Leftover Turkey Stock & Turkey Congee (Don't throw away your turkey carcass!) | The Woks of Life

Consider this your Thanksgiving PSA. Don't throw away your turkey carcass. Hey everyone, it's Sarah from the Walks of Life, and today we are going to make turkey congee. I have to say, my mom looks forward to this congee more than she looks forward to the actual turkey. After Thanksgiving dinner, we will take the turkey, we'll take all the meat off, or most of it, and then we put the turkey carcass in a pot, add water, add rice, and then the next morning we have this delicious bubbling pot of turkey congee to enjoy for breakfast. My dad's side of the family is Cantonese, and congee is a really big part of Cantonese cuisine. All you need is the turkey carcass, some water, any vegetables left from your turkey roasting pan, some white pepper, salt, some white rice, and some ginger, scallion, and cilantro. So there are two ways of making turkey congee. The first is adding all of the ingredients into the pot all at once. This is what my mom usually does. She'll put the turkey carcass, the water, and the rice into the pot, let it all cook for a really long time. The evening of Thanksgiving, and it kind of sits overnight, and by the next morning it is done and ready to eat. The other method, which is what we're gonna do today, you can just make that bone broth first, add the rice. We're gonna show you a really awesome trick to cook that rice in just 20 minutes to make your congee. You can also chop up some of your leftover turkey meat, dark meat preferred, and mix it into that congee, and then you stir in the julienne ginger, the chopped scallions, the chopped cilantro, a little bit of white pepper, and it is like so, so good. Don't throw away your turkey carcass. Don't throw it away. It has so much flavor in it. You can make turkey noodle soup if you wanted. You can just make turkey stock that you put into the freezer and use it to make other soups. You could make turkey matzo ball soup. This turkey carcass is valuable. Just put it in a pot, add some water to cover, simmer it for four to six hours, and you will have the most delicious soup. This is also cold and flu season, people, so you wanna be ready with that soup stock in the freezer to make soups for when you feel sniffly. Bo is hovering for turkey. Give me a little piece. Barley gets pushy around turkey. So this is our turkey carcass. We already put it in the pot. So when we serve our turkey at Thanksgiving, we generally trim the meat off most of the bones, except, I would say, the legs and the wings. So for this turkey, I'm gonna add 12 cups of water. I wanna make sure that there's enough water to cover it completely. This was a 14 1 1⁄2 pound turkey. If you cooked a larger turkey, you could add a bit more water, maybe 14 cups. Just remember that the stock is gonna cook down and reduce a little bit. It's not gonna hold its shape as it cooks, so it will eventually all be submerged. The less water you add, the more flavorful the congee will be. If you're one of those people that walks away from a pot and then you're like, oh no, it's burning, then add a little extra, because that will just buy you time. So let's say you're all turkey-ed out, and you're like, I don't really wanna eat more turkey things after Thanksgiving, and you wanna leave your turkey troubles in the trash. Well, rather than throwing that carcass in the trash, you can put it into a Ziploc bag, put it in the freezer, and then you can do this process at a later date when maybe your turkey trauma is not so fresh. So if you were making the congee the way my mom normally makes it, you would add the vegetables at this point. If you're gonna make it like we are making it, where you make a clean stock and then strain it and then add the vegetables and the rice, then I'm going to, you know what I'm gonna do? Maybe I'll add a third, maybe. I mean, that flavor will get into it eventually, right? So I'm just gonna add a little of it now. So this is going to get covered. We bring it to a boil and then turn it down to a simmer, and we're gonna simmer it for about four hours. You wanna extract as much flavor as you can from the turkey carcass and cook it long enough, and if you're at too rapid of a boil, you're gonna start cooking off that liquid more quickly, which you don't wanna do. So we're moving on to the rice. So we are using jasmine rice. We prefer Thai jasmine rice. If you've ever made congee without this method, you know that it can take an hour or more, and this congee, by contrast, cooks in just 20 minutes. That is one episode of a sitcom, and the secret to that is washing and then freezing the rice. My mom always has frozen rice in the freezer to make porridge and to make congee whenever she wants and to have it on the table really fast. So you're basically rinsing the rice, you're putting it into a freezer-safe bag, and then you freeze it for at least eight hours. So the reason this works is that the moisture in the rice actually breaks open the rice grains, and the starch in the rice releases much quicker in the congee, dramatically reducing the amount of time that it takes to cook it and get that really thick