Thanksgiving Broth: Revisit the Holidays and Reduce Waste One Sip at a Time
Three things before we begin:
1) I have no affiliation with any organizations referenced in this article (no money, no endorsements, nothing).
2) I apologize for the late timing of this article. It’s a bit too late for most Thanksgiving practitioners to apply, but the message is still meaningful regardless, hence why it’s here. Perhaps I’ll have better luck next year!
3) Content warnings include: Crude, Thanksgiving-themed humor. References to meat. A pinch of profanity.
I’ll warn you, my description of this broth will sound unrealistic, and I am prone to allowing my imagination to take off from time to time, but what I have to say is how I would most accurately describe my firsthand experience with it.
I should also mention that my debut into the culinary world (and not the professional one by any means) is a fairly new endeavor. I’ve always known that good food tastes, well, *good*. But I haven’t always been able to cook. I recently graduated college and prior to that transition into adulthood and the “real world”, the best I could do was fry a couple eggs, bake cake and boil pasta from a box, and occasionally brown some beef.
It’s not to say I haven’t ever ingested anything delicious and mouthwatering, because I certainly have. For instance, I had the privilege of drinking a lovely carrot cake mead from Odd Elixir Meadworks in DeLand, Florida, during my cross-country road trip last year. In that mead I could taste the carrots, AND the cream cheese frosting. Delish. 10/10, would absolutely recommend. But this broth right here took it to another level and was the first food-oriented substance I’d ever consumed that I felt transported me to another place entirely. And here’s where the tale begins.
Sam, my partner, is a savant when it comes to free-styling in the kitchen. Give him your crusty undesirables and he’ll transform them into a meal that will exceed Michelin standards. At least, that’s how I feel about his cooking. I was an extremely picky eater before I met Sam over a year and a half ago, and now I eat almost everything — such is the power of this man’s culinary ability, but that’s a story for another time.
Last year, Sam was kind enough to prepare Thanksgiving dinner for a group of six people, which was no small feat. I humbly presented my appetizing but meager contribution of a plate of deviled eggs. Sam single-handedly tackled the turkey (though not literally), scraped together stuffing from scratch, and whipped up a wonderful sweet potato dessert topped with melty, browned marshmallows. For your viewing pleasure I’ve included pictures of it all below. Thank you again, Sam, for your hard work.
After the feasting had finished and we were down to what little nibblets and salvageable leftovers remained, we gathered the kitchen scraps to assemble a broth, as we’d done many times before. The broth wasn’t planned (it never is), and we couldn’t have anticipated how delectable it would be. We were simply trying to cut down on waste and in the process stumbled upon something truly spectacular.
As I said before, this was the first time I’d ever transported elsewhere through my taste buds, like a culinary out-of-body experience. As I began my first tentative slurp, I envisioned the Thanksgiving dinner table again and saw the fixin’s laid out before me. My plate filled with food once more, and I engorged myself with every single bite of each entree: the deliciously moist turkey, the rich sweet potatoes, the savory stuffing. All the courses were present. An hour or so later those same courses vanished from sight, submerged in the depths of my no longer rumbling tummy, and I concluded the meal, ready to take a fat and happy nap.
Above: A visual representation of the Thanksgiving broth, because a picture is worth a thousand words, and because I failed to capture an image of the real broth. Sigh.
I opened my eyes and realized that I’d only taken a sip of this broth. Instead of my life flashing before my eyes, I’d relived a full Thanksgiving feast in a matter of seconds, as if I’d been subjected to a new creation from Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory. Not only that, I noticed that I wasn’t stuffed to the brim with food or insanely bloated, but still thoroughly satisfied as if I had demolished that entire ensemble of Thanksgiving delights. This is the experience that this broth brings to the table.
To summarize, the broth tastes like a very condensed and satisfying Thanksgiving dinner, and simultaneously like your grandmother bringing your favorite meal to you when you’re sick in bed… minus the illness and added emphasis on feelings of love and comfort.
The effect is instant, and yet the time stretches to make it feel as though you’d been sitting down and slowly grazing upon that shit for hours. Perhaps it’s the tryptophan in the turkey, or perhaps it’s holiday magic, or a combination of both.
Neither of us had ever tasted a liquid whose flavor held such depth. That wasn’t saying much for me, because again, cooking just wasn’t a massive part of my life growing up. But Sam, who was more experienced and had been around the culinary block, also acknowledged that this broth was something special.
Beyond the potential for cuisine-induced astral projection, this recipe is ridiculously easy to put together — Again, this is coming from someone whose cooking experience consisted of only box cakes and mindlessly slapping together pasta and sauce for several years. This recipe can be vegetarian and vegan-friendly because the ingredients are adaptable based on what you’re serving for your Thanksgiving dinner.
I’ll walk you through the recipe, which is so incredibly simple and versatile, the dead turkey could almost do it. It’s probably more a concept walk-through than an actual recipe, because I’m not including precise measurements and figures.
We’ll then go over a couple things you can do with that broth once you’ve created it.
And then finally, some of my concluding thoughts.
Side note: I know that Thanksgiving as a holiday isn’t very PC nowadays and I wasn’t exactly sure how to rephrase or reframe it in this article. This recipe was noted after last year’s Thanksgiving celebration in 2021. It’s not the holiday that matters here so much as the essence of gratitude and sharing spirit. So, if you celebrate something else or have another name in mind, please share in the comments and substitute whatever makes you feel good as you read this article.
The Recipe and Instructions
Alright, here it is. The meat and bones of this article. Haha.
