It’s hard to believe that the new year is so close! I’ve already started coming up with my goals for the new year, and will be sharing them soon. But before we move onto hopefully better things I wanted to share this turkey noodle soup recipe with you. I’ve posted the recipe first, but you can read on for more details.
Turkey Noodle Soup
Ingredients
- 16 cups homemade turkey broth
- 2-3 cups leftover cooked turkey
- 2 cups chopped carrots
- 2 cups chopped celery
- 2-3 onions (chopped)
- 1 teaspoon thyme
- 1 teaspoon garlic powder
- 1 teaspoon dried rosemary
- 1/2 teaspoon paprika
- 1/2 teaspoon onion powder
- 2 bay leaves
Turkey Broth
- 1 turkey carcass plus giblets
- 1 cup baby carrots
- 3-4 stalks celery
- 2 onions
- thyme
- peppercorns
- salt
- thyme
- rosemary
Instructions
Turkey Broth
- Start by making your turkey broth. Place turkey giblets and turkey carcass in a pot.
- Fill pot with water, then add the vegetables and spices.
- Bring to a boil and allow to simmer until turkey is cooked.
- Remove cooked turkey from the bones, place bones back in broth and continue to simmer for 2-3 hours , or until broth is concentrated enough for your liking.
Turkey Noodle Soup
- Melt butter and saute chopped veggies until soft.
- Add broth, left over turkey, and spices. Simmer covered for about an hour.
- Near the end of the cooking time add noodles of your choice. Allow to cook until the noodles are done.
For Thanksgiving we cooked two turkeys. One we did in the roaster, and the other we smoked. Well, Matt butchered the one we smoked, so we ended up with a carcass. We boiled the carcass (and the giblets) with onion, carrots, celery, and some spices (thyme, rosemary, salt, pepper, garlic) in order to make a broth. We ended up freezing the broth (with the cooked turkey meat that had been left on the bones), and last week I used it to make turkey noodle soup.
If you’ve never made your own soup before, you need to try. I think it tastes so much better than store bought!
Prepare your broth
Like I said early, we had already made broth that I used. You can totally make it same day. We used a raw turkey carcass for ours. But you could also use a cooked turkey carcass. You could also cut up a raw turkey and boil it until the turkey is cooked. Then remove the turkey from the bones, put the bones back in the broth and continue to boil with carrots, onions, celery and spices of your choosing. I usually let it simmer for a good few hours. It will boil down a bit, but that’s what you want. We ended up with lots of broth. you can skim off the fat by putting the broth in the fridge overnight. The next morning take it out and scrape the fat off the top.
The picture below is the broth we had frozen.
Chop your veggies
Melt a stick of butter in a large stock pot. You will be adding the broth to this so plan accordingly. Nothing worse than realizing the pot is too small halfway through adding your broth. Add your veggies and saute.
Add your broth, spices to your turkey noodle soup
Add your broth and spices, cover, and simmer for about an hour. My broth was still a little frozen, so those are the chunks you see in the picutre.
Add noodles
After it has simmered add your noodles. You can go with any noodles you’d like. I make my own egg noodles, but you can buy them too. Either the dried or frozen kind would work well. Cook your noodles according to package.
Enjoy your turkey noodle soup
Now it’s time to enjoy your turkey noodle soup. I usually freeze leftovers, but because I used frozen broth and turkey I didn’t want to refreeze it. We ate a lot of soup that week.