Breaking down the bones

Down.

Get a big-ass pot--I mean big. Take your turkey carcass and start ripping that mother apart. Put EVERYTHING in the pot. Skin, bones, any stuffing cling-ons. All of it.

The candy-asses out there aren't going to like this, but you need to break the bones apart old school. Use your hands and tear them up righteous. Rip the soft backbone and breast bone into pieces. The more you bust those up, the more mysterious inner bone stuff comes out and the better the soup is going to be. Don't piss-out. Bust the shit out of it. If you can't do that, I just don't know what. Go to bed.

Rinse off a couple of raw onions, cut them in half and throw those in there. Leave the skin on for good color. Don't peel them like some goddamn Martha Stewart wannabe. That broad couldn't make turkey bone soup to save her Special Edition Eddie Bauer USS Martha girdle.

Got any old celery hearts? Greens? Carrot Greens? It's soup, for chrissake, throw it in there. Throw any leftover stuffing in there. One last scoopful of mashed potato? Into the pot. We're not effing around here.

Add enough water to cover everything, maybe a little more. You'll want at least three or four quarts of water total. Five or six for a real big bird.

Put the lid on and bring it to a boil. Put that soup down to the lowest simmer possible and let her ride for four to six hours with the lid slightly ajar.

That's right. Four to six hours. Don't eff around and take it off in an hour because you know what you'll have? Watered down turkey piss, that's what.

You will not believe how good that soup smells as it cooks.

Fit a colander (not too fine) over another pot and pour your soup in there. All the gnarly bones and skin and cooked-into-submission onion will go in the colander. It'll look worse than that Chrissie chick from the opening scene in Jaws after the shark was done with her and they put what was left in a bedpan. DO NOT throw it out.

Put the strained soup in the fridge to cool overnight, covered.

Take the leftover Chrissy stuff and start picking through there. Pull out any good meat chunks. Save those. Now you can throw the rest of that crap out.

Boil up some regular polite carrot and celery and onion pieces in regular water. How big should those pieces be? Well, genius, as big as a person would want to eat in their turkey bone soup. Can't you people figure anything out? Cook them up proper, strain them and put them in the fridge. Cook some soup noodles too. Go ahead and use some pansy girlie shape (ditalini, farfalle, gemelli). I don't care, just use Barilla. Every other kind is piss-poor. Cook those noodles up but not too much or they'll get too soft in the soup and that will suck. Strain those and, you guessed it, into the fridge.

You want to use your egg noodles? Go ahead and use your egg noodles. Good christ--the things that trip you people up ...

You might need a beer or whiskey or something by now. Okay, fine. you're about done for day one.

The next day, take the soup out and skim the fat from the top and toss it. The more the cold soup broth is like jelly, the better. (No, I'm not going to fool around trying to explain high-end gourmet terms like consomme and aspic here. This is just a dumbass blog post, people.) Heat it up (the jellyness of it will go away, so don't worry).

I don't really have to tell you to taste it and add salt, pepper and some spices, do I?

Add the meat and the polite boiled veggies. You can put all the noodles in there, but sometimes they suck up too much broth and that will piss you off. I like to put a scoop of noodles in each bowl and pour the hot soup over that, which also cools the soup to a perfect eating temperature.

Everyone will be dying for that soup on account of the aroma wafting through the house the past two days. It is so good, don't be surprised if your peeps procure a lush silken pillow with the word "Genius" embroidered on it just for you. Put it in front of the box and sit your royal ass down with a steaming bowl of that soup.

This post is done.

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