How many of my readers can confess to having tossed a chicken or turkey carcass in the rubbish in a pang of exhaustion, in a kitchen full of dirty dishes, after cooking a big meal? I for one do not enjoy standing and picking the meat off a carcass with my fingers. But I also do not enjoy preparing a soup recipe only to find out, after putting lots of time into it, that it mostly tastes like the stock I bought from the store. I don’t cook a whole bird but maybe once a month, and when I do I buy very high quality poultry, so it always makes me feel terrible to throw any away. But having it hang around also seems like THE WORST sometimes.
So I am writing to you today, two days before Thanksgiving, to put a bug in your ear about how to overcome the carcass-burnout syndrome.
Take that turkey or chicken– dont worry about the meat left on it– toss it in your slow cooker. (You will have to break up a turkey carcass unless you have a very large slow cooker– hack it in two, freeze half in a plastic bag.)
Add whatever you have on hand: onion, celery, garlic, bay leaf, thyme, parsley, carrots. And then if you have it, add about a cup of white wine. Then about ten cups of water, until it covers the carcass. Then a tsp of salt. If you dont have any of this stuff, that’s ok. I have even done this with granulated garlic, and it is still superior to the store bought stock.
Cook it on low for 8 hours. The carcass will completely fall apart. Ladle it through a strainer into a large pitcher or bowl, and let it cool in the refrigerator. Once cool, you can portion it into freezer bags for later use. And if you do this right away, the night of Thanksgiving, you can use the stock to make turkey soup the next day. Let me know if you do this– I would love to find out I had enabled homemade stock into happening.
When when we’re short on time or just ‘cooked out’ we freeze the carcass. It’s great with chickens because you can save up a few and make one big batch of stock. Totally agree with you, you can’t beat homemade stock – shop bought can’t touch it!
yes, this is a good point– freezing is an excellent way to get that carcass out of the way.
Nice post. I hope I am not a disappointment to you when I say that I make chicken stock almost weekly. I get 2 pints from a chicken carcass (and the skin, jelly like stuff etc. I start by cooking the chicken using a Chinese method of boiling on a reducing heat. (6 slices of ginger in the water, boil for 10 minutes, simmer for 20 and turn off the heat. Leave overnight in the water. The resulting chicken is moist and delicious. The messy bit is taking the skin off and removing the meat from the bones. Everything bar the meat goes back into the pot with the cooking water. I then add an onion, peppercorns, bay leaf and whatever other vegetable may be handy. This gets simmered for a couple of hours then reduced to 2 pints. This will set into a nice thick jelly. Perfect for stew bases or risotto.
Sorry for the long comment, I got carried away!
Best,
Conor