Turkey noodle soup from scratch is about the best thing you can do with your leftover turkey. Deep turkey flavour, tender noodles and incredible mouthfeel make this version special.
There is something wonderful about turkey noodle soup. Childhood comfort food. Feel good food. Magical almost. Puts a smile on your face. And you cannot beat homemade. No way around it.
There’s no single killer recipe. No rock your world – this is the best thing ever. I’ve looked. It’s all pretty much the same. Variations on a theme.
I have my own variation on the theme. Mine is about mouthfeel. The difference between a watery broth and unctuous, oh my god this is amazing broth. That small tweak is what makes this version a great one.
It’s not hard to make really good turkey noodle soup either. Takes a bit of time to make the stock. Simmer the soup. But it’s all unattended. Almost set and forget.
This recipe is a guideline. There’s lots of room to improvise. Don’t have leeks? No big deal. Try onion. Want to add peas? OK, that works. Celery? A bit of an overpowering flavour in my mind but why not?
There are only three things I think are important in this recipe. Turkey stock, dried thyme and cornstarch. Yes, cornstarch. It’s all about incredible mouthfeel.
turkey noodle soup
Ingredients
The stock
- 1 turkey carcass
- 1 onion halved with skin left on
The soup
- 3 Tbsp vegetable oil
- 1 large leek diced - white and light green potion
- 1 large onion diced
- 4-5 large carrots coarsely diced
- 2 cloves garlic minced
- 2 tsp dried thyme
- 2 tsp salt
- 10 cups turkey stock or as much turkey stock as you have plus water to make up 10 cups
- 6 oz broad or extra broad egg noodles
- 4 cups diced leftover turkey
- 1 Tbsp corn starch
- more salt to taste
Instructions
The stock
- In a pot large enough to hold your turkey carcass, combine the turkey, onion and enough water to cover. Simmer for 6-8 hours. You want the turkey tasting like nothing and the stock to be flavourful.
The soup
- Heat a pot big enough to hold everything (6 quart dutch oven works) over medium low heat. Add the oil and then the leeks, onions and carrots. Cook, stirring occasionally, until onion and leek are soft but not brown. You won’t get the carrots soft at this stage - don’t bother trying. This takes about 7-10 minutes.
- If you don’t want bits of thyme floating in the broth, place it in a bit of cheesecloth. Tie securely with food safe string. Add the garlic and the 2 tsp salt and cook another 2 minutes. Add the thyme with the garlic and salt if adding it loose. If you are wrapping it in cheese cloth add it with the broth.
- Pour in the stock. Let simmer, covered for about an hour. Add the diced turkey and let simmer another 10 minutes.
- Add the egg noodles and cook until the egg noodles are tender, another 10 minutes or so.
- Dissolve the cornstarch by adding it to a cup of cool water and stirring thoroughly. You don’t want to be chasing lumps of cornstarch so get this right.
- Add the cornstarch slurry to the soup. Bring to a boil. The soup will thicken noticeably.
- At this point the soup is under salted. Add salt gradually until you are happy with the salt balance. Soup takes a lot of salt.
- Serve.
If you want to learn how to make Indian restaurant curries at home this is the place to start.
Indian restaurant curry base or base gravy is the foundation of the whole thing.
Get this figured out and you are on your way to making better curries than you can buy.
Indian restaurants cook a whack of different curries to order. Ever wonder how they do it?
For sure they don’t have 25 curries simmering away in the kitchen.
Nobody can run a restaurant like that. They have a secret. Indian restaurant curry base.
Curry base is how Indian restaurants can cook to order
It’s cooked to order and it’s done using curry base. Curry base is at the heart of every Indian restaurant kitchen. Giant pots of it simmering away.
Once I heard about it I started asking waiters. I met kitchen staff. Talked about it with a chef or two. I was on the inside. Now you are too…
Never heard of curry base? Not surprising. For the longest time it was a closely guarded secret.
Even now, Indian restaurant curry base recipes are carefully guarded secrets.
A hint of carrot – ooohhhh. A bit of cabbage – aaahhh. A green pepper – ssshhhh. But that’s how it’s done.
It’s a bit ridiculous. In it’s simplest form it’s just a lot of boiled onions with some spices and oil. Seriously.
Cook it up and it tastes like a weak curry onion soup. Nothing to it. Not particularly tasty.
The magic is in the cooking technique
But when you layer the Indian restaurant technique on top it’s magic. Something wonderful happens to that insipid onion soup.
It caramelizes some. More importantly, the Maillard reaction kicks in. The depth of flavour is – well it’s restaurant quality.
It’s not hard. It’s just a matter of rolling up your sleeves and getting it done. Chop some onions. Add some water and some seasoning and boil. Puree. Boil some more. Done.
You can get a quick lesson on cooking Indian restaurant curry here .
You use this base in recipes like Indian restaurant madras , lamb curry , jalfrezi or chicken tikka masala .
Look around – there are lots of Indian restaurant curry recipes here.
One thing to note. Indian restaurant curries are big on oil. This recipe is about as low as you can go on the oil.
Don’t use less. It just won’t work. Indian restaurant curry is a lot of things but low calorie it is not.
If you want to cook Indian restaurant style curries this the first step. The real deal.
Watch the video(there’s real audio)
indian restaurant curry base
Ingredients
- 8 large onions – about 2.5 lbs peeled weight
- 6-8 cloves garlic peeled
- 1 1/2 Tbsp ginger coarsely chopped
- 1 1/2 Tbsp cumin powder
- 1 1/2 Tbsp coriander powder
- 1 1/2 tsp turmeric
- 1 1/2 tsp salt
- 12-15 fresh cilantro stalks with leaves – roots removed
- 1 cup vegetable oil
- 12 cups boiling water
- 15 oz can diced tomatoes – one small can
Instructions
Step 1
- Bring the water to a boil (a kettle works well for this).
- Quarter the onions and then break them apart into petals (roughly – two or three petals per quarter)
- Combine all ingredients except tomatoes, bring to a gentle boil and simmer, loosely covered, for one hour. Use a big pot!
- Add tomatoes, stir and simmer an additional 20 minutes
- Let cool slightly. Blend to smooth consistency. Make sure you remove the centre cap from the blender lid and cover the hole with a cloth or you will be cleaning the ceiling. Alternately you can use an immersion blender.
Step 2
- Wipe out the pot and return pureed curry base and simmer, loosely covered, until the oil separates out – this can take an hour or more. Stir the oil back into the base. At this point you can portion out the base into 2 cup portions and freeze if desired.
