To prepare Thanksgiving dinner I purchased some items that now, seem to be not so useful.
A gigantic stock pot.
About 2.5 gallons, it was not only big enough to make the bine solution in but also to hold the entire turkey. Oh yeah, umm, I live alone. So soup for twenty is kind of out.
Whole All Spice Berries and Candied Ginger.
What will make with this stuff? This frickin ginger was like 9 bucks. I hope it keeps becasue at one turkey a year, this bottle should last for a good long time.
I also got a stick blender but I know I’ll be using that.
Any ideas on what I can do with my stuff or do you have stuff that now seems a bit on the pointless side?
I use allspice in all kinds of stuff. It’s good in Chinese food, Indian food, and Jamaican food, not to mention deserts. You can throw in allspice for any dish where cinnamon & cloves would be good. It’s excellent in chai.
Candied ginger lasts forever. You can even nibble on it straight as a treat if you really like ginger. Ginger’s also a good home remedy for nausea.
I use my stock pot to make stock regularly, too. I save up bits of vegetables in a big Ziploc in the freezer: Onion skins and ends, garlic skins and those little tiny garlic cloves that aren’t worth the trouble to skin, plus the leftover bulb structure when you’ve taken all the cloves off, the ends of celery stalks and carrots sticks, carrot peelings, carrot greens, tough mushroom stems, veggies that are past their prime (but not yet spoiled) . . . Broccoli and greens (spinach, kale, etc) and peppers are about the only vegetables I don’t put in there. When the bag is full, we get a roasted chicken from the deli. We eat roast chicken one night. The next day I take the rest of meat off the carcass, not being too terribly picky about getting every last scrap, then make stock out of the carcass and my saved veggies. The day after that, I make chicken soup, and we have about four cups of stock for the freezer, for future soup. (Soooo much better than storebought!)
You don’t need to feed twenty. Freeze it in small portions. Use it to make soup when you want, or pan sauces. Some people’s version of chicken-noodle soup is simply egg noodles cooked in chicken stock. Tasty.
Too bad you probably threw out the turkey carcass. I made stock on saturday from the carcass, the legs, and an old chicken carcass I’ve been saving.
Yesterday, I made potato-leek soup (in about an hour) from the stock that’ll make you slap yo’ pap. The texture is so soft and silky you wanna make a shirt out of it. A soup shirt.
This weekend, I’m planning something like a coconut-curry chicken soup, and some kind of chili.
Every time you buy any kind of poultry that has a bone associated with it, start storing it in a bag and freezing it. Consult the “Joy of Cooking” on stock-making when you get about 2-3 pounds of dead bird bones.
Or, if you’re SURE you’re not gonna make stock, I bought a stock pot at a garage sale for a countertop compost pot. Lined with a plastic bag and with the lid on, it’s a great fly-proof place to dump your juicier kitchen garbage.
Or you could soak your aching feet in it.
Or you could throw up into it.
Or you could invert it and let loose with a wooden spoon as march around the living room singing marching songs out of tune. THis is much more effective if you have a colander on your head.
I have and use ground all spice, it’s just the whole berries that I’ve never used befor.
I may look into cooking a bunch of soup and freezing protions. At least I got the pot on sale. I will use it again next year as the brined turkey turned out great.
Zebra, you know that you can grind the all spice berries and then use it just like the ground all spice? In fact, I don’t buy ground spices anymore. I just go to my neighborhood middle eastern market and buy whole spices and grind them in a spare coffee grinder. The flavor is so much more pronounced.
FFR, for your next party that you are hosting, you can pick up real cheap kitchen pots and various sundry at the Salvation Army.
Stockpots can also be used to hold your paper plates and plastic cutlery somewhere.
For the stockpot:
The compost idea was a good one.
Fill with ice and a twelve-pack of beer or a bottle of champagne when needed.
Use as a dog food/cat food container.
Fill with salt to use on frozen steps and sidewalks.
Save to use for future turkeys, you can also use it to boil crabs or lobsters.
Use as a garbage can in your bathroom or bedroom.
Put it next to the fireplace and put kindling in it.
Put it near the front door for umbrellas.
Use it as a planter.
Toss the allspice if you’re not going to use it. It won’t taste as good for next year’s turkey.
Sugared ginger is good for nibbling on, I also use it in tea. Or mince it really fine and throw it into teriyake sauce.
I live alone in a modern flat with a pathetically small kitchen and storage space is at a premium. My only really big pot is a combined stock/pasta/steamer that would take up one shelf in a cupboard. I keep it on the cooktop and store all my root vegetables in a bag inside the pot. They keep better in the dark and are readily at hand for cooking time.
Oh yeah, my spare coffee grinder. Yeah, right. Since my location tag is, in fact, a jest, and a rather good one at that, perhaps I should inform the audience that I live in Brooklyn. Using it for storage is a good idea. Not as good as boiling crabs, man those things itch, but I like the champange bucket and the crabs.