The upside (or downside, depending on your point of view) of cooking a large bird like a turkey, is that you have to deal with quite a lot of leftover meat. My husband and IÂ love turkey, so this is not a problem. Hence, another simple leftover turkey recipe: tortilla soup.
Today, I am going to deal with the carcass. We’ve already removed the meat, so we put the carcass in the pressure cooker with a couple of cloves of garlic, an onion, bay leaves, a carrot and a stalk of celery, and cooked it for 25 minutes. Â Once it cooled enough to open the lid, I picked the remaining meat off the bones and set it aside with the broth to make soup. I got about 10 cups of broth off the turkey, so I froze half for another day.
Tortilla soup
The first thing I do when I decide to make this, is to take about 10 six inch corn tortillas and slice them in thin strips, place them on a cookie sheet that I have sprayed with vegetable oil, spray the strips, and bake at 375F for about 20-25 minutes, fluffing them up partway through baking.
The actual soup is extremely easy to make. I put the broth and the meat into a large dutch oven, and set it on the stove. While it heats, I dice half of a large onion and open a 28 oz can of tomatoes. I put half the tomatoes and onion into a blender and process at the highest speed until it is smooth.
I pour it into the pot and repeat with the rest of the tomato and onion, as well as half a cup of salsa. Once that is added to the pot, I add a tablespoon each of chili powder and cumin, bring it to the boil, reduce the heat to medium and cook for about 20 minutes. You can add half a cup of corn if you like it.
It starts out looking like this (not very appetizing, is it?):
And ends up looking like this (much better):
To serve, I place a handful of tortilla strips in a bowl, add crumbled monterey jack cheese, and ladle the soup over top. You can add a dollop of sour cream and chopped cilantro leaves if desired.
Nice post full of great information.
Thanks!