In my effort of eliminating the grocery store, I realized that I needed to be more conscious in taking advantage of the food that I do already have. In other words, I need to make the most of what I've got. Case in point: turkey bones and dark meat.
Now, I admit, that I am a white meat kind of girl. I'll take a nice succulent turkey or chicken breast any day. And usually, after the Thanksgiving meal is over, we are too exhausted to do anything except throw the old bones and leftover dark meat away. However, as part of preparing my wonderful Thanksgiving meal, I realized that I am pretty dependent on chicken and beef soup stock. I mean, the stuff is awesome! And I use it to cook my stuffing, flavor my rice, add some savory goodness to my pasta, and whip up some really yummy gravy. And this stuff is not exactly cheap - especially when you buy between 10 and 20 boxes of this liquid gold a month.
It was time to do something different.
After we were all done eating, I saved the rest of the white meat for dinner today. I then put everything turkey related in a big stock pot. I threw in a bunch of spices and seasonings, some minced garlic, onion, celery, and carrots. I then brought it to a boil, turned down the heat and let it slowly simmer for hours. And hours. At bedtime, I simply turned the stove off and left the stock pot tightly covered.
We went to sleep smelling turkey and all those wonderful seasonings. It was wonderful.
The next morning, I brought the stock pot to a boil again and then let it simmer for a couple of more hours. As a side benefit, my kitchen felt nice and toasty warm. I had muffins baking in the oven and turkey boiling on the stove. It was so nice and cheerful and warm. I really like that it was warm.
Anyway, after a couple of hours of simmering, I poured the whole thing through a strainer into a metal bowl. This allowed most of the juices, soup stock, small pieces of meat, and spices to go into the bowl and leave me the rest. Using a very large fork, I raked over the meat, picking out bones, skin, and fat. These were promptly thrown into the garbage. I continued raking until all the bigger pieces of junk was eliminated and I was left with some nice pieces of turkey meat. Using a smaller fork, I stabbed as much meat as I could and put it into a quart sized canning jar. By stabbing the meat, I was able to find the smaller bones that were missed during the initial raking process. By the time I was done, I had one quart jar full of turkey meat and another quart jar half full.
I then ladled spoonfuls of the liquid from my metal bowl into the two quart jars with meat. The remaining liquid was put into two more quart jars and one pint-and-a-half jar. I made sure to leave a good inch of head space in the jars. Sealed them up with lids and rings and put them into the pressure cooker for 90 minutes at 10 pounds of pressure.
Voila! I have turkey meat already for casseroles, tacos, enchiladas, or pot pies. And I have a few jars of soup stock to flavor all my other items. And all it cost me was a few hours of my time, the recyclable jars I already owned, and what had historically been "garbage" post Thanksgiving.
What have you historically thrown away that might be able to salvaged? Share your ideas with us.
Blessings be upon you.
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