POST-THANKSGIVING COMFORT

After the wretched excesses of Thanksgiving, there’s no better way to dispose of Turkified Remnants than by making a nice pot of soup. It’s an Elisson family tradition of long standing.

Green bean casserole... made from scratch.

Generally, Soup Night is the Sunday following the holiday. By that time, the turkey carcass is pretty well picked over and most of the other goodies - the sausage-rice dressing, the green bean casserole, the sweet potato pudding - have been devoured.

The soup starts with me taking the turkey carcass out of the fridge and busting it all to flinders before shoving it into a nice big stockpot, where it is joined by a pile of mirepoix - chunks of celery, carrot, and onion - along with a few cloves of garlic, some peppercorns and parsley stems, a bay leaf, a few sprigs of thyme, and cold water to cover. There was still plenty of meat on this carcass, and I still had on hand some of my chicken stock, packed with gelatin from all the chicken feet I had used, so there was flavor to spare. After a slow simmer for three or four hours, we had a big potload of rich turkey stock.

The next step was to strain the stock, removing all of the solids. Once those had cooled enough, I picked out all of the chunks of turkey meat, discarding the bones and vegetables. The meat went back into the stock, along with some diced carrots and parsnips. Back on the fire it went for another slow simmer.

After about a half hour, I threw in about a pound of lentils and (just for grins) a handful of barley to give the soup extra body. And then it was only about an hour before it was Soup o’Clock. Behold:


Turkey-lentil soup... perfect comfort food.

If this ain’t comfort food, I don’t know what is!