Sometimes it’s difficult to mine back through blocks of time, to discover why I have picked up a habit. Decades ago (could I even be old enough to use such a phrase?!), I began to save the turkey carcass after each holiday when such a bird was on the menu.
Written 11/16/2016. Originally published on my Facebook.
Am I remembering correctly that my paternal grandma, known as “Grandma,” gave her carcass to our family each year after a special meal? I feel as if I recall it, wrapped up into an ungainly package festooned in Reynold’s Wrap. For people brought up near Richmond, it’s never foil—it’s always Reynold’s Wrap™, because their headquarters was here. The packet of turkey would also be joined by leftovers in recycled plastic margarine or Cool Whip™ containers—together, they’d form nearly a whole meal for the next day.
I am quite certain that I watched my maternal grandma, known as “Memaw,” cook chicken and dumplings every time she visited us from Louisiana. She and my grandfather rarely visited in the colder months, which is when I typically make dumplings, because their warm goodness seems just right. During her summer visits, I’d watch Memaw studiously while she roasted our non-air-conditioned house during the production of the dish my Mama specifically missed from her childhood.
Memaw was very specific about the ingredients. She needed a gallon of whole milk, which was something we rarely had in the house. (Those of us who weren’t allergic to milk drank skim.) And she always specified a whole chicken, never parts.
“Why do we have to use the whole chicken?” I’d ask.
“Well, the dark meat has all the flavor. I’d never want to give you dumplings with just the white meat, that wouldn’t taste good at all,” she’d explain, boiling the chicken whole in a pot. And I assumed that, if anyone, she’d know! She also made a mean homemade German chocolate cake, but I digress.
One day—or at most, 2 days—after Thanksgiving, you’ll find me wresting a turkey’s innards into a pot of turkey and dumplings. Today was one of those days. First thing this morning, before I made it out of bed, my husband reminded me, “Don’t you need to do something with that turkey in the downstairs refrigerator?” Like most people in our family, we have 2 refrigerators. The problem with that clever arrangement, is that food in the downstairs one is a little out-of-sight-out-of-mind. “You’re right, thank you, I can’t forget that. For supper, we’re gonna have turkey and dumplings.”
Yet, of course, I promptly forgot. Hours went by, during which I completed all sorts of random assignments that had accumulated over the past crazy-busy month. There were a number of calls I needed to make, one of which was to my aunt. She commented that for lunch they had made their annual turkey and dumplings using their leftover turkey. “What are the odds?” I asked her. “I’ve committed to make ours for dinner tonight,” mentally preparing to start the process after our hour-long call that meandered down memory lane. You see, yesterday would have been Grandma’s 96th birthday, and we are all piecing our new normal together after her loss over the summer.
Once the call was over, I dragged my 12-year-old into the kitchen. She has promised to cook 50 meals for our family, as a gift for a certain milestone birthday of mine. She’s been making the dumplings for the past couple of years; finally, she’ll learn how to make the broth.
“Will I get to eat some of the raw dough?” she asks, signaling that a “no” might result in her skipping this assignment.
“Of course, if you want such a thing.” While I would eagerly eat raw cookie dough, I am not a fan of dumpling dough, which is made of just flour, water and salt.
She watches me put the carcass into an 8-quart Calphalon dark anodized stock pot. Its rounded top just barely fits over the bony framework that had previously held an 18-pound turkey her father had carefully smoked on pecan wood for hours on Thanksgiving. I ask her to fill the pot with water, up to the screw. “The top of the screw or the bottom?” she clarifies. It’s a good question…in the rice cooker, the tolerance between the top or bottom of a line can be as much as ¼ or ½ cup of water—the difference between fluffy or soggy rice. We decided to use the top edge for this recipe, because it sort of didn’t matter either way.
She started to cut up the onion into quarters. “Which knife should I use?” She picked up a plastic knife she began using to cut up lettuce when she was about 6.
“This serrated one works best,” I respond, pulling it from the 3rd shelf of the dishwasher.
“Why not this one?” she counters.
“I’m afraid you’ll hurt yourself with that one. The teeth on this one hold into the slick skin of the onion, so it doesn’t roll.” She cuts it in half expertly.
“Now, put the two flat edges down, and slice each half in two.” Seeing that she has done so, “Okay, you can throw them in the pot.”
“Why do you put the onion skins in?” she asks, grimacing, as I grab the previously-ignored remains. “Because they add color and flavor to the broth,” I explain. I tuck in the remains of a bag of carrots. She grabs the herbs de Provence. One of her life goals is to go to Paris, but cooking with French herbs is as far as she’s going this fall. She dumps a handful in before even asking me how much to put in, so I respond to her belated query with the truth: “It’s up to you.” She also places three bay leaves in the pot. They had started as leaves on a whole branch my friend Pamela brought me after it was pulled from her gargantuan bay shrub.
“For the timer, enter the number as 99:59.”
“Why do you do that?” she asks.
“Well, you cannot do :99, because the timer knows there are only 60 seconds in a minute. You cannot enter over 99 minutes, because the display doesn’t include a 3rd digit for minutes,” I explained, meting out this bizarre sense of logic. “This will get it pretty close to being long enough.”
About an hour into the process, she and I test the pot and pronounce the broth close to done. I tug the turkey bones out and vegetables out and set them on a roasting pan to cool. By this point, her older brother is loading the dishwasher.
“Why would you do that?” he asked, referring to our entire production, starting with the timer. His sister explained, but he was still confused. “Why? You can enter anything in the seconds up to 0:99.” He reaches up and presses the 9 button twice, to prove his point. Surprised, I sheepishly yelled, “You’re right!” My daughter and I begin high-fiving her brother while laughing at ourselves. “Why did I think it would only allow you to enter up to 0:59?” One of them interrupts, “That was probably how your last microwave worked. We’ve only had this one a year or two.” Clearly, there are times when a “Why?” uncovers no good reason at all.
By this point, I move to a chair at the dining room, tearing turkey strands away from the steaming carcass. “Better you than me. I don’t even want to touch that thing!” he comments.
“I can’t blame you. It’s not my favorite thing, either.” There is a fine line between warm enough for the meat to come off easily and too hot to handle. The cooked carcass is closer to the latter end of that line. I tear a little meat off, then hold off, to cool my fingers from the steaming poultry. “If I think about how much this is worth, it’s not even about that. The whole amount of turkey…it’s just a scant 3 cups…at $0.99 per pound, which is what the fresh turkey cost from Wegman’s, it’s only saving us about a buck or two to do all this work.”
He grabs a piece of meat to taste it. “Would you like a bowl of it?” I ask.
“Yes, may I?” he responds, as if surprised. He holds out a small bowl, which I fill, and starts munching, as I continue.
“As bizarre as it sounds, I think of this as a form of discipline. If you’re disciplined enough to walk through the steps, the broth is truly amazing. Besides, I always like finding the wishbone. You and your sister can break it later.”
Perhaps it would have been too maudlin to say, “If the turkey gave its life up for food, the least we could do is to use it all.” Ridiculously, self-awareness doesn’t filter me, so I heard myself say that, too. I am by no means a vegetarian; I love meat. And, truth be told, it is always possible for our family to discard leftovers (especially if the refrigerator starts to smell questionably). “I guess when it comes down to it, it’s just a tradition. And, you happen to love turkey and dumplings, so tradition works out pretty well.” At that, he grinned, seemingly content in the knowledge that, in a few hours’ time, several bowls of that creamy goodness will have made their way into his happy tummy.
And I grinned, content that he and his sister had given me the gift of asking me “Why?”