If you’ll be making a roast turkey for the holidays, or any time of the year really, don’t throw out those bones afterwards! They can be “upcycled” so to speak into a delicious and easy turkey stock, with plenty to use or freeze for later.

(This turkey stock recipe could also work for chicken bones, beef bones, and probably pork bones as well. The basic concept is the same, and the freezing method is exactly the same as well.)

Bone broth is thought to have many health benefits, and is even better when you can make it yourself using organic ingredients and plastic-free cooking accessories. Regardless of whatever it may do for your skin’s elasticity and bone density, it is a great way to reuse parts of the animal that would otherwise go into the trash.

Making your own broth also saves you the money you’d otherwise spend on buying canned/boxed broth from the store, not to mention the extra waste that generates for our landfills.

 

Before You Begin Making Your Turkey Stock

When you buy your turkey from the store, you’ll probably notice that is also came with a bag of gizzards and the neck pieces. While some people say to use the gizzards in your broth, I just couldn’t bring myself to deal with those parts (they’re squishy and a bit too gruesome for my sometimes-atarian standards). But definitely save that turkey neck! I left mine in a recycled take out container in the freezer while the rest of the bird defrosted, so that it was still fresh when it came time to cook with the remaining turkey carcass.

Also, as you’re cooking your big holiday meal, save all the end pieces of the veggies that you’d otherwise discard or compost! Rinse them off if they’re dirty, and then put those in the freezer with the turkey neck as well, to use later in the stock. Another way to “upcycle” part of your holiday meal into a second edible item!

 

What You’ll Need To Make Turkey Stock

The basic ingredients of a turkey stock recipe are pretty straightforward:

• Turkey carcass
• vegetables
• water
• big pot
• strainer
• glass jars for freezing (I’ll get into this in a bit)

That’s it! If you want to add salt, you absolutely can. I actually prefer to go without it for the stock, so that when I use it in recipes later, I have more control over how much salt to add to that dish, rather than trying to estimate how much is already in the turkey stock.

 

How To Make Turkey Stock

After your big holiday meal is over, and all the edible bits of turkey meat have been removed either during the course of the meal, or afterwards when they’re transferred to a leftover container, you should now have a fairly picked over collection of bones and bits.

 

Step #1: Put turkey bones in a big pot.

I have a big tall pot, the kind you boil lobsters in (though I’ve never actually boiled lobsters in my life and it sounds pretty cruel to me actually). It happens to come with a strainer insert, which is brilliant for making turkey stock with because at the end, you can just lift it out and all the stock strains out into the big pot below while the solid pieces remain in the strainer.

If you don’t have a strainer insert, that’s okay. You can always pour the pot contents through a strainer later.

Put the leftover turkey bones in there plus the raw turkey neck you’ve saved in the freezer. No need to defrost. Making turkey stock is super low-pro!

 

Step #2: Add cut vegetables to the pot

If you have veggie ends in the freezer from when you were prepping your holiday meal, throw them in the pot! If you don’t, or if you’d like more veggies in there, go ahead and cut up whatever you have leftover in your fridge that didn’t get used up for your meal.  (See? I did say this was a super low-pro recipe!)

I used the following, all of which was excess from what had been needed for the stuffing:

• 1 onion – peeled and cut into 4 sections
• Celery – half the bunch that didn’t get used before, cut into 3ish inch pieces
• Carrots – cut into 3ish inch pieces
• Kale stems – cut into 3ish inch pieces (you get the point now)

 

Step #3: Cover with water

I tried to measure out how much water I used and it was at least 8 cups. Basically I just tried to make sure the ingredients were covered.

 

Step #4: Boil and then simmer

Something I forgot to mention at the top – only start this recipe when you know you’ve got several hours to do it in. After you bring the turkey broth to a boil, you’ll need to turn the flame down to medium/low so that it simmers. And then let it simmer for 3-4 hours until the turkey broth has reduced to about half.

Do not cover the pot! You want it uncovered so that the water evaporates as it simmers, so that all those turkey and veggie flavors condense and intensify in the water as it reduces. Your house is going to smell amazing by the way!

