The Turkey Broth Payoff
If you’re a frequent reader, you may remember my Thanksgiving week pleas for turkey eaters to save the bones and turn them into stock. It’s delicious, versatile, and adds extra value to your purchase of the big bird.
So I walked the walk and came up with enough broth for two soups, both of which turned out beautifully and were easy to make. [And for sure, if you’re not a meat-eater, you can make either soup with vegetable broth or water.]
On the right is a loaded vegetable soup. Most recipes called to sauté all the soup vegetables, but I’ve found it can take a long time to get the harder veggies to soften at the same time without overcooking some of them. So for this soup, I chopped and steamed six carrots, three celery stalks and a potato in one pot while I sautéed a chopped onion and some fresh kale in the other.
When the steamed vegetables were done, I added them to the other pot, let the ingredients cook together with some salt and thyme. Then I barely covered the vegetables with broth, turned the temperature to high until the soup boiled, then lowered it to medium-low to finish cooking for 20 minutes. Adjusted the seasonings (not much) and had soup for days.
The beautiful orange stuff on the left is butternut squash soup. You know how some soups and stews taste good right out of the pot and then great after sitting a day or two in the fridge? This soup is that x 2. I was amazed how delicious this was on second taste.
What’s more amazing is that there are only four ingredients (besides salt and thyme) in this soup.
To start, I split and seeded two medium-sized butternut squash (save the seeds to roast and snack on). I roasted the squash halves for an hour at 375 degrees; timing may vary, so check to make sure they’re soft throughout. After the slightly messy chore of separating the squash flesh from the skin, I set it aside.
Next, I chopped and steamed a large sweet potato while sautéeing a chopped onion. When the sweet potato was cooked through, I added it to the onion, stirred in the squash to heat through, and added some salt and thyme. Then I covered the veggies with broth, heated to boil, then lowered to medium-low for 20 minutes.
There’s no law that says you can’t leave it as is (meaning a bit lumpy), but I prefer this kind of soup puréed. So I broke out my trusty immersion blender. This soup is rich and will surely last us a few days.
It’s soup season. Got a favorite recipe? Feel free to share.
And if it’s soup season, it’s gotta be chili season too. This is the same version that I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, adapted from a New York Times Cooking recipe. I’ll get more adventurous when I have a little more time.
When you’re crazy busy, these big-batch one-pot preps are a godsend.
Gratitude. Yesterday I wrote that I needed just two new paid subscriptions to top $150 for the cancer charity set-aside, and that’s exactly what we received.
Can we get five more by Sunday to raise the charitable donation to $200? Please help if you can.