How to Use EVERY Part of the Holiday Turkey

The holidays are upon us!  If your family is anything like mine, you’ll end up with more turkey meat than you know what to do with.  In this post, I’m going to share a small step my husband and I take to prevent our Thanksgiving or Christmas turkey carcasses from going to waste.

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So, first of all, I need to apologize for my extended hiatus.  Between family duties, studies, an internship, and just life in general, I haven’t had the time to dedicate to blogging.  It’s not like any of my fellow busy-suburbanites-on-a-budget can relate… 😅

Anyways, even though Thanksgiving has come and gone, I’d still like to share a tip for reducing food waste: processing the turkey carcass.

It should be noted that here at the Light Blue Longhouse, we don’t go full homestead… as in, we don’t raise and butcher our own birds.  For now, we still buy our holiday turkeys from the grocery store.  That may be subject to change; I’d like to support small businesses and local farmers/ranchers by buying locally raised birds in the future.  But at present, we deal exclusively with pre-processed, store-bought turkeys.  So, this post will not deal with using the byproducts of butchering.  It will only deal with the turkey carcass after the holiday meal has ended.

This tip is simple, relatively easy, and cost saving:

Boil down the carcass for soup stock.

And really, that’s it.  Just as you can do with veggie scraps, you can boil down your holiday turkey carcasses to make delicious broth to nourish your family year-round.

First, you’ll need to strip the carcass of as much meat as you can.  At a later date, I may post some recipes for leftover turkey, but for now, I’d say freeze whatever you won’t eat within the next week.

Next, take the stripped bones and toss them into a stock pot.  You can find one like this on Amazon.  Fill up the pot until the bones are covered (you may want to push the bones down to the bottom).  If you want, you can add seasonings here.  Personally, though, I like to leave my broth kind of bland so that I can adapt it to other recipes and flavors.

Then, place the stock pot on low heat and allow the soup stock to simmer for 12 to 24 hours.  Stir occasionally if you feel like it—it really doesn’t matter as long as all the bones are underwater.  Additional meat may fall off the bones and float to the top; feel free to skim those off or leave them in.

Once the stock has reached the desired strength, remove from heat and allow to cool.  Remove the bones, strain the stock, and store in freezer-safe mason jars.  Once they’ve cooled completely, freeze the jars.  Whenever you’re ready to use your soup base, allow them to thaw in the fridge a day or so in advance.

And that’s it for the soup stock!  But that still leaves the bones.

So, it’s common knowledge that you shouldn’t give cooked bones to dogs, since they can splinter in the dog’s stomach and perforate their intestines (quite a nasty way to go…).  However, after boiling the turkey bones for so many hours, the bones become quite soft.  That being said, my husband and I still don’t give our pup the bones just as they are.  Instead, we pulse them through a food processor and add them as an extra treat to her dry food.

And there you have it!  The turkey carcass can be boiled down to soup stock, then processed to a pulp for a doggie treat.

Do you have another tip for using holiday turkey carcasses?  Have you tried out this trick?  What do you think?  Let me know in the comments!