Thanksgiving Turkey Leftovers – Asian Style

“halp halp, I have 50 lbs of turkey leftovers from thanksgiving, what do I do with it so I’m not bored of eating turkey sandwiches for the next millennium?”  Well good thing you read my blag.

First I hope you saved your turkey bones and made a turkey stock. If you didn’t, tsk tsk. It’s the best part of cooking a whole turkey and it takes about 2 seconds to make, and your house smells wonderful for the whole day.

Turkey Stock

Ingredients:

• Your leftover turkey bones
• 1 or 2 onions, quartered
• 1 or 2 stalks of celery, roughly chopped
• 1 or 2 carrots, roughly chopped
• 1 or 2 leeks, washed clean and roughly chopped
• Any leftover aromatics such as rosemary, thyme, sage, whatever works. Throw it in!
• Enough water to submerge everything

If you don’t have any of the above ingredients, no biggie, stock isn’t a precise thing.

Directions:

1. Put all your ingredients in a pot, bring to a boil. Then down to a simmer and cover, leave it on the stove for 4 hours or so.
2. If the water level is too low, add a little more water.  Taste at the end, if the flavor is too strong, add more water.  If it’s too weak, let it boil off some more.
3. Strain the stock. Store in a large Tupperware container.  I usually end up with about 6-8 cups from 1 turkey.

Now that’s over with, you can use the turkey stock for many things.  I’ve used it to cook my ramen, recipe to follow.  I also used it in a turkey fried rice which I will post later this week.  I make ramen, A LOT.  Probably too much but it’s one of my comfort foods and it’s super easy to make.  Now this isn’t the dried noodles with some flavor packets labeled “oriental flavor” and sold for 30 cents.  This is all fresh ingredients, fresh vegetables are very important when making good ramen.

Evie’s Turkey Ramen with Baby Napa Cabbage and Mushrooms

Ingredients (this yields 1 serving):

• 2 cups Turkey Stock
• 1/2 cup Leftover turkey meat
• 2 roughly chopped Baby Bok Choy*
• 3 mushrooms, sliced
• fried onions**
• Sesame oil
• Salt***
• 1 bunch of Asian Noodles (Angel hair pasta is an acceptable substitute but requires longer cooking time)

* You don’t need to use bok choy here if you don’t have any on hand.  Any vegetables that you like will do.  Find what’s in your fridge, chop it up and stick it in.  (heh heh heh)
**You can get fried onions from the asian stores.  You can probably use the american kind too, but I find the asian ones have better flavor and less batter.
***If you brined your turkey like I told you to, you might not have to salt the turkey, your stock should be salty enough from the bird

Directions:

1. Heat up the turkey stock in a medium pot.  Bring to a boil.
2. Add the vegetables and leftover turkey, boil for 3 minutes.
3. Add the asian noodles, boil for another 2 minutes.  Add salt to taste.
4. Put everything in a bowl.  Sprinkle with fried onions and drizzle with seasame oil.

EASY HUH.   I told you so.