Friday, December 9, 2011

Turkey Broth

Today I'm making turkey broth, and lots of it. I had a turkey carcass in the freezer left over from Thanksgiving and I was sick of looking at it, so last night I threw it into a crock pot and covered it with water. It cooked overnight and all day I've been straining liquid into wide-mouthed jars, letting them cool, and then chilling them in the fridge.

The idea is that chilling the broth makes the fat rise to the surface. I then remove the jars from the fridge, skim off the fat, and store THAT in it's own special jar (labelled "schmaltz". It'll be fun to cook things in turkey fat). Then I pour the broth into ice-cube trays and freeze it. The broth cubes then go into a specially labelled freezer bag, for later use in soups and stews. I like this storage method, because it's easy to pull out a bag and grab however much I need. I don't have to worry about defrosting a huge block of broth, or about it spoiling. Win win.

I also organized my part of the freezer and found:
  • a freezer bag full of the remainders of several bags of commercial frozen vegetables (there was broccoli, green beans, peas, and carrots)
  • a freezer bag full of lemons, already halved and juices squeezed out
  • a bag labelled with my name and the words "veg stock" it had some celery tops and the ends of onions in it.
  • a bag of chicken stock
  • a tupperware container full of cooked chicken pieces
  • a tupperware container full of cranberry sauce
  • an opened bag of frozen shelled edamame
  • a container of yogurt, which didn't freeze to the consistency I expected and is now thawing in the fridge.
  • half a gallon of ice-cream
  • a serving of lentil soup
And now there's turkey broth and a bag full of cooked turkey pieces that I picked off the carcass.

One of these days I'm going to have a week where I just cook out of my pantry and freezer. I'm sure it would be good eats.

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