Save Your Turkey Bones-Homemade Turkey Soup!

If you hosted Thanksgiving this year or visited a home that doesn't use their turkey bones, you have just received an extra bonus of lots of turkey soup or stock to keep your family warm throughout the cold seasons.  Are you ready for a super easy, extremely delicious, and nourishing post-thanksgiving meal?

This soup has been traditionally prepared in my family since I was a child, except now I use a little better ingredients.  As you will see, the ingredients and quantities are flexible, as you cannot go wrong! If you don't have time or energy to make this the day right after Thanksgiving, you can simply freeze the bones and wait until you are ready.  So easy!

Homemade Turkey Soup

Ingredients:

Turkey bones
1 onion quartered (or leftover frozen scraps of veggies)
water (enough to fill your largest pot)
1 Tbs of vinegar (I use ACV)-optional
Leftover uncooked veggies (or frozen veggies)-use whatever you'd like to have in your soup
noodles or rice (adjust to amount to your liking or can be omitted)
sea salt

Directions:

After I have stripped my Thanksgiving turkey of all the meat I can pull off, I put the turkey in the largest pot I have (or half of the turkey this year, since the bird was so big).  Next, I pull out my frozen scraps of veggies that I add to progressively with different meals (onion peels, carrot ends, mushroom bottoms, celery ends).  Sometimes I throw in some fresh herbs I have leftover in the fridge as well (parsley, oregano, rosemary, etc). I fill the pot up about 75% to the top and bring it all to a boil. Finally, I add a little vinegar which pulls out more nutrients from the bones of the turkey. Once boiling, I turn it to a low simmer and cook for as many hours as I want (minimum of 4 hours).  This time, I did this the night before and let it simmer all night long and into the morning.

Once you are done making stock, you strain all the bones and veggies out of the pot.  I put a mesh sieve directly into the pot and then put the remains in another bowl to use again for stock.  Once the stock is all cleared out, add any leftover veggies or frozen veggies you want.  This year, I added big chunks of carrots, corn and peas (nothing fancy).  I boiled it again until the carrots were softened.  Next, add either your noodles or rice into the pot.  Once cooked, throw in some leftover turkey (I use the dryer pieces of meat) and add salt to your taste.  Voila!

Later, you can reboil those bones over and over again using the same technique.  After your stock is made, you can freeze the stock in muffin tins and put them in a freezer bag for later recipes.  Stock can be expensive in the stores and this way, you know exactly how healthy it is!

I also like to make this for any family that is still staying with us.  This way, I don't have to worry about spending more money on a meal and it feeds a ton of people.  Depending on how big your pot is, ours would feed about 12 or more people.

Here's to good health,


Jen Starks, Owner
www.ecologicalbabies.com 
ecologicalbabies@gmail.com 
574.275.1235