Crock Pot Turkey or Chicken Stock

To keep our sanity Husband and I flip flop major holidays with each side our respective families. After last year's Tofurky Thanksgiving, we traveled deep in the heart of Texas to spend this Thanksgiving with Husband's family. As we were cleaning up I stopped his sister from tossing the turkey carcass. It was stripped clean of meat but was still able to produce a bunch of tasty homemade turkey stock. 

I asked Husband - the King of Homemade Turkey Stock to work his magic. He's a Lazy Chef too because he makes his turkey stock in a crock pot.




How to Render Bones into Soup Stock/Broth

1. Place your turkey or chicken bones into a crock pot or stock pot on the stove. If you have to cut the carcass up to shove it in the crockpot, that's fine too.The bones are an important part of this equation because the marrow in the bones will add flavor and body to your stock as well as whatever fat is in the meat. If you are making stock from poultry, do not add the giblets (the gizzard, liver, and heart) to your pot because they will make your stock bitter. Bleach!

2. Cover the bones in water in the crockpot.

3. Add a few chopped vegetables (such as carrots, onions, and garlic) and herbs, (such as oregano/basil and a pinch of salt to bring out the flavor.Chances are your turkey bones and bits have already been flavored when you cooked the bird so there isn't big huge need to add a bunch of extra seasoning.

4. Simmer the turkey (or chicken) meat and bones in a large pot of water on low heat for 6-8 hours  to remove any large portions of meat from the bone (called rendering.)

5. Remove the bones from the broth. Ta Da! Easy turkey broth people.

Since our turkey meat was already flavored by smoking, Husband just stuck the entire turkey carcass into the slow cooker, covered it in water, added a bit of salt to bring out the flavor and oregano to compliment the turkey’s original smoked flavoring and let the whole thing simmer on low heat overnight.

Of course, if you’re using a stockpot method, I don’t recommend that you leave anything to cook on a stove unattended. That’s an excellent way to burn down your humble abode, and no amount of turkey stock is worth that!
 
When the stock was finished we fished out the bones and I froze the stock in one cup containers. I like to freeze stock in one cup containers because most recipes tend to call for one cup of broth. You can also freeze stock in an ice cube tray and use the stock cubes for later cooking.

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