The Turkey That Keeps On Giving

The day after Thanksgiving the skies opened up and it began to rain.  A slow, soaking rain that nourished the landscape.  In true feast or famine experiences, rain either refuses to fall (this summer) or comes down in refreshing abundance.  We had plenty of leftovers.  There was not much to do outside.  The options were slim.  So we stayed inside and ate.

Around the back of the house, I have water catchment that enables us to catch over 400 gallons of water with a 1 inch rain.  All of our rainwater reservoirs were overflowing.  You can see one below.  Our cup runneth over.

Look at this big ol' turkey wishbone.  I'm not a superstitious person.  I remember as a kid, we would each grab one side of the wishbone and pull until it broke.  If I recall correctly, the person holding the biggest piece of the wishbone was supposed to be able to make a wish and it would come true.  

One thing I was wishing for is to turn the carcasses of the fried turkey, the baked turkey, and the smoked specklebelly goose into stock.  My wife wasn't nearly as enthusiastic about that venture as it makes a big mess in the kitchen.  The results, however, are well worth it, in my opinion.  We make lots of broth and stock, primarily out of our grassfed beef and chickens.

It's a little different with store-bought fowl as you really don't know what's in the bird.  It's surely not near as healthy for you as the animals that come off your land.  At least the specklebelly goose was wild and we could be sure there was no antibiotics in him.  Stock and broth is really good for you.  It's loaded with nutrients, minerals, protein, amino acids.  It's got collagen which is good for your connective tissue.  Broth and stock is a big booster of your immune system, giving you power to fight off sickness!

So I pulled out the big pot and put the carcasses into the pot with some celery, onions, carrots and herbs.  I added water and got it boiling and then turned it down to low and let it cook for hours and hours.  The next day I heated it up again and then let it come to a luke warm temperature.  I poured through a sieve and captured 12 cups of turkey/goose stock!

We froze it in quart-sized ziploc bags.  We'll use it as a base for soups in this winter season.  I like to use it in place of water when cooking rice.  There were a couple more beneficiaries of the stock-making enterprise other than our family.  I completely picked all the remaining meat and fat from what was left of the carcasses, making sure no bones remained.  This was placed in a big bowl.  Belle, our Great Pyrenees, and Ginger, our cat, will get to enjoy Thanksgiving leftovers for a few more days than their humans.  They like it a lot better than their normal diets.  

Though making broth or stock can be a messy ordeal, resulting in a lot of dishes and countertops to clean, the dividends are great!

The Only Thing Going to Waste is the "Gobble"

On the evening of Turkey Day, we were stuffed with leftovers and a little tired after cooking, cleaning and the letdown after all the excitement of the big day with family.  Time to find an easy chair and relax, right?  Not exactly.  First there is a bit more work to do.  After lunch and during clean-up, we carve all the remaining meat of the two birds - one a baked turkey and the other a fried one.

The meat goes into the fridge for leftovers and the bones, skin, cartilage, onions, carrots, and bits of small meat goes into a big stock pot and water is poured to cover the contents.  A cover is put on the pot and it is boiled all afternoon long.  In the late evening, we turned off the stove and let it sit.  In the morning, the contents of the pot was still warm.

Remnants of the Gobbler

The contents of the pot was poured through a sieve to strain out the non-liquids. The photo above shows those "non-liquids."  The dogs really appreciated eating on this for about three days.  As for the liquid, well, that is some good turkey stock.

Straining through a sieve

The turkey stock was nice and rich and we wanted to be able to use it for being the base for soups this winter or gravies, or, if you really want to make your rice more flavorful, cook it in turkey stock instead of water.  Wow! Does that ever make a big difference.

There are many things you can do with turkey stock

We put the pot of turkey stock in the fridge and cool it down fully for about half a day.

Turkey stock

Once it has cooled, the turkey stock will settle out with the fat rising to the top.  The bottom congeals like turkey flavored jell-o.  We skim the fat off the top and that goes into the pile of bones and skin for the dogs.  They really enjoy that.  The remaining turkey stock goes into quart jars and is frozen in the deep freeze for use later.  Not much gets wasted on the turkeys.  Obviously, we do this with every chicken we eat as well.  Turkey stock is a flavorful, healthy item that we enjoy long after the rest of the Thanksgiving turkey is gone.

