Recipe: Homemade Bouillon Cubes

I hesitate to call this a recipe, but I thought some of you might be interested in what I do.

After Christmas dinner, I took as much meat as I could off the great big turkey, and then I broke it up so that it fit in my crockpot and my big pot. The cooked gizzards, and the neck, and the bits of chicken skin, all of it went in. I also threw in the vegetable leftovers that I didn’t think would get eaten. I had to put a heavy container on top of my crockpot lid in order to keep it down, but it worked. Of course, if you have your own usual recipe for making turkey stock, do that.

I let the stuff in the pot cook for the rest of the day, and then I put in the fridge. The bones were sticking up out of the fairly weak broth. The crockpot stayed cooking on low Thursday night, all day Friday, and Friday night, although I did have to top it up with water a couple of times. When I finally decided that it had been thoroughly cooked to death, I strained the bones and guck out of the broth, and added that broth to the big pot. Now, I hope you know that I made sure that there was enough room in the pot. If there hadn’t been, I would have just cooked the broth in the pot a bit longer. So now I have the crockpotted broth poured into the pot where bones are still cooking. A big canning pot would make all of this so much easier, because I’d be able to put the turkey in one pot. I think I’ll add that to my “Please Santa?” list for 2009.

Are you getting the idea that I’m going for a super strong broth here? There are bits of meat in it, because I’m not really that careful with my straining. I just want to make sure that I get all of the bones and inedible bits out. I let the pot simmer all day Saturday, then I strained it and put it in the fridge. Sunday morning, I scooped off the chicken fat (which is now in a dish in the freezer) and let the broth simmer some more. This was easy to do, because the broth was a very thick jelly. As I cooked it today, it began to turn a dark brown and the house continues to smell like turkey!

From a crockpot plus a big pot, both full of turkey carcass and veggie leftovers, I now have about three cups of incredibly strong broth. In fact, it looks more like gravy than it does broth, and I’m still letting it simmer. The smell is mouthwatering! When it looks like about two cups of broth, I’m going to pour it into my Pyrex 9×13″ baking dish and then let it chill in the fridge. It will turn into a firm broth jelly that I’ll be able to cut into squares, wrap up in plastic wrap, and store in the freezer. I have no idea about how many cubes to add to how much water, because I don’t cook like that.

This may seem like a lot of work, but the hardest part is really straining the broth and tossing out the wet bones. (I let them set, in the strainer, in the sink, until they’re cool and dry) The broth just cooks on its own. The best part about this is that, like Stone Soup, it uses up things that aren’t going to be eaten.