Turkey For You, Turkey For Me

Last weekend, Kent and his buddy Josh went turkey hunting.  While I was hosting my ladies' cookie exchange, my sweetie came home with this:

That's one big turkey.  No, I mean the bird.  :-P

I'm guessing the typical thing to do is roast the turkey, eat the big chunks of meat and toss the rest out.  My heart breaks a little when I see a perfectly good turkey carcass thrown away before being simmered for stock, torn apart for extra meat shreds, and given its last rites and sacrament before finally tossing the bones out.  It seems like the ultimate disrespect to the life of the turkey, not harvesting every last morsel out of its body, right down to boiling out the marrow of its bones. 

So when we get a turkey, which is twice a year for spring and fall turkey hunting seasons (assuming that my sweetie is a good shot), this is what we do to eek every last morsel out of that bird.

The Feast
Kent killed and cleaned the bird on Saturday.  We brined it on Sunday and Monday in a big cooler of salt water with a handful of brown sugar thrown in (if you are cooking wild turkey, I highly recommend brining it.  In fact, even for regular turkey, brining takes the flavor and moisture to another level).  On Monday after work when I got home, the first thing I did was turn on the oven to get it preheated so we could have a turkey feast.  Yes, on a weeknight.  Sure, we could've frozen the bird and saved it for later, but we wanted to enjoy this one fresh.  We invited a few other wild meat aficionados, roasted some sweet potatoes along side the turkey, and served up what basically looked like Thanksgiving at 8 pm.  However, before our guests arrived, Kent roasted the small turkey heart, about the size of a lime, sliced it thin, and we ceremoniously gave thanks for the bird giving its life so we could continue ours.

The Leftovers
Perhaps better than The Feast itself - the blessed leftovers!  Nibbling on turkey straight from the fridge, making a quick turkey cranberry sandwich.  Bliss.

The Stock
After The Feast was over, we cleaned the kitchen and since it was late, I didn't want to start the stock pot quite yet, so I threw the carcass back in the now-empty brining cooler and put it outside in the snow.  On Tuesday, Kent broke up the now-frozen carcass into chunks for me so I could fit it all in my massive stock pot.  I added a couple quartered onions, a few carrots, a few sticks of celery, about six whole peppercorns and a bay leaf and then filled the pot up with water and let it simmer away all evening, adding some salt towards the end and straining everything out so I had big bowls of lovely golden broth.  I made some carrot soup out of the turkey stock that night, then poured the rest into three large bowls to sit overnight.  The next morning before work, I skimmed the fat off the top, pour it into Tupperware containers, and put the containers in the freezer.  All together, it came to about 6 quarts of homemade turkey stock.  That'll make some amazing soup and risotto later this winter.

The Morsels
After making the stock, I pulled out the boiled pieces of carcass and starting tearing off the last bits of meat.  Maybe this sounds a bit vulture-ish to you, but it's just how I roll.  I put all those last bits (mostly from the thighs and legs) into a bowl and put it in the fridge.  The next day, I sauteed some onions and mushrooms, added marinara sauce and the turkey bits along with a touch of cream and served it over egg noodles for an imprompteu leftover turkey bolognese. 

Alas, 'twas the last morsel of turkey for the fall/winter season. With a heart full of gratitude to that big 'ol bird for the meals it provided us, I finally threw the bare bones in the trash.