Homemade Turkey Noodle Soup

This is the best part of having a turkey to eat, the homemade Turkey Noodle soup with homemade noodles as left overs. Oh yeah!  My Hubby, once cooked a turkey, just so that he could make Turkey Noodle soup.  So when Thanksgiving was over, I asked my Mom for the carcass.  She said, yes, otherwise it would have been thrown into the trash. 

Here is the supply list for both parts of the soup.  Take note that isn’t so much labor intensive, as it is time consuming.

Broth:
1 picked-to-the bone turkey carcass
Water
Salt
Seasonings (your choice)

Noodles:
Flour
Eggs

Tools:
Slow cooker
Strainer
Pizza cutter
Food processer
Rolling pin

First we start with the broth.  Take the turkey carcass, and put it in the slow cooker, cover with water.  Turn the cooker on high and let it cook for 24 hours.  This will create a wonderful broth for the soup.

Once the 24 hours are up, strain the bones, etc. from the broth.  Put both in the fridge so that they can cool down to handling temperature.  This will take a few hours.  Once the bones are cool enough to handle, with impeccably clean hands, separate the large pieces of meat from the bones, sinew, skin, etc.

Now you may throw the carcass away!  What you have left is the broth and the meat!

Here is the broth, cooled down so that all the fat has floated to the top and turned solid.  Now if you or any of your loved ones, don’t have heart problems, etc. leave the fat there, it adds flavor.  

At our house we have to watch the fat, so we scrape the fat off the top of the broth and throw it away.

Put the broth and the meat back in the slow cooker, to bring it to a boil.  Add onion, garlic, salt, celery, grated carrots, etc. to the broth.  Do this according to your taste.  My Hubby is allergic to onions, garlic and a few other choice things, so we leave them out.

At some point while you are making the broth, make the noodles.  I used the recipe found here,  http://www.cooks.com/rec/view/0,1735,153179-226206,00.html. I put the ingredients in the food processer, pulsed until it formed dough.

I let the dough rest for 20 minutes and then rolled it out as thin as I can get it.  I have a hand pastry cutter that I used to cut the noodles.  You can use your pizza cutter to cut the noodles.  This makes it a lot easier.

I put the noodles up on my cooling racks so that they can dry out.  If your broth is boiling and ready for the noodles, you can add them now.  I like mine to dry out a little.

Here they are all dried out.

If you don’t have time or energy to make the noodles you can buy home style noodles dried in the bag, or you can find some in the freezer section of your local grocers.

I add the noodles about 1 hour before serving.  I like my noodles al dante not over done.   Here is the end result.  Homemade Turkey Noodle Soup!    For you information, you can do this same process starting with the picked-to-the bone carcass of a roasted Chicken.  Great Soup!