Turkey Carcass Soup
Yay! potluck_supper! I didn't know there was one over here, but here it is!
This is mostly based on the version in the Better Homes & Gardens Cook Book.
Get your 1-gallon cooking pot with lid. (If you don't have one, you'll just have to buy one I'm afraid. They're massively useful. LOL!) Break up the carcass of your turkey with your hands until it will fit into the pot. (When I say the carcass, I mean the skeleton, basically -- the thing that you've already removed most of the useful meat from. If you still have the neck, you could put that in, too, but it's not really necessary. I didn't use the neck with this batch.) Cover the dead mutilated turkey carcass with water (the recipe says three quarts). Add a quartered onion and two teaspoons of salt. Put the lid on so it will come to a boil faster (watch it like a hawk or it will boil over). Bring to a boil, then reduce the heat and simmer with the lid on for an hour and a half. Take all the solids out, by whatever means necessary (I removed the turkey bones with a slotted spoon and salad fork and put them on a big plate to cool. Then I poured everything else through a colander into another big bowl to get all the big chunks of onion and small chunks of bone out. Then I poured it all back through a wire strainer into the 1-gallon cooking pot, to get out the small bits of nameless whatever.) If you want a soup with less fat, put the lid back on and put it all into the refrigerator for a while (probably a few hours), which will make it pretty easy to pick the fat off the top. Meanwhile, pick any remaining useful meat off the bones and save it. Throw the useless bones and boiled onion bits away. Scoop the fat off if you wanted to. About an hour before you want to eat, put the pot of turkey broth back on the stove. Add an undrained can of tomatoes (about 15 ounces?), 1/8 teaspoon pepper, 1 teaspoon crushed dried thyme, and 1 and 1/2 teaspoons crushed dried oregano. Also add the leftover turkey meat, coarsely chopped, and four cups of chopped vegetables (I used an onion, a few carrots, and about half a bundle of celery). Bring to a boil (it'll boil faster with the lid on, but you'll have to keep an eye on it then); reduce heat and simmer covered for half an hour to 45 minutes. Then add some noodles (I used tortellini, actually, and that worked out wonderfully) and continue boiling for about 10-15 minutes, or until the noodles are done.