Hearty Wild Turkey Soup

Some of the best things about Autumn are the soothing hot beverages that make their annual comeback as the weather gets chilly.  Warm soups and warm wine (e.g. sake) are two items at the top of the list for me.  And for a while now, soups have been a big hobby of mine.  I love thinking about and making different stocks because:

1. The process is so simple,
2. The sky is the limit when deciding what goes into the stock, and
3. Depending on how you approach things, you can really stretch your dollar on several nutritious, filling meals.

I only make my own stock from scratch because, although it is more labor intensive, it is much more rewarding.  When the soup touches your lips, complex, awesome flavors begin seeping in and warming you up, and it only intensifies as it flows past the sensors on the tongue and beyond.  Being able to control nearly every ingredient that goes into the stock, and therefore the flavor profile of the stock, cannot be overstated.

For the last few years, I have been making my stock by starting in a sauce pot because I did not have a large stock pot.  After that, I would either make an overall smaller portion in the same pot or transfer it to a slow cooker for no hassle stewing.  This weekend, however, I finally stepped up my game by purchasing a legitimate stock pot.  (Did I mention this Winter is going to be an awesome soup bonanza?)

For this round, I wanted to create a stock that evoked a sensation of North American Autumn wilderness blended with the serene mountainous Chinese countryside near my home province.  Usually, I would be the first to claim that these two concepts are not only opposites in geography; they also clash in flavor.  But I think it can be done well by starting simple and harnessing the basic, wild aspects of both locations.  For reference, consider a seemingly untamed Shenandoah Valley in Autumn on the left, and the almost mystical Tianzi Mountains in Southern Hunan province on the right.

I began with two smoked turkey drumsticks and some ginger, washed, peeled, and chunked.  These two items were brought to a boil and allowed to cook on low heat for four hours, replenishing water and bringing back to a boil when necessary.  Since I could not finish making the soup in one day, I refrigerated it overnight.  During this first leg of cooking, the broth was extremely enticing because such a long process brought out not only the flavor of the meat, the bones, and the fat--it also elicited the smokey character of the drumsticks, which went perfectly with the desired imagery above (more so the one on the left).

On the second day, I brought the broth to a boil again, and this time, added four green onion whites and several fresh shiitake mushrooms to begin molding the flavor.  Two hours into cooking, I prepared and added diced carrot, chunks of lotus root, and a single star anise.  At this point, I was worried that the carrots and star anise would give the soup too much of a sweet profile, so I added some salt, which outside of the carrot and anise, would not have been necessary given the natural saltiness of smoked meat.  After another two hours of cooking, the broth was ready to sample.

It was delicious.  I spoke above of two opposites in flavor profile, but the only juxtaposition was how filling a small bowl turned out to be even as the gamy flavor of smoked turkey danced around ever so lightly with the flavor of the earthy vegetables.

The selection in vegetables was on par with my expectations.  I did not break new ground by choosing earthy, root-like vegetables, but the use of shiitake and lotus as opposed to more commonly chosen tubers like potatoes and other greens brought in a bit of the Chinese countryside.  Next time, however, I would add the carrots later so they are not so beat up and soft.

I wanted the soup to be deeper and richer, but at the end of the day I suppose you can only get so much out of two medium sized turkey drumsticks and eight hours of cooking.  By the way, what did the drumsticks look like after all was said and done?

Okay, so skin and bones do not look so appealing.  But what happened to the meat!?  I took that and stir fried it with leek and some sesame seeds to make lunch for the week.  Here, I did not bother to arrange the food in an aesthetic way, because it was just going to end up stuffed into a lunch container anyway.