Taking "Stock" in Turkey Soup

I was talking with my younger daughters the other day and they wanted a turkey. After we had the turkey, I asked each of them as they were alone how to make turkey soup to see if they remembered. They said they didn't but when I said they had to watch me do it, my fourth Princess came out and gave me verbal directions for the whole process. My other kids said, "Why don't you just blog about it and then if we ever want to make it we can just look it up!" I thought that wasn't a bad idea.

I did tell them the time when I was really sick about 8 years ago. I don't ever remember being that sick in my life. I couldn't move with a horrible aches and hadn't gotten out of bed in a full 24 hours. I had to call someone to take my kids to school.

When my oldest arrived home from school, I asked her to make me some chicken soup. She brought me a mug of soup. I started to drink it and it was so salty I couldn't drink it. I asked her if she had added a can of water. She said, "Was I supposed to?" I laughed and said, "You know how to make chicken soup from a turkey but as a senior in high school you don't know how to make a can of chicken soup!" We still laugh about that.

This is how I make turkey or chicken stock. I take my roasted turkey and pull off all the excess meat I can from the bones. I put that into baggies and freeze if we have more than we can eat in a day or two. I use that for turkey salad or add it to rice or make enchiladas with it.

After all the meat is off, I add about 1 gallon of water to my roasting pan or enough that most of the bones are under water and put the pan on the burner and bring it to a boil. I then turn down the heat and let the pot simmer for a few hours. You may want to set a timer as there has been one or two times I forgot and the water boiled out and we scorched the pan.

Once the bones have simmered, the meat just falls off. You can see the difference in the fluid color from the top photos to the bottom how it gets richer when it has simmered for an hour or two. I use a fork and start taking the bones out of the pan. A slotted spoon would work but sometimes it is hard to keep all the meat that way. I take all the fat out. I actually take most of the skin off before baking it so there isn't a ton but it is easy to get it out once it is boiled down.

Using the fork I scrape any meat that is still on the bones off. There are sometimes little bones from the neck in the bottom. I usually cook the neck just for the flavor and meat it adds to soup. I use the slotted spoon to make sure I got all the bones, fat and skin out of the stock.

Next, I spoon it into containers and label it for freezing. Always leave a little room at the top for expansion so you don't crack your containers. If it is a large turkey, you can make four to six medium soups out of the stock. This was a medium turkey and I got 4 medium soup stocks out of it.

To make soup, just rinse the frozen stock container with hot water, dump the stock frozen into a pot. Add about 3 to 4 containers of hot water into the pot using the stock container to get all the stock out. Add veggies to your liking. I usually keep a larger amount of turkey in the stock but sometimes I add some of the frozen turkey into the stock to add more meat if needed.

One thing my step-mom taught me, she takes the center of the celery when making celery sticks and freezes it and when making soup, she just pulls the cut up leaves from the celery heart and puts them in the soup. I used to throw that leafy stuff away. Now, I freeze it and use it in my soup.

If you like a more stocky soup, only add 1-2 containers of water. I don't add much salt and pepper because we like to eat potato chips in our soup which adds salt but normally, you would add seasons to taste.

Thanks for taking "Stock" in my blog today!