How We Used Our Thanksgiving Turkey

Well our Thanksgiving turkey has now been baked, boiled, canned, and only what was left (bones) was thrown in the trash.  After Thanksgiving I had saved the extra liquid from when we had cooked the turkey and made up a large pot of gravy with it, and into that went a bunch of the leftover turkey.  I also cooked up some plain fushilli pasta and made up some red and pink mashed potatoes.  Mashed potatoes went onto the plate, then the pasta and the turkey and gravy got poured over the top of the potatoes and pasta, yum.

Mashed potatoes and pasta with turkey and gravy

15 jars of canned turkey broth

Today I made turkey broth out of the left over turkey carcass, and I ended up with 15 jars.  Last year I had also made turkey broth, and it was so nice this year to be able to pull out a jar of my homemade turkey broth and use it when I made my stuffing.

I am almost done using up all of my Thanksgiving leftovers, tomorrow I will be using up the last of my pumpkin puree, and baking up some more pumpkin pies to freeze for later use.  I also have some leftover winter squash puree that I will either be making some winter squash waffles (to freeze) or some winter squash pancakes, just depends on what I fell like.

Then I will get to relax for a little while and really start planning out and preparing for next years growing season.

Homemade Turkey Stock

A few days after Thanksgiving I made some homemade turkey stock.  If you have a pressure canner, it is really pretty simple, and does not really take as long to make as I thought it would.  I followed the instructions on the National Center for Home Food Preservation site.  You can check it out Here. 

Basically what I did was place the turkey carcass with most of the meat removed in a large pot covered it with water and added about 4 stems of my celery (cut up) and about 4 or 5 medium size carrots (cup up) to the pot.  I boiled it for about 1 hour, until the meat could easily be removed from the bones.  Then I removed the meat and added back into the pot with the broth.  Then filled the jars with broth along with the meat and veggies, and filled within 1" from the top.  Then pressure canned it for 25 minutes.  In the end I ended up with 12 pint jars of turkey broth.

 Homemade Turkey Broth

So the other day I used the first jar of turkey broth and made some rice.  Here is what I used:

1 pint jar of turkey broth (about 1 1/2 cups broth, I used the meat and veggies from in the broth also)

1 1/2 cups water

2 tbls. butter

2 cups white rice

4 or 5 medium size turnips (skinned and cut into cubes)

I mixed everything together in the pot and cooked it according to the package directions.  When it was done I added a little more butter and some salt, and I think it came out pretty good.