Turkey Broth to Die For

We were invited to a belated Christmas dinner on New Year's Day with some other expats. The dinner was very much a Thanksgiving meal for us, complete with turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, green bean casserole, mashed potatoes, gravy, and sweet potato-pecan amazingness. Very, very good.

At the end, a half-eaten turkey glared at us as we cleaned up the kitchen. I offered to take the poor thing off their hands so I could make stock and turkey soup (thanks mom!). They obliged, even letting me borrow a pot to cook it in. After leaving them the wishbone (that I broke - is that bad luck?), I had a pot full of turkey bones. Yum.

The next afternoon around 3 the pot was brimming with bones, carrots, onions, and water that looked a bit like this:

 I had read a recipe once (okay, an hour before this picture was taken) that discussed skimming the stock throughout the cooking. Usually, I just skimmed the first bowls-ful of foam and left the thing to simmer for an hour until I got tired of watching it. Apparently this is why my stocks have always been so-so.

This time, I skimmed every 10 minutes for the first hour. I started with cold water on low heat and let it get warm veeerrry slowly. It did not bubble for over an hour, though it did steam. When I skimmed, I was not removing foam but little fat droplets that were clearly yellow and hanging around my onions. I removed bowls and bowls of fatty stuff, stopping to take this picture because I was so amazed at how yellow it was.

Now the really cool (or disgusting) part of this whole process was not the amazing, delicious, and rich stock I got after 4 hours of a slow simmer. **Check out how reduced it is?! Awesome.**

The cool part was how the skimming appealed to my love for picking at things (here comes the potentially gross part). I am that person who has scars from paper cuts because I pick the scabs for so long. Having a newborn is sometimes a struggle as you are not to pop the cute little baby acne they get lest you scar them at 8 weeks of age (told you it was gross). But searching out little droplets of fat in steaming broth among floating veggies and turkey bones? Heaven.

And it was totally worth it. Not only is the broth amazing enough to be referred to as such twice in one blog entry, but I left it in the fridge overnight, hoping to skim the fat off the top in the morning before freezing. The next day, there was so little fat to skim, it was difficult. I left it, thinking, I've already done my part. Leave a little fat.

Devine.

A final note: when I began the skimming process I was all excited and brought hubby over to see. His first response to my joy was, "isn't fat where all the flavor is?" I was so surprised that I responded with, "yes, but the flavor from the fat seeps into the water before I remove it." Who's the biologist?

Really, with stock, the flavor is in the bones, not the fat. Leaving in fat will make a more flavorful broth, but a richer broth comes from one strengthened with bones. And that is what is now in my freezer. Ha.