Our Own Grass Fed Beef - Making Bone Broth (Part 5)

Today is the final entry in our series on bringing our grassfed steer to the slaughterhouse for processing and the different things we did in order to use almost every part of the animal except the "Moo."  Before we go further and in the event you missed the previous posts, here they are so that you can click, read and catch up:

Part 1 Grassfed Beef - Organ Meats
Part 2 Grassfed Beef - Picking it Up
Part 3 Grassfed Beef - Rendering Beef Tallow
Part 4 Grassfed Beef - Cooking Grassfed Beef

Today we're going to show you how to make beef bone broth.  As members of the Weston A. Price Foundation, we are firm adherents to the phrase, "Broth is Beautiful."  In fact This Article by Sally Fallon really opened our eyes to the health benefits of cooking with broth.  It seems in our house we always have a pot of our home-raised pastured chicken bones simmering to make that golden, healthy, elixir.  We just never did it with beef bones since we've never had grass fed beef. That ends now!

In the tallow post (Part 3) we told you we asked the butcher to save all of the fat for us.  We also asked him to cut up all the bones and save them as well.  We picked up two HUGE bags of bones for making bone broth and over the next week, we always had 3 pots simmering on the stove.  Here's how we did it.

First, we used a variety of bones, bones with marrow, bones with joints attached, short bones, large bones, you name it.  We had bones strewn across the kitchen.  If we would have had any archaeological experience or were better with jigsaw puzzles, we might have reconstructed the skeleton of the steer right there in our kitchen.

The first of many, many bones

We first trimmed the excess pieces of meat and fat from the bones.  These went into a bowl and became dog food.  Our dogs absolutely loved it and we probably saved $25 bucks alone in dog food. Needless to say, the dogs were as pleased as we were with the grass fed beef.

Scraps for the dogs

We filled 3 large stockpots three-quarters of the way full with bones and set them on top of the stove. These 3 pots and our stove got quite a workout over the next week!

If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen!

We added roughly 3 or 4 tablespoons of apple cider vinegar to each pot.  The vinegar is said to draw the minerals out of the bones.  That's what we are aiming for in order to get the most out of our beef broth.

Adding Apple Cider Vinegar

Then we added filtered water until it covered the level of the bones.  We allowed the bones to just rest there in the water for an hour or so while we cleaned up the mess in the kitchen.

Adding filtered water

Then we brought the water to a rolling boil, skimming off the foam and brown stuff that floated to the top with a spoon and throwing in the compost pile.  Everything goes into the compost pile.

Skimming off the top

We added an onion and plenty of broken up celery and carrots to each pot, covered, and turned down the heat.  We want the contents of the pot to always bubble - a slow simmer.  Then we sort of forgot about it for 24 or so hours.  It just did its thing and we did ours for a day or so.  The long simmer causes the gelatin to be released from the bones, along with the marrow and many minerals.

The bubbling cauldron of health

Finally, it was time to take the broth off of the heat.  I lined a colander with a cut up t-shirt and poured the hot broth through it, to strain out the solids and much of the fat.

Straining the broth

The remnants or debris left in the pot after straining was happily consumed by our dogs and chickens. There is no waste at our house.  It was very interesting how our chickens gathered around the bones and picked at them, actually eating the bone. We give the chickens oyster shells to eat, but they really attacked the bones, picking them clean.

For the dogs & chickens

Once cooled I was able to pour the contents into gallon and half-gallon sized jars.  I left them on the counter until they were room temperature and then I moved them into the refrigerator.  The next morning the contents was gelatinous.  I used a spoon to remove all of the fat that lined the top of the broth.

The first batch of beef broth

Then we poured it all back into a pot, heated it up to a boil and ladled it into quart and pint sized jars and then put them into the pressure canner, pressure canning it at 10 lbs pressure - 20 minutes for pints and 25 minutes for quarts.

When we finished, we had 14 quarts of beef broth:

Quarts of Beef Broth

and 20 pints of beef broth for the pantry.

Pints of beef broth

If my math is correct, that is 6 gallons of beef broth.  That's a lot of health right there.  More than you'll find in a CVS or Walgreens.  Sally Fallon of the Weston Price Foundation says this about broth:

Science validates what our grandmothers knew. Rich homemade chicken broths help cure colds. Stock contains minerals in a form the body can absorb easily—not just calcium but also magnesium, phosphorus, silicon, sulphur and trace minerals. It contains the broken down material from cartilage and tendons–stuff like chondroitin sulphates and glucosamine, now sold as expensive supplements for arthritis and joint pain.

So we are set now for a while and will be able to use the beef broth we made as a base for making soups, using it instead of water for cooking rice, boiling potatoes in or basically using it instead of water for making recipes richer and more flavorful and healthy.  Bon Appetit!