Creamy Turkey & Wild Rice Soup (ATK)

• portions: 6-8

Ingrédients

Turkey Broth

2 tablespoons unsalted butter

2 onions, chopped

1 celery rib, chopped

1 leftover turkey carcass, chopped into 4 pieces (see note)

3 cups white wine

6 cups low-sodium chicken broth

Soup

1 cup wild rice

2 carrots, peeled and chopped

½ teaspoon dried thyme

¼ teaspoon baking soda

¼ cup all-purpose flour

1 cup heavy cream

3 cups chopped cooked turkey

Salt and pepper

Instructions

1. For the turkey broth: Melt butter in large Dutch oven over medium-high heat. Cook onions, celery, and turkey carcass until lightly browned, about 5 minutes. Add wine and chicken broth and simmer over medium-low heat for 1 hour. Strain broth, discarding solids.

2. For the soup: Wipe out Dutch oven and toast rice over medium heat until rice begins to pop, 5 to 7 minutes. Stir in turkey broth, carrots, thyme, and baking soda and bring to boil. Reduce heat to low and simmer, covered, until rice is tender, about 1 hour.

3. Whisk flour and cream in bowl until smooth. Slowly whisk flour mixture into soup. Add turkey and simmer until soup is slightly thickened, about 10 minutes. Season with salt and pepper. Serve.

Notes

Leftover turkey can add rich flavor to a pot of soup—if you know how to handle it.

With its silky broth, pleasantly chewy wild rice, and chunks of tender turkey, creamy turkey and wild rice soup is a great way to make use of leftover Thanksgiving turkey. Unfortunately, most of the recipes we found tasted of weak broth studded with undercooked rice and rubbery turkey. Though many turkey soup recipes are content to simply stir leftover turkey into chicken broth, more traditional (and thriftier) recipes make use of the turkey carcass by simmering it for hours to make a deeply favorful broth. To coax every ounce of flavor out of the carcass as quickly as possible, we chopped it into pieces and sautéed it with onion and celery until it was lightly browned. We then simmered the carcass and vegetables in a combination of chicken broth (for rich poultry flavor) and white wine (for brightness) for an hour; this method produced a rich, savory broth that was definitely worth the time. Since wild rice can take well over an hour to cook, some recipes call for toasting the grains in a dry pan to break down the tough exterior of the rice prior to cooking. This cut a few minutes off the cooking time, but we were eager to lop off even more time. In the test kitchen, we often add baking soda to cooking beans to help them soften, as baking soda breaks down the beans' tough fibers. Hoping that this might work for the rice, we stirred 1 teaspoon of baking soda into the soup. Sure enough, this reduced the rice's cooking time by about 15 minutes. The cream tasted best when it was added toward the end of cooking. we thickened the soup by simply whisking some flour into the cream before it went into the pot. Adding the leftover turkey at the very end of cooking ensured that it stayed tender. -Jeremy Sauer and Greg Case

Leftover turkey wings, thighs, or drumsticks can be used in place of the carcass.

OCTOBER /NOVEMBER 2007• COOK'S COUNTRY