Turkey wild rice soup
by:
by:
Turkey wild rice soup with fresh baguette
Makes 4-6 servings
Ingredients
Broth:
1 big-ole carcass
4 cans cup low sodium broth
2-3 cups water
3-4 celery stalks (including leaves)
2 carrots
1 onion
2 bay leaves
1 tablespoon pepper corn
Soup:
Shredded turkey
1 white onion
1- 1 ½ cups Wild rice
2-3 diced carrots
3-4 diced celery
To Finish
Fresh warm baguette
Sweet corn off the cob (optional)
Directions
Strip as much fat as you can from the carcass and put in a pot with celery (including the leaves), carrots and onion, bay leaves and paper corns.
Instead of salt, use low salt broth mixed with water
Bring to a boil and simmer for about 3-4 hours
Remove carcass to cool, strain the broth of all ingredients (you can throw them away). When cool, shred all meat from carcass and set aside
In a fresh pot, saute a fresh batch of diced white onion, celery and carrots. Mix in broth and add in the shredded turkey. Bring back to a simmer and add the wild rice.
Simmer with the wild rice until soft (maybe 45-50 minutes).
Let each person crack their own pepper in their soup, serve with a fresh warmed baguette for dipping, if you want you can include sweet corn off the cob with that final batch of veggies.
Story
Before moving, flying into Oregon for Thanksgiving was a yearly norm. Oregon is known for its snowy mountains and luscious forests. We spend these few days skiing, eating some prime and superior food, as well as celebrating the time of giving and receiving.
The first year we moved to the NW, we celebrated thanksgiving with my cousins, it would always be filled with glee and joy. The following day we would all go and get Christmas trees, it would always be a day to get cleared out for a very special and mesmerizing day.
The day starts off bright and early. We pack the car up and head to our usual tree farm. After we get home, the kitchen starts hustling, the leftover turkey is used to make turkey wild rice soup.
The carcass is put in a big pot with celery, carrots, onions, bay leaves, along with some peppercorn, and instead of salt, use low sodium broth mixed with water. “This is the part that makes the magic, it is key to let it simmer for 3-4 hours, because good things take time, and great things take a little longer,” said my uncle.
Every year I receive my same task of dicing up the veggies, as the years went by I’ve noticed some improvement in my knife work. It's such a simple task but yet it requires precision and focus. In the meantime, I help dice up white onion, celery, and carrots, and saute them in a small pan. As we await for the broth to be finished, the noise and smell of the soup simmering fills up the house.
Once the broth has simmered for most of the afternoon, we add the shredded meat from the carcass, sauteed veggies, wild rice, and combine it into the broth, to bring back to a simmer for about 45 minutes.
“Long await-, the soup is finished!” My dad yells, my cousins and I put a pause to our intense game of ping pong, and all sprint up stairs to the kitchen. Both of my cousins climbed up onto the kitchen island and took a big whiff of the mouth watering turkey soup, with some impulsiveness they stuck their little fingers into the soup and tasted the savoriness.
We all sit down at the table about to enjoy our meal, when my uncle yells, “there's one final step to perfection, a warm baguette can never be missed, and some pepper cracked into the soup, and BOOM…. that's the best dang soup ya ever had!”
The original recipe of this perplexing turkey wild rice soup is engraved into my brain from the number of times I’ve helped make it. Over the years, I’ve noticed there’s that unique and distinctive taste that differs from the previous year, as I grew older, and as my cousins slowly grew out of the toddler phase, I’ve started to grasp that there is no ordinance in “family”, nor in the soup our family makes, there is no recipe, it’s a family recipe, with no specific amount of ingredients measured, and maybe plus or minus a little trick here or there.