Ingredients in Leftover Thanksgiving Turkey Soup Recipe

Series Summary

Thanksgiving is a time of year we usually set aside for people to celebrate the good things in life. And what better way to give thanks than with a feast so profligate that its leftovers last for a week or more! Whether it’s the pleasure of each other’s company—or just the prospect of a home-cooked meal—that gathers children, grandchildren, cousins, aunts, and uncles from the four winds, is a matter of opinion. But whatever personal feelings we have about the annual celebration, Thanksgiving dinner is, for many of us, a necessary part of being a family member.

But now the feast is finished, and in the days following, you’ve observed the powerful sedative effects of food, as bitter feuds and sibling rivalries eventually lose momentum, pacified by a glut of leftover turkey sandwiches and a monotheistic devotion to cable television…and you want to keep it that way for the rest of the Thanksgiving holiday.

In this free Thanksgiving leftovers series, learn how to make a turkey soup recipe—and keep the tryptophan flowing. Our expert will show you how to cut and sweat vegetables, split the turkey carcass and use it for flavoring, add seasonings and a little orzo pasta, and how to serve.

Trust me, if you want to get the most out of your turkey, you’ve got to try this recipe!

Video Transcript

"My name is Brandon Sarkis on behalf of Expert Village. Today I'm going to show you how to make turkey soup out of left over turkeys after the holidays are done. All right, let's see, things we're going to need for holiday leftover turkey extravaganza. We're going to need one turkey carcass. This is what's left over after you actually cook your turkey. You see I intentionally didn't clean this one that well because I knew I was going to be making soup out of it. So what you want to do is maybe you did not clean it so well, or you didn't clean it really well. Basically this is going to be cooked in and then taken out. So this isn't going to stay in the soup. So, but I left some meat on there because I figured I'd be making some soup out of it. You can safely, if you wrap it up and keep it nice and cool, you can hold on to it for about two or three days before it starts getting a little funky, as long as you let it cool down right, which is cool it down as quickly as possible. Don't let it sit at room temperature very long. I've also got us one large carrot, got one large, sweet, yellow onion, a couple of stalks of celery here. Let's see I've got one tablespoon of just whole black peppercorns, I've also got about one and a half tablespoons of salt. I'm not going to use all of this necessarily, I'm just going to use this because I'm not sure how much of this it's going to take. So we'll just going kind of do it to taste. I've got about two cups of this left over turkey. When I actually cut the turkey, this is all the small little pieces that you know, kind of fall off when you're cutting it that don't make whole pieces. You know, like all the little shredded pieces like this. I actually, when I was cutting the turkey this is the stuff that was left on the cutting board after all the good pieces get put out. So I went ahead and put this in a cup and refrigerated it, so it's fine. So like I said, keep it, don't let the air get to it too long so it dries out. Not that it's going to make a tremendous difference being in a soup, but still you want to keep your product as fresh as you can. Also, I've got about a half a cup of just some orzo pasta here. You can also use rice, or if you had some egg noodles, or anything like that. I'm just trying to use stuff that I had laying around after the holidays. So this is all stuff that was left laying around. So none of this stuff I intentionally went out and bought just for this turkey recipe. Everything I've got here is stuff that was already here. That was left overs and so I'm going to show you how to maximize your left overs. So let's move on to the things you're going to need for today. "