Turkey & Rice Soup

Its leftovers time!!! By now, I'm sure you've worked through the turkey sandwiches, turkey enchiladas and turkey pot pies -- or whatever your favorite leftover recipes are. And..... you should be left with a beautiful set of bones. Let's make something awesome out of that!!

I made this yesterday-- it took me about 2 1/2 hours from start to finish. I packaged up most of it for Hubby's lunches (that's technically what I made it for to begin with....) but kept a serving out for me. I had that today for lunch and not to be too conceited about it, it was the best turkey soup I've ever had! Probably had something to do with the fact that its the first time I also ever made my own stock instead of cracking open a box or can......

Of course, if you've already picked that bird clean or didn't get any bones in your take home bag from Grandma's house, you can easily do this with a chicken carcass (even from a grocery store rotisserie chicken-- we don't judge here!)

I used my ~4 1/2 quart soup pot but any good size pot will do! If yours is smaller, you might end up with a higher tidbits to broth ratio and vice versa for a larger pot. I got about 14-15 cups of soup out of this.

 

Recipe: Turkey & Rice Soup

1 turkey carcass (preferably with bits still on it)
2 stalks celery, chopped coarsely
2 large carrots, peeled and chopped coarsely
1 small or 1/2 a large onion, peeled and cut into chunks
2 bay leaves

1 cup uncooked rice (white, brown, wild or a mix, your pick!)
up to 2 cups extra turkey bits (if your carcass is particularly clean....)
extra carrots, celery & onions if you are squeamish

1) Put carcass into pot, fill until bones are covered with water (pretty much right up to the top). Toss in celery, carrots, onion and bay leaves.
2) Adjust heat to keep soup at a low boil/simmer.
3) Add water as needed to keep level near the top of your pot.
4) Cook for 2-3 hours (2 hours got me a rich, deep flavor & nice soft veggies)
5) Using a spider strainer or mesh collander over a bowl, strain all bones, veggies, bay leaves out of your soup-- KEEP THESE!!!!  Return strained stock to soup pot.
6) Pick through all the bones for edible, usable meat chunks (chop or shred if necessary). Discard all bones, gristle or skin. Return good meat to soup pot. I had a pretty meaty set of bones and didn't actually have to add any extra.  If you don't have enough turkey for your taste, add in some chopped turkey meat (no skin or gristly bits, please!).
7) If you aren't squeamish, continue picking through your strained bits and take your soft cooked veggies and chop them into bite size pieces. Return to soup pot.

•  If you don't wish to use the pre-cooked veggies, finely dice new celery, onion and carrots. In a separate pan, cook the onion and celery until softened. Put veggies into soup pot and cook until soft. (This could add up to an hour!)

8) Stir in 1 cup of uncooked rice. Simmer soup until rice is fully cooked (about 10 minutes)
9) Taste soup and add salt and pepper to taste (I'm not gonna lie here... its gonna take a pretty amazing amount of salt -- like 2 tsp or more!)
10) ENJOY!!

So the time breakdown for me was 2 hours of occasional minding while the bones simmered. About 20 minutes of carcass picking and cooked veggie recutting. A final 10 minutes for the rice to cook. Honestly the process was so painless that I'm embarrassed I've never done it before. This is probably the 3rd Thanksgiving that the Hubby has brought home the bones and they've always ended up at the bottom of the freezer for months until I finally threw them out. This year the in-laws made 2 turkeys so I have another complete set of bones to cook! Yay!! As an added bonus, if you are of a cheap thrifty nature, like myself, the total cost of this entire POT of soup was under $2. If you compare that to a can of Progresso, you are looking at $3 a can and this made 6-7 cans' worth. Nice!


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