overnight (or outside if you do not have enough room in your refrigerator and it is between 32 and 38 oF).
- The next day, skim the fat that has risen to the top off the stock and discard. The stock is now ready to use to make soup or to freeze for the future.
