Turkey & Vegetable Soup

I wanted to make a recipe for a simple homemade soup you can pull from the freezer and quickly finish up. The idea for me, was to have a soup base that's frozen into small portions, then you add a couple of ingredients to it. Basically a base that you could finish by adding a starch, such as rice or pasta. I had a turkey from Thanksgiving that I decided to base this on, but you can swap it to any fully cooked meat, especially the cooked chickens from Costco or any supermarket.

At one of our cafes we sell a chicken noodle soup. We make a flavorful broth with herbs and vegetables, then finish it with pasta that's already cooked off, and chicken that's been roasted. I went in a similar route, but I decided to keep the protein in the broth to help enhance the soup, and to have less components to add when picking it up. Additionally I added some extra flavor, and more herbs than we do at the retail outlet.

When I made this soup I started with a turkey stock using the carcass from Thanksgiving as well. If you don't have homemade stock on hand, you will want to add a little more depth to your store bought one.

You can pretty much take this in any direction, but one of the things you want to make sure, is that you don't heat the meat at too high of a temperature and too fast. A slow simmer is the best way to help impart the flavor of the cooked product to the soup, while still retaining it's tenderness.

Feel free to change up the ingredients, add hot sauce, pickled vegetables, different vegetables, etc. This is a great base soup to play around with and make your own.

Enjoy.

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Ingredients

• turkey stock 3 qts

• turkey meat, diced 2 lbs

• celery, sliced 1 bunch

• carrots, peeled and chopped 6 ea

• onions, diced 3 ea

• avenue spice 2 T

• herbs de Provence 1 T

• roasted garlic (garlic confit) 2 T

• thyme, dried 1/2 T

• oregano, dried 1/2 T

• chili pepper, minced 1 ea

• salt to taste

• pepper to taste

• bay leaf 3 ea

• maple vinegar* 3 T

• pasta or rice 2-3 oz per bowl

  *if you don't have maple vinegar, feel free to swap to sherry vinegar or rice wine vinegar

Method of Procedure

1. Start by making your turkey stock, or taking a store bought broth and fortifying it with seasonings to your liking.

2. Next saute your celery, carrots, and onions with your minced crushed red pepper and garlic confit. If you don't have any oil with the confit, add a splash of olive oil to help the vegetables cook.

3. Add your turkey (or other diced meat), bay leaves, avenue spice, thyme, oregano, herbs de Provence, maple vinegar and cook while stirring for about 10 minutes on medium heat.

4. Add your stock and season it to your liking with salt and pepper.

5. Simmer for about 30-40 minutes to blend flavors.

6. Cool and portion into freezable packets. An easy way to do this is strain everything through a colander and place into freezer bags. Add equal parts of the vegetables and turkey. Seal the bags, removing as much air as possible, lay flat on a sheet tray that fits in your freezer, and place until frozen.

7. To serve, pull a bag, thaw, add rice or pasta, season to taste. Enjoy.