Thanksgiving turkey keeps on giving

Yesterday was World Food Day, and this interesting report on food waste by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization concludes that “[r]oughly one-third of the edible parts of food produced for human consumption, gets lost or wasted globally, which is about 1.3 billion ton per year.” I believe simple things can help reduce our waste of food, like trying to make full use of the foods we eat.

On Monday I decided to do just that. I took the leftover turkey carcass from our Sunday night Thanksgiving dinner and with a few ingredients from around the kitchen I made turkey stock. It’s a simple process and you can rely on basic ingredients from your fridge and pantry. I used these ingredients:

IMG_2319a

You can use any vegetables and the best recipe, when it comes to stock, is no recipe. The longer you cook the stock, the healthier and more flavourful it becomes. 

Making stock is very basic. I placed the turkey, vegetables and spices in a large stock pot, and filled it with water covering the turkey. I brought the pot to a boil then simmered on low for 16 hours (I would’ve done more but was too tired).

I then removed the pot from the stove, and let it cool before pouring it into mason jars. Since I had a large amount, I used mainly 1 litre mason jars (although having different sizes is useful for various recipes).

I then filled one jar with 3½ cups of stock (leaving enough room to freeze) then used that jar as a measurement for the remaining jars, by placing an empty jar beside it and filling that jar with stock to reach the same volume as the first jar. This saved a lot of time since I had several jars to fill.

I usually freeze my jars for up to three months. I was able to make just over 8 litres of turkey stock:

IMG_2322a - Turkey Stock

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