Welcome to the November 15, 2015 edition of Sunday Scratchups, your weekly recipe from scratch around grocery sales and affordable ingredients: Thanksgiving turkey noodle soup edition. Every year after our Thanksgiving dinner is done I use the turkey carcass (or if you’d like to sound more polite, bones?) to make a yummy broth overnight in the Crock Pot, and then make a big batch of soup the next day.
Some years it’s slow cooker turkey soup with sausage, and sometimes we enjoy this crockpot turkey and wild rice soup, but this year I decided to scratch up a new garlicky comfort food soup recipe using egg noodles. (Mine were on clearance at ALDI, but No Yolks also often goes on sale around the holidays — so a great frugal recipe for your post-Thanksgiving meal as well.)
To make your broth, just carve your turkey and reserve the bones. Throw those turkey bones — leaving some nice scraps of meat on there — into your slow cooker. Add enough water to cover plus a little thyme and maybe some chopped onion, carrots, celery if desired. Simmer on low for 8-10 hours, or as I did here, just let it go overnight.
In the morning, remove your turkey bones and veggies. Refrigerate the resulting broth for a few hours, then skim off the fat from the top and use that delicious homemade broth to make whatever kind of turkey soup your heart desires.
This week my heart desired some garlicky turkey noodle soup — good for what ails ya! This is the soup you want to inhale when you are suffering from a winter cold, or when you just need a bowl of warm comfort food when you come in from the winter chill.
I also had the roasted garlic already handy in my freezer. The last time I got a big bag of peeled garlic cloves at Costco, I roasted up a bunch of them to freeze in ice cube trays, then popped out the cubes of roasted garlic and just froze them in a freezer bag. These have come in handy for everything from Homemade Enchilada Sauce to this turkey noodle soup, and I’ll definitely be doing that again the next time I pick up some whole cloves.
If you don’t happen to have roasted garlic handy, you can easily roast up some whole garlic cloves — just place them on a sheet of foil, drizzle with olive oil, fold into a packet, and bake them on a cookie sheet in your oven or toaster oven at 375 for about 45 minutes.
Roasted Garlic Turkey Noodle Soup
Ingredients
About 10 cups turkey broth (can substitute chicken)
2 cups water
2 cups cooked turkey, diced
About 10 cloves roasted garlic
Olive oil
1 medium onion, peeled and chopped
3 medium carrots, peeled and chopped
3 ribs celery, chopped
Black pepper, to taste
Sea salt, to taste
2 tsp thyme
1 tsp parsley
1 bay leaf
1/2 tsp cayenne
6 oz uncooked egg noodles
Juice from 1/2 a small lemon
5 oz fresh baby spinach
Directions
Add turkey broth, water, roasted garlic, and turkey to large soup pot and start it simmering. In a separate pan, saute veggies in olive oil over medium heat until soft, about 15 minutes (may take longer). Stir the cooked vegetables into to your broth and season with salt, pepper, thyme, parsley, bay leaf, and cayenne.
Simmer at least 30 minutes, then increase heat to medium. Remove bay leaf. Add lemon juice and egg noodles, then cook about 8 minutes more or until noodles are al dente. Stir in spinach until wilted, then serve immediately. Garnish with shredded Parmesan if desired.
Soup IS good food
I was just reading a memoir called My Fat Dad (pretty interesting!) where the author’s father was responsible for many memorable advertising taglines, including “soup is good food.” His mother used to say it. 🙂 It’s so true, especially when it’s homemade soup full of good stuff — and there’s nothing better than a big pot of soup that makes your whole kitchen smell wonderful and creates plenty of leftovers. (This one holds up pretty well, although the noodles do get mushier the next day.) You must enjoy garlic to love this one, though, although the roasting process really does mellow out and sweeten the flavor.
Easy print version
Roasted Garlic Turkey Noodle Soup
Ingredients
- About 10 cups turkey broth can substitute chicken
- 2 cups water
- 2 cups cooked turkey diced
- About 10 cloves roasted garlic
- Olive oil
- 1 medium onion peeled and chopped
- 3 medium carrots peeled and chopped
- 3 ribs celery chopped
- Black pepper to taste
- Sea salt to taste
- 2 tsp thyme
- 1 tsp parsley
- 1 bay leaf
- 1/2 tsp cayenne
- 6 oz uncooked egg noodles
- Juice from 1/2 a small lemon
- 5 oz fresh baby spinach
Instructions
- Add turkey broth, water, roasted garlic, and turkey to large soup pot and start it simmering.
- In a separate pan, saute veggies in olive oil over medium heat until soft, about 15 minutes (may take longer).
- Stir the cooked vegetables into to your broth and season with salt, pepper, thyme, parsley, bay leaf, and cayenne.
- Simmer at least 30 minutes, then increase heat to medium.
- Remove bay leaf.
- Add lemon juice and egg noodles, then cook about 8 minutes more or until noodles are al dente.
- Stir in spinach until wilted, then serve immediately.
- Garnish with shredded Parmesan if desired.
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