So, i have just strained a big pot of turkey broth. I actually brewed it shortly after t-day, but didn’t get around to straining it. It’s been sitting chilled-but-unstrained for days.
I have a hankering for turkey bean barley soup. My mom always put those giant white lima beans in her turkey soup, and i think i will, too.
It should also have carrots and celery and probably parsley. It needs salt. Probably some pepper. There isn’t really any meat to throw in, except the cooked-to-death shreds on the soup carcass, because my husband just cut up all the rest of the turkey for curry. But i could add other veggies. (No peppers! No eggplant!)
When I make stock (generally a slightly meaty one) I always add a bit of acid because the gelatin can make it feel dull and heavy. So I’d add some lemon juice, citric acid, or vinegar to cut the heaviness.
I also like to add a bit of dill shortly before serving, though if I was making matzoh ball soup (which I will probably this or next weekend with my stock bonanza) I change that to a LOT of dillweed.
Are you cooking the beans in the soup? Are they precooked, fresh or dried? That’ll inform a lot of your short term decisions.
Anything else I can think of at the moment would probably be too much for what you’ve already suggested - with turkey, beans and barley, plus the hearty veggies, I don’t think much more in ingredients are called for, just a bit of herbage and seasoning.
I don’t do a lot of cooking with dried beans. It seems (!) that a ratio of 3-4 cups of water per cup of beans is the norm (representativeexamples) with lima beans seeming to come in at the higher end of the range.
In a soup, I’d probably pre-cook, or at least pre-soak the beans, as I don’t want to use that many cups of my lovely broth. Or, do a 1/4-1/3 stock to 3/4-2/3 water ratio for more flavor.
Pepper Mill just boiled down the carcass yesterday and started making soup.
By all means add even shredded meat remains – it adds to the stock, both flavor and nutrition. She doesn’t add beans or barley – mainly carrots and celery and seasoning. She found by experience that adding noodles is an invitation for them to absorb all the broth, swell up, and turn the soup into a semisolid aspic. The same could be said of barley and other grains. Better not to add them to the stock that you’re storing, and only add them just before serving.
My significant other pouted when I threatened to cut into his turkey dinner leftovers too early so a grocery store rotisserie Turkey thigh provided the extra meat needed for my stock. I was only expecting to find Turkey breast so that was a nice surprise.
puzzlegal, it sounds like you’re on the right track with your soup. I find with soups I make from homemade bone broth, I like to keep it relatively simple, to let the quality of the broth shine through. If I’m making something like a tortilla soup, which will have various spices and tomatoes added, I might just go with a commercial stock, unless I already have thawed bone broth on hand.
One addition I might go with is some kind of added umami. Unfortunately natural sources of it, like mushrooms or tomato products, will complicate the soup more than you might want to. Soy sauce will affect the color and taste too easily. Fish sauce might work, but you’d have to be very careful to add just enough for depth of flavor without making the broth taste fishy.
I actually keep a big container of granulated MSG on hand for just such an occasion. MSG got a bad rap back in the day. It actually has 1/3 the sodium of an equal amount of salt. I add it very carefully to stock-- first a bit of MSG, taste, a bit of salt, taste, repeat until just right.
ETA: @CalMeacham , if you’re wondering why you got a notification as if I replied to your post without an actual reply, I was going to agree with you about not adding noodles directly to the soup-- add at serving time. But I decided it didn’t add much to the discussion and my post was long-winded enough already. I do that all the time, decide against replying without canceling the post with the attached reply
I have a pot of turkey soup sitting in the fridge. I was going to make it with barley, but our local store doesn’t carry it for some stupid reason, so it’s going to be white beans and it’s what’s for dinner tonight.
I make a bean and noodle soup from chicken broth. I use canned beans, but i boil the noodles in the broth. Server immediately for soup, and eat the leftovers as stew, as the noodles absorb all the broth over night. Oh my fucking God i love those rich brothy noodles. And yes, the quality of the broth shines through in those noodles.
But that’s not what I’m going for here. I’m trying to make my mom’s soup, which was broth-forward. I think I’ll cook in the beans and barley today, and add the celery and carrots after those are mostly done, though.
I’m not going to buy it today. But my father used to keep MSG on hand for seasoning Chinese food, because he had Chinese cookbooks that called for it. That was back when it had a bad rap, too.
This is a very good suggestion and quite important. You don’t want this tasting like lemonade, but a moderate squeeze of fresh lemon juice will significantly brighten up and improve turkey soup (just like it does with chicken noodle, chicken and rice, and a lot of other soups)
I have all of lemon juice, vinegar, and citric acid lying around. I bought the citric acid on a whim, used it once, and totally overdid it. Maybe i should try it again. I have between one and two gallons of stock. How much citric acid would you recommend?
Honestly, I’ve never used citric acid. In a wet application like soup, I would just use lemon juice. Add the juice of half a lemon at the end, taste, and add more as necessary.
I have a bottle of reconstituted lemon juice in the fridge, though.