congee consistency. Here's a bag of my mom's multigrain rice mix, which is actually not just rice. There's millet, there's beans in here, mung bean, red bean, quinoa, there's barley, and there's red and black rice. And she washes it and freezes this, and she makes this really healthy porridge. This would take hours to cook if you were doing it without this freezing method. But with the freezing method, it doesn't cook in quite 20 minutes, but it definitely cooks a lot faster. And if you wanted to make this turkey congee with this multigrain mix, we will link our multigrain congee recipe in the description box below. So our turkey congee recipe calls for one cup of rice. I'm gonna rinse it. Now you drain it. And we are going to put this in the freezer bag. This is one of those tasks that demands patience. We have to work to get every grain of rice and not waste any. Seal the bag. I'll flatten it out a bit. And I'm gonna put this in the freezer for at least eight hours. This would be something to do on the night before you plan to enjoy your congee if you want it the next morning after Thanksgiving. Just do this right before bed. It takes two seconds. So we're at the stove, and our stock has come to a boil. And now I'm gonna turn the heat down to low, cover it, and we'll simmer it for four hours. So it's the next day, and I have this pot of stock here. It was refrigerated, so it's actually congealed right now, but still a liquid. And at this point, there is fat on the top of this. You can absolutely skim this off, but it's really just gonna taste better if I leave it, so I'm just gonna leave it. And here I have our bag of frozen rice. It was frozen overnight. So you can actually keep this rice frozen in the refrigerator for up to about three months at best quality. If you keep it in there longer than that, it does start to gather some unusual flavors from the freezer, but you can still use it. So now I'm just gonna heat this up long enough to make it go through the strainer easily. Once it has heated, I will strain it and then put it in a clean pot. So now that I strained the stock, I still have meat and bones in here. You may be wondering, can I use that? Yes, you can. You can actually take the meat that's sort of still clinging to the bones here, and you can shred it and add it to your congee, but to be honest, it's pretty dry, and there's not a lot of flavor left in it. The flavor from the meat and the bones has gone into your stock. What we usually do with this leftover meat, so it doesn't go to waste, we take it off the bones and then we just sort of put it into a bowl for Barley, our dog. For us human diners, I would say if you have leftover turkey from your Thanksgiving dinner before you put the carcass in here, I would shred that meat and add it as opposed to using this meat that was used for the stock. So we're gonna take this pot to the stove and bring it to a boil and then add the rice. So as you can see, we don't have a ton of meat left over from our turkey. We actually ate most of it and we had some sandwiches already, but I do have a decent amount. So I have a whole turkey leg here. I have a turkey wing and I have a little piece of breast. I'm just going to take the breast piece. I'm gonna slice it and then I'm gonna kind of break it up with my fingers a little bit. I think when it's sort of shredded, it has a better texture in the congee. And I'm adding the skin. You don't have to, but. I wouldn't. I mean, you know, some people don't like it. And this is the white meat. Caitlin would disagree with me, but the dark meat is really where you're gonna get most flavor. When I said earlier, the night that you process the turkey carcass, like you could have just ripped this wing tip off and put it in the stock pot. That would have been a good move. The more bones that you add to that stock pot, the more flavorful it's gonna be. So I've shredded the meat off the turkey wings and I'm just sort of running my knife through it to make the pieces smaller so that they're more distributed through the congee. And you know, if you had made the congee from the beginning, this is what I like about doing it with this method, with making the congee in a strained stock, is that if I had just made the congee with the carcass, added the rice and then boiled it, like it's still gonna have a lot of flavor, but the meat itself is a little dry and doesn't have a ton of flavor anymore because like I said, that flavor has gone into the congee. Now you kind of have the best of both worlds. You have a yummy stock as a base for your congee and then you also have meat that's still flavorful and juicy. So I'm gonna add this turkey to the pot in the last five minutes of cooking. The stock is now boiling and I'm going to add the rice. And obviously the rice cooled down the pot. We're gonna bring it back up to a boil. So you wanna stir in the rice initially, but after that, you don't wanna stir too often because that actually makes the starch release quicker and it can cause your congee to stick to the bottom of the pot. That said, you know, as the congee does start to thicken, you can stir it to sort of get it to that like smooth and creamy