When I had internet at my house it was so easy to just sit down, type my thoughts and post! Now there’s no motivation – except for my faithful three followers lol. It’s been so long that there is was too much to fit into one post. I’ve got stories to tell about a $6 turkey and then there’s the new knitting project that I have worked on for 12 ½ hours.
The $6 turkey doesn't seem as exciting as when I had all the thoughts about the post at the time. Oh, well. Basically, Save-Mart had a coupon where you bought $20 worth of groceries and got any turkey under 14 lbs for only $6. Well spending $20 bucks at the grocery store is easy for me. So, I picked it up, drove home and dreamt of the the creations I'd make. I don't celebrate Thanksgiving so making that classic dinner, wasn't my goal. I'm really not as big of a fan of a whole roast turkey anyway (a whole fried turkey is a whole other story - yummo). In a whole roast turkey the breasts are dried out by the time the rest is cooked and then if you don't have a crowd to feed, you've got a whole lot of roast turkey meat that has to be used as "roast turkey meat". Come on, there's way more exciting things I can think of to do with all that meat rather than roasting it all in one shot. And besides the process for me is the exciting part. If I roast the whole thing now there's no more fun in the days and weeks or months that follow!
Well it took almost five days to completely thaw in the fridge. Good thing I wasn't in a hurry! The gizzards were actually still frozen but they thawed quickly enough once I yanked 'em out.
So, first, I removed all the "good" meat - like you would a whole chicken. Two breasts and two thighs.
Then I took off the whole wings and roasted them with the carcass, neck and drumsticks. You can't dry out drumsticks, right? Hubby and June bug ate the drumsticks for dinner and I nibbled on a wing. I made some stuffing too. If there's anything I like about a traditional "turkey dinner" it's stuffing. I could eat it morning noon and night - and I have. This occasion was no different. My recipe made two loaf pans worth and after a whole week of eating for a few lunches, a few dinners and I think one midnight snack, I think there was still some left. It went in the freezer for later (Oo that's right, now I know what I'm having for lunch today!!). Hubby likes stuffing too, but could care less about it after the first day - so it's all mine :)
Back to the turkey. Two days later it was time to make the stock. In went the roasted carcass, neck and bones that remained after dinner two nights before as well as the onions, celery, carrots, garlic, peppercorns and some leeks tops left over from the oxtail soup I'd made earlier that week.
After two hours of simmering, I carefully lifted out the the meatier bones, let them cool a bit then removed the final bits of meat.
When the stock was done about 1 1/2 hours later, the meat went back in. Now I had almost two gallons of rich roasted Turkey stock with some still sorta-flavorful meat (that's why I removed it before the stock was done).
Half the Turkey stock got made into Turkey soup with dumplings the next day - after the addition of some chopped fresh carrots and celery. The other half went into the freezer for a rainy day.
As for those two breasts and two thighs above. One half breast got ground into ground "lean" turkey -8 oz. Its other half and the other breast was sliced thin into 6 - 4 oz. pallairds. The two thighs were made into ground "not-so-lean" turkey - two 6 oz portions. All were frozen. BTW, the food processor works great for making "ground" meat. Chop into 1 inch cubes and pulse until it's ground to your liking - no meat grinder required. I've got pictures but they are on my camera at home - sorry.
Needless to say, there will be many more meals ahead from that $6 turkey. :)
