I’d like to make comfort foods, foods that don’t look fabulous or visually stunning. They simply have the warm feeling and the sense of a homemade dish, and still taste awesome without straining yourself in the kitchen…
I present to you the turkey “chowder”, a new addition to my list of comfort food made in minutes out of left-overs or pre-cooked ingredients.
So, it was after Thanksgiving this year (Canadian Thanksgiving is in October, always before the US Thanksgiving) that I had a big chunk of turkey, meat and bones, left in my fridge. There were 8 of us for a 10 lbs turkey. It was quite a chanllenge considering our eating capacity has been reduced through the years. If it had been 5 years ago, the turkey bone wouldn’t make it for the next day’s soup broth, just to show you how crazy we (my friends and I) use to consume food.
Now I was left with the the turkey skeleton and some good chunk of meat. I had not idea what to do, except for making some kind of broth or soup out of it. That’s also how we make use of leftover food in my family. The pre-cooked meat has one big advantage of being well-seasoned and marinated so the soup needs little or even no seasoning. This is a big plus when you are making comfort food. You don’t want to work too much to just fix up the taste.
I brought some fresh carrots and potatoes for the soup. I always like to have my veggies fresh at the very least. Every soup depends largely on the freshness of ingredients, especially vegetables. I also utilized the mashed potato that was also left-over from the Thanksgiving dinner. When putting more than one leftover dish into a soup, you have to make sure that their seasonings won’t fight with each other and turn ur soup into some sort of pet food (Yes, our pets eat what we eat in most Asian countries. I still think it’s healthier for them than the processed pet food at the store. In a way, you have to eat healthy in order to keep ur pet nutritionally healthy :D). Luckily enough, the mashed potato went perfectly with the turkey’s seasonings. Therefore, my turkey “chowder” has been a great success.
Now, I present to you the easiest soup recipe, using left-over turkey.
Preparation: 20 minutes
Servings: undecided
Ingredients:
– Left-over turkey, meat and bone separated
– Carrots
– Potato
– Left-over mashed potatoes
– Flour to thicken the soup
– Diced spring onion for garnish
Process:
– Boil the turkey bone with some water over high heat to extract all the flavour
– Shred the turkey meat to bite size; Wash and dice potatoes and carrots
– After the bone has stayed for a while, discard it and clear out the bits of fat in the broth. Add the turkey meat and diced veggies. Let boil again.
– Add the mashed potatoes and dissolve in the soup to the desired amount. Add flour mixed with some water to thicken the soup. Season with some salt.
– Add spring onion and turn off the heat.
– Served alone or with some hot bread as an apetite.
Notes:
– As this recipe calls for leftover turkey and mashed potato, its taste vary widely based on their seasonings. Moreover, you can add more herbs in the soup if the taste is not really there. I’d go with rosemary or thyme for most soup, as these are widely used herbs for marinating turkey and are quite collaborative with other herbs and spices.
– If you don’t have mashed potato but still want the texture of it in the soup, simply mash some of the diced potatoes in the soup, or just add potato starch in place for both mashed potato and flour.
ENJOY!!!!
