I love Halloween it’s my favorite holiday. Theres no expectations except to pretend to be someone else for a few hours and have fun.
My next favorite is Thanksgiving, but only because the days that follow are SOUP MAKING days! Butternut squash, potato leek, t.u.r.k.e.y., and stock by the gallons!
Growing up the tradition was to add ALL leftovers into the stew pot and cook for hours. Personally I dont love green beans in my soup, especially when cooked for hours on end. My modified salute to this childhood tradition is that once the bird is carved, and picked over for any and all bits of meat, it is then plunked directly into the InstantPot to become beautiful full-flavored bone broth.
The day before Thanksgiving, when all the vegetables are getting prepared and cooked is when I make vegetable stock. All the leftover bits, peels, heels and such are tossed into the IP and cooked down into a stock to be used in the upcoming rotation of veggies soups. It’s nice to have a meat broth, and a separate vegetable stock to use in different ways.
This year I tried something new and used a few vitality oils in my cooking. I made my own dry rub for the turkey using coarse salt, pepper, dried rosemary, dried thyme and added a few drops each of orange, sage and marjoram oils. I put it all in the mortar and used the pestle to grind it all up into a super fine powder that got sprinkled on the bird a few minutes before going into the oven. HOLY COW!
My son, who has always turned up his nose at eating turkey, asked for seconds! My dad said it was the best he had had in quite a few years, and that’s saying something! The only thing that was different from other years was adding the oils to the rub.
I dont know what magical potion was created when those three hit the salt rub, but I know for sure I’ll be using that combo again. It was the juiciest roast I’ve done so far (the photo doesn’t do the flavor justice)
Anyway, back to soup. All that yummy goodness gets recycled into the bone broth and the veggie stock. This year the roasted butternut squash became a brown-butter sage squash bisque. The parsnip, turnip, sweet potato mash got veggie stock added to it and became a soup for a vegetarian friend who has THAT COLD from her school-aged child. The leftover leek-kale-garlic sautee was added into a pan with cream, potatoes, thyme sprigs and water and simmered into a hearty potato leek soup that I’ll top with a drop each of sage and rosemary oils before serving.
Today, with almost 11 inches of snow, was definitely a soup day. I was extremely happy to have a larder full of options as I made all of these soups. Tomorrow I’ll portion out servings and pop them in the freezer for the next snow day. (Which will probably be tomorrow as we’re forecasted to get another 6 inches)
What do you do with Thanksgiving leftovers?
