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Saturday, November 29

the guatemalan says...

Okay, so I know what to do with that turkey carcass you've got lying around. You channel Raphael's mother, that's what you do.

1. You take your turkey carcass.

2. You get all the meat off. Everything that's actually cooked all the way through. That's yours, man. You get to put that in sandwiches or potpies or whatever it is you people do with your extra cooked turkey bits.

3. You take that stripped-down turkey carcass and you stick it in a pot two-thirds of the way filled with water. Just stick it in there.

4. You add two-three-four chopped-up celery stalks. The leftover inside stalks are fine.

5. You also add a buncha whole peppercorns. And anything leftover that you wouldn't eat on its own. Carrot shavings, potato skins. Whatever you got lying around.

6. You simmer this all down for as long as you like. An hour or so. You still gotta have some liquid by the end, but otherwise, it's up to you. As you go, scrape the softened stuff off the carcass into the liquid.

7. After awhile. An hour. Whatever. Scrape down your carcass for good and dump it into the trash. Strain the cooking liquid into another pot. Add to this new pot any meat that looks good from your cooked-down carcass that has been left in the strainer. Also add some meat from your other leftovers if what you think you're going to need is more meat. Squish the juices out of whatever's left in the strainer and then discard the solid remains.

8. Put your pot full of turkey liquid and bits of meat onto the stove and turn on the heat to get a good simmer going. Throw in some chopped up celery, red bell pepper, onion, tomatoes, cilantro or parsley, salt, carrots, whatever. Chop it all up really small.

9. Simmer it for awhile.

10. Ladle all this into bowls. Open up an avocado and dump some chunks into each bowl. Squeeze in some lime, grind in some pepper, and butter up some bread to go with the whole mess.

11. Eat.

3 comments:

Betty said...

My Louisana man did the same thing and called it gumbo.

Jenny said...

My supervisor called hers Turkey Soup with Rice.

Well, whatever it's called, it's the best use for a leftover turkey carcass I know of.

Melinda said...

You could always do what my mom did after Thanksgiving this year, which was a) boil carcass on stove for several hours; b) move pot to back porch because people are coming over for dessert and the house smells like boiled turkey; and c) forget about boiled turkey and leave it on said porch for the next four days. Yummy!