consistency. Okay, so now I'm going to add the rest of the vegetables, which is gonna give the congee a lot of flavor and also nutrition. Eating a big bowl of rice, white rice porridge, isn't always the healthiest thing, but when you can add vegetables and protein, it becomes a little bit more nutritious. It's very good. Now that I've added the rice and the vegetables, I'm gonna bring this back to a boil. I'm gonna cover it and simmer it for about 20 minutes. So I just thinly sliced the ginger and now I'm going to fan it out like this so that it's more stable. It's not gonna slide around on me. And run my knife through. And then we have nice Chilean pieces. And then some cilantro. Fresh from the garden, washed. I'm just gonna take the leaves off. Actually not, I'm not. We're just gonna- No, we want stem. We want stem. We are pro stem. Yes, yes, we want stem. Don't throw away your cilantro stems. I'm taking the really thick stems off, but I'm leaving the thinner, tender stems, which really have great flavor and add texture. And if you're one of those people who thinks cilantro tastes like soap, I'm sorry. I know that this is a genetic thing. You don't have to add it. But if you do like cilantro, it's a traditional topping for congee. So this is simmered for 20 minutes. Still, this is like a consistency that I think my mom would like, but I think most people would prefer a thicker congee. So if you need to thicken it, you can now stir. Stirring is going to help it release starch. It's gonna help it cook down faster and get that really thick texture. And I'm also cooking it and simmering it uncovered at this point, because that's gonna sort of help it thicken as well. So I'm going to add the turkey now, and we're gonna let that heat through. And then we are going to season it with some salt and white pepper. We just say to taste, and then I'm just gonna taste and see. It's amazing how when I smell the combination of white pepper and ginger in there, that it just smells so congee-y. It's congee. Mm, good. The essence of turkey with congee. If people have different salt needs, you know, you can always add more salt at the table. So I'm just gonna cook this for a couple more minutes to let the turkey warm through, and then we can garnish it and serve it. So this is the consistency of the congee that we have right now. If you wanted it thicker, you could obviously cook it longer, but this is just thick enough to be nice and creamy and have that congee-comforting, coat-your-belly kind of experience. Okay, let's ladle up our tasty, tasty congee. It looks perfect. Okay, let's garnish. Our aunt always says, it's not congee without the ginger and the cilantro. And a little scallion. Okay, it's time to taste the congee. Very meaty in here. Mm-hmm, and doing it this way, boiling the bones to make the stock, and then you add the fresh turkey meat, the turkey is actually more flavor. Tastes like you put so much MSG in it. I put none. No MSG. That is just pure turkey umami. So much umami. And for most people, they just throw the carcass away. It's just a terrible waste. For as long as I know, Phil, every year, this thing is, this porridge is always the day after Thanksgiving. Yeah, no Black Friday shopping, just congee. Isn't this method so much better where you just like cook the stock, and then it's clean? You don't have to pick bones. But not only that, it's just so much more flavorful. Right, that's what I say. Every recipe has room for improvement. This is like a little bit more effort than just pouring everything into the pot the night before. I'll grant you that. But the end product is just smooth, it's yummy, there's no bones to pick through, and the flavor is superior. But you know, if you wanted to do it the other way, like that's the way that we grew up doing it too. I think we've learned a thing or two in the last 10 plus years of the walks of life, and now I think we have a new and improved version. So this is kind of a once a year treat, maybe twice a year if you're doing turkey for another holiday. But it definitely is a tradition in our family, and we hope it becomes a tradition in your family. And if you like this video, please like it and subscribe to our YouTube channel, and check out more recipes on thewalksoflife.com. So you don't wanna cook it too thick at this stage, because as it sits, it is gonna thicken further. It's kind of like oatmeal that way. So in the last like 15 minutes, the time it took us to film the tasting, it has thickened further. And you can see how thick it is now, close to what you might see at like a dim sum or a congee restaurant. It is definitely much thicker. And I'm gonna have another bowl. The day after Thanksgiving, this pot of congee goes quick. Yeah, when you got 15 hungry Cantonese folk in this house, it's like, oh, a full pot of congee, and then wait, oh my gosh, it's gone. You basically have everything you need to make a bowl of turkey congee with your turkey carcass, just some water, and the vegetables that are left over from... Okay. See you in 20 minutes. Just $20. And if you throw away your turkey's carcass, then you're a doofus. That can be your line off camera, I'm not saying that.