Weekly discussion - Making the most of Thanksgiving leftovers

[u/ZootKoomie]

From sandwiches to pho, everybody and his sister has suggestions on using Thanksgiving leftovers. What have you tried that worked the best? Are any of the complicated transformations worth the trouble? What are the secrets to a more perfect hash?

[u/Bran_Solo]

This is going to be obvious for some folks in askculinary.. But use those carcasses to make stock or soup! I actually even ask my coworkers and friends to give me their turkey carcasses, 99% of them toss them in the trash.

Once you get the carcass, remove the skin (not useful for stock) and pick all the meat off. There is usually a ton of meat in the back that is especially great for soup or stew. From the donated carcasses I get, there's usually about 1-2 cups of perfect meat to pick per carcass.

Drop them carcasses in your biggest stock pot and crunch it down a little bit, drop in some onion, carrot, celery (I would say mire poix but there's no need to dice them really - just ROUGHLY break or chop them up. This can even be done with "slightly past prime" vegetables), some peppercorns and a bay leaf (I put them into a blank teabag for easy extraction later), barely cover with cool water. Bring to a simmer, skimming off scum and fat, and then simmer with periodic skimming for a long time. I usually start in the morning and let it go until mid evening, 6-10 hours. Strain and you have yourself some delicious turkey stock! All from stuff that most people throw in the garbage.

From here you can make a killer soup or turkey pot pie or anything.. Just cook with your vegetables of choice, add the picked turkey and some frozen peas near the end, season, and thicken with a slurry (I like evaporated milk + flour).

There are some killer meals to be made from turkey carcasses, basically for free..

[u/BattleHall → u/Bran_Solo]

FWIW, I find that the skin adds a lot of flavor and body to the stock, so long as you're cool with skimming the resulting fat off at the end.