I haven’t made enough broths to know if all broths are made equal, if adding the same proportions of ingredients and just simmering will produce a similar-tasting result each time. However, I don’t mind the variety and have actually grown to love and treasure the uniqueness of it, much like a nostalgic Polaroid.
So I can’t promise you that if you follow what I write here 100% that it will perfectly recreate the heartwarming essence that we captured in our broth, but I share it with you anyway because it was amazing enough that it’s worth a shot to replicate it. In the same way that everyone deserves a home and to be loved, everyone who can and wants to experience this broth absolutely should.
The beauty of this recipe is that the ingredients won’t be exactly the same each time you create it, because this broth is comprised of leftover meat and veggie scraps. Your turkey will differ from mine, if you have a turkey at all. Your Thanksgiving entrees may be vastly different, too. However, I’ll list the items that we used for reference and from there you can decide what to put in yours.
Our Thanksgiving scraps that year were:
- Turkey bones and bits of meat — we basically added what remained of the carcass (you could also add other bits, like the neck)
- Celery
- Carrots
- Onions (green and other colors)
- Garlic
- Thyme
- Rosemary
- Sage
- Whole black peppercorns
- Salt
- Paprika
- Cayenne pepper or red chili flakes
This is all that we added. If you don’t fancy one or more of these items or you have a special spice you want to throw into the pot, by all means, don’t let me stop you. Like I said before, the beauty of this is that the broth is customizable and adaptable depending on what your Thanksgiving leftovers are. And this can easily be done with a vegan or vegetarian dinner. Just remove the meat and you still have a savory and scrumptious broth.
The instructions are as follows:
- Gather your scraps.
- Throw them into a pot and cover with water.
- Simmer for what seems like forever.
- Occasionally replace water.
- Repeat steps 3 and 4 for as long as you wanna. (At least an hour, says the Internet.)
- Strain the solids out.
- Keep the delicious liquid and you’re done!
- (Optional, but highly recommended) Compost the remaining solids, if possible.
Note: If you do add fresh rosemary, I’d remove it earlier on because it can add a bitter taste if overcooked. I’d recommend taking it out once the leaves have lost their color or you know that their spice has been imparted into the water, after about ten minutes or so.
Since this liquid contains bones I guess it could be classified as a stock, but because our end-product was thinner and made of a variety of other foodstuffs (including some of the turkey meat), I’ve decided to label it a broth. You could continue to simmer until it reaches the consistency of a stock, depending on your preference and the plans you have for that bad boy afterward. Speaking of which…
What do I do with this broth, anyway?
Slurp it as-is.
The first thing you can do is just drink it. Yep, that’s it.
It wasn’t until we made this broth that I realized you could just drink it and not have to add it to anything or cook it further with other constituents. It’s similar to a soup, but minus the chewing of the solid pieces. A savory drink?
If you’re feeling like ingesting a liquid more substantial than tea but aren’t quite in the mood for a full-on soup, sipping on this broth could do the trick. I think it’s ideal for people feeling under the weather who want simple, warm, and nourishing sustenance to take in. The nutrients are readily available. It’s especially nice for those cold autumn or wintry days. You could freeze the broth and keep it handy for that very occasion, then thaw and heat it up in a mug. Yum.
Soup’s up.
The next option would be to add something to the broth, if the thought of a meal in liquid form freaks you out.
This broth would make a great base for a soup, stew, or chili. Anything that needs a flavorful liquid can benefit from adding the Thanksgiving broth. If it were me, I’d probably add some rice, carrots, and celery to start a hearty meal, or perhaps substitute turkey for chicken in a more holiday-oriented chicken noodle soup.
Cook rice or pasta with it.
This is a pretty common use for broths and stocks. Instead of using plain old water, cook your rice with the broth and notice how that subtle seasoning infuses into the rice. You can also do this with pasta, though the way the flavor transfers (or not) would largely depend on the dish in question and other cooking variables. For instance, just boiling the pasta in the broth may not impart much of its essence, but cooking the noodles in a sauce with the broth as the base may allow some of that flavor to stick a bit more. Remember, I’m not a chef, I’m just a person who’s learning how to cook more beyond ramen in the microwave. It’s a learning process and I don’t make the rules here. Yet.
Concluding Thoughts
What I love most about this recipe is that it’s not only super tasty, but is an excellent way to utilize those excess kitchen scraps, which is the primary motivation behind writing this article. Saving the planet and heading toward zero-waste living doesn’t have to look and feel bummy for the average person. Consider instead that about 305 million pounds of food were estimated to be thrown out from Thanksgiving dinners this year. Now that looks and feels bummy to me. In this case the broth is not only one solution to this problem but is elevating and adds a depth of flavor that I don’t think you’d find just anywhere.
I would venture to say that making a broth like this is the perfect extension of Thanksgiving in the way I feel it was meant to be celebrated: giving thanks and being fucking grateful. And what better way to demonstrate that than by using the unwanted portions of your Thanksgiving feast to create more rich and nutritious sustenance for your friends and family in the form of a broth that can be sipped over the days leading up to Christmas, or even frozen and thawed for days when someone is sick and in need of a little home-style comfort food.
I also enjoy the thought of doing this for other holidays. What would a Christmas dinner broth taste like? What about Fourth of July? Any feast that has a distinctive palette could potentially be made into an equally unique and flavorful broth or stock. What would you put in yours?
That’s all for now. Thank you for reading and remember to show appreciation for your loved ones this holiday season. Stay warm, stay safe, stay merry. Until next time.
