Christmas - Boiling the Turkey Bones and Making Noodles

December 13, 2009

Am I the only person left in the world who boils the turkey bones?

My mother did it.

I do it.

I know that Rebecca is not going to do it. She doesn’t cook turkey and so isn't going to have the bones to deal with.

I know Bonnie isn’t going to do it … to a turkey that someone else cooks.

But someone might be interested in traditions of the past. I came across the perfect recipe and the perfect method, described below.

Method:

When someone else is cutting the meat off of the turkey, have them put the bones, the whole carcass, even the giblets that were too frozen to take out of the turkey 5 hours previously -- have them put all of that into a large pot as they take the meat off of the bones. Then fill the pot with water and let it simmer 3 to 6 hours … while the meal is eaten, the clean up done, and then the last joy, a turkey bun with cranberry sauce is consumed when there is space in your stomach to do so again. Then strain the broth and throw out everything else.

The Recipe:

Toss a peeled and quartered onion, a couple of carrots and 12 to 20 peppercorns in with the bones that are going to be boiled, as well as filling the pot to the top with water. When the broth is separated, throw out everything else, let the broth cool outside in the winter weather, cool, and skim the fat off of the top before you freeze the 4 litre pail of broth you now have to use when making soup later in the month.

Alternately, you can let the solid part of what was boiled, cool, and pick off the meat that has come away from the bones. My mother did that. I do that. But I toss out the onion and carrots which are pretty well boiled beyond recognition.

Egg Noodles

Someone else besides me has to remember that Wyora used to make egg noodles to go into the broth that was made from the boiled turkey. I hated that meal when I was a kid. When I was married, I asked her to show me how, since by then I noticed that many other people used to think that was a delicacy.

Here is how she created home made egg noodles. She took 3 eggs and beat them with a whisk. Then put in enough flour to make a soft dough. Rolled out the dough by taking a few pieces of it at a time and making it super thin, then cutting it into strips about 3 inches wide and six inches long. The strips were put on top of each other, flour dusted between each layer, and then cut very finely into thin noodles. She stressed to me – cut them thin. And then she made me practise -- very thin.

She brushed the noodles apart, easy because of the flour between each layer. and let them dry on the counter.

When the thickened broth with lots of turkey in it came to a boil, she dropped the noodles in, leaving all of that extra flour on the counter. Just the noodles into the pot -- for a fine meal from the past.

I will give a demonstration to anyone who asks, if you want to know more – either about the old custom of boiling the bones or making the noodles.

And now, continuing on the theme of making food at Christmas time, Moti, the roomer from Nepal, made a carrot cake. At midnight. The time the roomers like to cook the best. An 8 x 12 inch pan of carrot cake with cream cheese icing as thick as Wyona adds to hers.

Since he came to our house, unschooled in the ways of cooking, I couldn’t figure out why he could go straight from having no kitchen skills to making carrot cake in 3 months. I asked him what happened. The other guys were equally suspect and kept asking him, "Are you sure Arta didn't help you with this?"

He explained that at work, they all brought ingredients for someone else to make the cake and he was in charge of getting the carrots, the cream cheese and the cassonade sugar for the cake. He bought too many carrots, too much cream cheese and too much cassonade sugar, so he came home and made another cake. Afterall, though he is not a cook, he doesn’t like waste and he is a scientist, so how hard can putting the right ingredients together be.

“Cassonade?” I said, while eating his cake for dessert. “I know golden sugar, demara sugar, brown sugar, but not cassonade.” He and I interrupted our dinners to go and look at the package of sugar he had. Ah … our country is sweet. Everything labeled both in English and French.

Cassonade -- French for brown sugar.


After our meal, David Lorne slipped back to the university to work at a study group. "Why, oh why would a person go out at -35 degrees," I asked him.

“Easier to get answer to my questions in a study group than to work the answers out myself,” he said, and toque in hand, out the door into the bitter cold he disappeared.