by Kelly Edens

Created on: January 15, 2009   Last Updated: January 28, 2009

Making broth is very simple, so simple my 9 year old granddaughter joined me Thanksgiving day to do this. She was bored, and finding me in the kitchen elbow deep in turkey carcass she asked, "Can I help?". I told her if she wanted to help, she needed to wash her hands first.

As I pulled large pieces of meat off what was left of our turkey, I asked her to find the biggest pot I had. Then I told her to grab three celery stalks left over from making stuffing, three carrots from the crisper, and one large onion from the onion bin. She scrubbed the carrots and celery, then set them aside. She joined me in stripping the meat off the bones.

Once we tucked the meat away in quart size freezer bags for future recipes, we placed the bones into a stock pot. We also tumbled in the celery chopped in half, leaves and all. Carrots were next, unpeeled and cut into 2 inch lengths. Then the onion. She curled her lip when I sliced off the root end, chopped it in half, but left all the brown peeling on. I explained that the brown onion skin would give the broth a lovely color.

We put enough water in the pot to cover the bones and veggies and set it on the largest burner. A tablespoon of salt and some cracked pepper went in last.

We turned the heat on med-low, put the lid on and cleaned up the kitchen. She wanted to turn it on high to speed up the process, but I explained to her that boiling on a high heat would make a cloudy broth, so we kept the heat slow and low. From time to time she would check the pot and smell the lovely broth quietly simmering and ask, "Is it done yet?"

After a couple hours of play time and watching grandpa watch football, we turned off the heat and let it cool a bit. We then put a strainer over another large pot and slowly poured the broth in. The strainer caught the bones and vegetables that were now soft and falling apart.

We put a lid on the new pot and slipped it into the deep freeze to blast chill it. We pulled the cooked carrots from the strainer and enjoyed a "cooks treat", they were tender and sweet.

After about 40 minutes, we took the pot out. I showed her how all the fat had risen to the top of the broth and had become like spreadable margarine. We scraped that off and discarded it. Underneath that, we found a lovely golden gelatin.

To store the broth, we got the quart size freezer bags that zip closed and scooped about three cups of "turkey jello" into each bag. We ended up with almost six quarts! The freezer bags store nicely in the freezer and defrost quickly.

I told her that one bag would make the most delicious turkey soup, but that would be another cooking adventure.

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