Turkey Carcass Soup

Throw all your turkey and chicken soup recipes away.... I've found the one! Actually, I've always known about the soup I am now calling "the one." My mom makes it religiously and I've made it once before myself. I must not have followed it exactly and thrown a bunch of other crap in it because I am not remembering it with the passion I felt after tasting last week's batch.

This is the soup I'll always turn to when I want to use up my homemade stock, in the days after Thanksgiving, or when a sick friend needs some comfort.

And here's how I know it's "the one": My husband who does not relish soups the way I do usually eats about 3/4 a bowl of any soup served and then moves on to the rest of the meal. But with Turkey Carcass Soup, he and I were actually fighting over who got the one remaining bowl. I suppose we could have split, but I caved in.

Last week, I pulled our two turkey carcasses from Thanksgiving out of the freezer and went to town, re-creating the recipe from Jane Brody's "Good Food Book."

It's a multi-step process. First you make stock, then you make soup. I recomend dedicating a weekend to the event. It's an event after all. Stock on Saturday, soup on Sunday. Voila, dinner is served. It makes for a perfect Sunday wind-down to the weekend. If only I could bring back the Sunday Disney movies and Mutual of Omaha's Animal Kingdom companion to the "soup and grilled cheese nights" of my childhood.

As Brody suggests, my mom gets her carcasses from her friends who have no interest in using them beyond their initial purpose. She also saves the chicken wing parts she clips off. Her friend Marty is one of her best carcass suppliers from what I hear.

The stock is proof positive that homemade is the way to go. You can stop right here and just make stock, or you can take it to the next level and follow Brody's recipe for Turkey Carcass Soup. It's full of good for you barley and earthy vegetables such as mushrooms and carrots.

This is one recipe that my mother hasn't really adapted, though you could substitute brown rice, or even white rice and switch out some vegetables. Though I wouldn't recommend leaving out the mushrooms. They make the pot. And here in the Northwest, we are privy to loads of fresh and local mushrooms that add a much richer flavor than plain old white button shrooms. I used porcini this go around.

For the cookbook, I'll also keep Brody's recipe intact for the family members. But I did take some good notes and have a few shortcuts that I think one would be wise to follow. Like the teensy amount of leek used in the stock? I'm recommending that one use use the remaining leek in the soup. Another modification is that I recommend sauteing the onions, garlic, leek, celery and carrots in olive oil before adding the stock. I think that brings out more flavor.

We're sadly all out of our post-Thanksgiving batch. But my mom still has a quart left in her third freezer. She's lamenting that she gave too many quarts away this year. I'm fairly certain she doubles or triples the recipe because we certainly didn't have enough to share. But it's a wonderful thing to share.