This year after Thanksgiving both my mom and my sister came to me and asked if I had my grandmother’s turkey soup recipe. No one ever wrote it down. Now that she is gone, we only have what exists in my memory. Before I got married I asked my mother’s mother to stay with me for a week to teach me her recipes. This wasn’t one I learned that week. It was only one we talked about years later, when she would drop it off at my door after she made a large batch. Once she gave me too much and I took half to a friend whose children had the flu.
Recipes are memories that come alive on tastebuds. They are the fruits of the labor of women passed down through generations.
This is my grandmother’s soup. Except it’s not. Because I never had her write that recipe down. So this will never be exactly the same, bit it is the closest I will come, and now this recipe is mine. This is the one my children will remember and the recipe they will ask for after Thanksgiving. Sometimes my blog seems frivolous to me. But then I remember that I am the record keeper. And it makes me smile that this little blog of mine is keeping the memory of my grandmother alive in my kitchen, my sister’s kitchen, and maybe even yours.
- 1 turkey carcass
- 1 cup cooked, shredded turkey meat
- 2 carrots, peeled and chopped*
- 2 celery stalks, chopped*
- 1/2 cup cooked corn*
- 1/2 an onion, diced
- 1 turnip, peeled and chopped
- 1 cup of egg noodles
- 1 raw egg
- water to fill pot
- salt and pepper
- other spices to taste (I think my grandmother would have added oregano and a pinch of garlic powder. I don't.)
- Optional: one raw egg
- Optional: *one bag of frozen mixed vegetables to replace carrots, celery, and corn
- 1. Make broth by simmering the turkey carcass and spices in a large pot of water in for 2-3 hours, stirring occasionally or in the crock pot set on low for 6 hours or overnight.
- 2. Remove all bones from broth.
- 3. Add vegetables and turkey meat to broth. You can cook the veggies through in a pot on the stove first to make the process go faster, or just add them to the pot raw and wait until they are cooked through. If you are in a hurry, use a bag of frozen mixed vegetables instead.
- 4. After the vegetables are soft (take out a carrot and see if you can mash it with a fork) and the onions and turnips are translucent, add the egg noodles.
- 5. If you are making the soup on the stove, bring it to a boil until the noodles are cooked. If you are making it in a crockpot, set it to high and continue checking every 10-15 minutes.
- 6. Taste the soup and see if it needs more spices. If it does, add them.
- 7. Optional: Finish the soup by adding one egg. Beat the raw egg in a small bowl and add some of the hot soup broth, still beating the egg, to temper it. Then add the tempered egg to the soup and stir. The hot soup will cook the egg and it will make a smooth, silky broth. I don't think Grandy did this, it's a trick I learned from Amish recipes for chicken corn soup, but I always do it with my turkey soup now.
You might also like my father’s mother’s hot milk cake recipe.
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