Comfort Food.

I had a wonderful Thanksgiving long weekend filled with family and old friends, which I am incredibly thankful for. I also managed to squeeze in two amazing Thanksgiving dinners (also thankful for that). One of which left me with a turkey carcass. I suggested on Facebook that you save yours by throwing it in the freezer. I hope you did because I have a bang-up cream of turkey soup recipe to share.  

Before.

After.

As you can see the carcass above still has quite a bit of meat and skin on it. This needs to be removed before you make your broth. Keep the meat to add to the soup. The carcass doesn’t look pretty or sound pretty, but it makes a beautiful broth. It is also waste reduction to the max, that turkey gave it’s all. Making broth is soooo easy, you don’t have to measure anything and you don’t even have to peel your veggies. If your carcass is already clean you don’t have to thaw it out first.

Ingredients:
1 leftover turkey carcass and pieces of meat
3 medium onions, chopped
4 large carrots, diced
4 celery ribs, diced
1 cup butter or non-hydrogenated margarine (or a combo of both)
1 cup all-purpose flour
2 cups of homogenized or low fat milk
1 cup uncooked brown rice
salt and pepper to taste

Directions:
Place turkey carcass in a large pot and cover with water. Add 1 onion cut in quarters, 2 celery ribs and 2 carrots cut into three. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat; cover and simmer for 2-3 hour. Remove carcass; cool. Once cooled skim the fat from the top. Set aside 3 liters of broth. This can be done the day or night before. 
In a large pot, sauté the onions, carrots and celery in butter or margarine until tender. Reduce heat; stir in flour until blended. It will look quite thick and dry like the photo below. Gradually add 1 liter of reserved broth. Bring to a boil; cook and stir for 2 minutes or until thickened.
Add milk, rice, salt, pepper, remaining broth and reserved turkey. Reduce heat; cover and simmer for 45-50 minutes or until rice is tender.

Makes 16 servings.
Adapted from here. 

This recipe makes a pretty substantial amount of soup. One option is to make the full amount of broth, but only make a 1/2 recipe of soup. The broth can be frozen and used to make another soup or in place of chicken stock in other recipes (how much better does the homemade taste anyways?).
  
I have made a few changes from the original: I used less salt, more veggies, brown rice instead of white and milk instead of cream. This comes in at about 196 calories per bowl and about 11 grams of fat (much less saturated if you use margarine instead of butter 7.4 g vs. 1.9).  You can also make this with a couple chicken carcasses if you save them up!

Finished product is to die for. I could eat soup almost everyday, I find it so comforting. My husband does not really agree, but he is always excited for this.

Hope you all had a great weekend as well and were able to set aside some time to think about all the things you are grateful for in your lives. Maybe this soup will make your list next year…it is that good.