 

Step #5: Strain the contents

Once your turkey stock has reached that point of being half reduced, turn off the heat and let it cool a bit. Then, if you have a strainer insert, slowly remove the insert so that the broth leaks out into the pot and not on your stove. Shake it a bit until it’s done. And then transfer the strainer contents to a big container if you’d like to save it for later. You can pull out whatever unsavory end bits you used, and just keep the edible veggie pieces.

I used these veggies later (my bonus crustless turkey pot pie recipe is at the end of this post!)

By the way, remember that recycled take out container you used for the raw turkey neck in the freezer? It gets a third life here: put the turkey bones and inedible veggie pieces back into that same take out container. It’ll be easier to throw out the bones in the trash when they’re packaged up like this and can’t poke holes in your trash bag.

If you don’t have a strainer insert, set your strainer over a large container/bowl, and slowly pour the pot contents into it, so that the pieces stay in the strainer and the broth flows into the container below. Then do as above and pick out the turkey bones and inedible veggie pieces. Or you may want to remove the larger turkey pieces first so that the pot isn’t as heavy to pour.

 

Step #6: Portion turkey stock into glass jars for freezing

If you’re going to be using the turkey stock immediately, you can skip this step. But chances are you’ll want to freeze at least some of the broth because there will be LOTS. (See jars photo below).

For the portion that you plan to freeze, you’ll want to make sure that it’s room temperature before putting in the freezer. This is to keep the glass jars from cracking from the drastic change in temp!

Every time I buy something that comes in a glass jar – apple sauce, pasta sauce, peanut butter – I rinse that jar out and keep it for future storage. They come in handy when you’ve got like half a gallon of turkey stock to freeze!

FREEZER TIP: Always leave some room at the top of the jar.

That’s so that if the liquid expands as it freezes, it has room to grow. Otherwise, it will expand out and cause the jar to crack. And the last thing you want to do after your big holiday meal is to be cleaning out shards of glass from your freezer that also probably has shards of ice in it too, which happen to look almost identical to glass….

 

 

Also, you may want to measure out exactly how much is going in each jar, especially if they’re different sizes. That way you won’t have to guess at how many jars to defrost later when you need 3 cups of turkey broth for a recipe.

 

I recommend using a glass measuring cup to scoop the broth from the pot and pour into the jars. That way you can measure the broth as you go!

 

Step #7: Label your glass jars!

This is important. No matter how certain you are that you will never forget the day that you put this turkey stock in the freezer, you will. Please trust me on this. It has happened to the best of us. I just found frozen tofu in my freezer that I thought was a few months old, and then I really thought about it and realized that it was made by my mom on her last visit, which was over a year ago due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

So please, put the day and year on your turkey stock, and the amount if you’ve measured it. Also write “Turkey Stock” on it because you may forget that too. Again, no shame in that if it happens. I had to defrost a container of mystery contents once to realize they were in fact peeled bananas!

I like to use blue painter’s tape and a permanent marker instead of writing directly on the lid. That way, after you’ve defrosted and finished the turkey stock later, you can pull off the tape, clean the jar, and reuse it once again.

 

Step #8: Defrost turkey stock as needed

This isn’t really its own step, but I wanted to throw in some ideas for what to use turkey stock for! Here’s a short list of the recipes I have used mine in, and plan to use it in later:

• Pumpkin soup (using the un-carved pumpkin pictured in this Halloween post here – see, I really do try not to let anything go to waste!)
• Savory oatmeal
• Risotto
• Sipping tea (just defrost, heat up, and sip like a snack between meals)
• Basically any soup that’s not vegetarian
• Crustless turkey pot pie

 

Ok friends, I know I said above that I’d share my crustless turkey pot pie recipe now and have been really hyping it up, but it’s after midnight as I write this, and tomorrow is a jam-packed day of holiday prep. So I’m sorry to disappoint, but am going to end this post here and then write one tomorrow with that recipe. I will link that one here once it’s live, so that if you’re reading this after it’s published, you won’t even know it wasn’t here. And if you are reading this without the link, I apologize for running out of steam, and also THANK YOU for being one of the first people no doubt to read this post!

If you make and freeze turkey stock from turkey bones using this recipe, please let me know what you use the broth for later! I’d love to know what other uses people have for turkey stock. 

 

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