Food Processing

I take perverse pleasure at making use as much of the food that I purchase as I can. I think I was beat on the head with all kinds of old world values about not wasting when I was growing up. So I am always happy when you have something like turkey which provides so much in the way of sustenance beyond the meal that is is served.

Unfortunately we didn't have Thanksgiving here and turkey is not our Christmas tradition. So I decided to just buy a bird so I could process it. Of course we did roast it and have a meal but there was pretty much the whole bird left.

First thing is to get all the meat off of the bones

Then I started making a stock. Onions and carrots of course but I also added the liquid from mashed potatoes I'd made and the pan juices from the roasted turkey.

I also put in the neck and the pack of giblets (out of the pack) in as well

I cut my turkey into smaller bits - mostly dark meat

And larger slices - white meat

The small bits were cut further because they will be packaged as ingredients to go into soup.

Here are nice individual packages of sliced meat for sandwiches and bits (3 oz each) for our soups.

The stock after it had cooled has a very lovely gelatinous character from all the bones and skin.

I put the stock into 14 oz units.

And individually wrapped them for easy conversion into our soups.