Confessions of a Soup-aholic

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11.20.09
Confessions of a Soup-aholic

Pilgrims, stories of thankfulness, turkey stuffing, cranberries and recipes galore; the news media inundates us with the Thanksgiving theme. Although thankful, we also need to direct our attention to the next thing. Black Friday? Christmas? No, the next thing is soup.

I am a self-confessed soup-aholic and after the holiday feast is the best time for soup creations. So many leftovers, so many flavors. Historically soup was a way to use aged animals and mature veggies. The thrifty homemaker prevented waste and saved money.

Joy of Cooking notes that a “careful selection of refrigerator oddments can often produce enough valid ingredients to make a flavorful stock.” While creating this article, I did a quick mental inventory of my refrigerator’s aging “oddments,” threw them together with fresh thyme and parsley from the garden and have my new soup recipe simmering away for dinner tonight.

The large meaty bird presented on my Thanksgiving table is only a means to the end. I drool-- not literally-- over the carcass that remains once the feast has concluded. Turkey carcass soup has been a favorite for generations in my family.

Ask any cook who lived through the depression or fed a large family in tough times and he or she will tell you that bones are for soup stock. Boiling bones in water along with seasonings creates a rich broth that no bouillon cube can replicate. Sure, we all take short cuts, but the mountains of leftovers after Thanksgiving means there’s no excuse for cutting corners.

Stock can be made from cooked or raw bones. Rich stock comes from beef, pork, and my favorite, poultry. Lighter more delicate stock can be made from fish or vegetables. Soup is the best way to recycle leftovers.

Removing the meat from the bones and putting bones into the stock pot with water, the soup is started even before the oven has cooled. I add leafy celery greens, onion, garlic, and carrots. Don’t forget salt and pepper. The stock pot goes onto a back burner while dinner clean up continues, by others if I play my cards right.

Simmer this for 2 hours and then cool overnight. The next day remove bones as well as the fat that has solidified on the surface, cook rice, noodles, or dumplings right in the broth and finally add some of that dry white turkey meat. This provides days of rich brothy goodness that can be served with other leftovers.

We don’t hear much about fish stock around here. Although good chowder is very delicious, we just don’t often come by the fish bones, tails, skin, heads and scraps that go into the base.

Did you serve ham instead of turkey? Great! I’ll be right over to start on the ham shank and bean soup.

What does any of this have to do with Auglaize Outdoors? You know the routine. Get off the couch, cinch up your pants around that overstuffed belly, start a pot of soup, grab the kids, and get outside! A vigorous walk in the fresh air will aid in digestion and burn off that extra slice of pie.

Look for deer signs- scrapes where a buck digs up a patch of ground and urinates to mark his territory, small shrubs or trees broken and cleaned of bark by a buck rubbing velvet off his antlers, and look for hoof prints along the path. Deer are very active and easier to spot now that crops are off the fields.

Head back indoors for a steaming bowl of leftover soup. Now that is something to be thankful for.

 
Allison Brady, Executive Director
Heritage Trails Park District
Your partner for parks in Auglaize County