Turkey Stock

So it's Saturday. I had eaten approximately four and a half Thanksgiving meals by this time and had mastered a slow heart rate and ideal blanket wrapping technique (Food + Fireplace). Grandma Rita offered to give me a short lesson on turkey stock. A short bit of rough chopping, no measuring and then hours of required laziness for simmering? Yeah, I can handle an increase to that level of activity.

Rough chop some carrots, rough chop some celery, rough chop some garlic. For giant turkey carcass: remove slimy skin, break bones and twist apart chunks so the carcass can fit in a stew pot. (Note: breaking the bones also helps ensure more nutrients) Cover with water. salt. pepper. Simmer for a few hours. Strain. Pick out decent sized turkey meat chunks. Make soup/Put in fridge/Freeze. Discard bones & veggie remnants.

Really the hardest part is not throwing away the carcass on Thanksgiving day. Okay, actually, the hardest part is finding a place in the fridge for the carcass. But it's totally worth it. And if the extremely low amount of effort this requires isn't enough to persuade you to keep a carcass around for a day or two, maybe this sweet educational bit will:

"Meat and fish stocks are used almost universally in traditional cuisines- French, Italian, Chinese, Japanese, African, South American, Middle Eastern and Russian; but the use of homemade meat broths to produce nourishing and flavorful soups and sauces has almost completely disappeared from American culinary tradition.

Properly prepared, meat stocks are extremely nutritious, containing the minerals of bone, cartilage, marrow and vegetables as electrolytes, a form that is easy to assimilate. Acidic wine or vinegar added during cooking helps to draw minerals, particularly calcium, magnesium and potassium, into the broth.

There is a large amount of research on the beneficial effects of gelatin. Gelatin acts first and foremost as an aid to digestion and has been used in the treatment of many intestinal disorders, including hyperacidity, colitis and Crohn's disease."

- Nourishing Traditions, Sally Fallon