Once the Thanksgiving turkey has gone from drumsticks to a pile of sticks, the bone of contention begins – toss the carcass or make something of it?
The answer may have been easy when IPOs came often and SUVs were the car of choice. But a plodding economy means we're returning to more frugal times, putting the remains of the day into the stockpot.
And it's not necessarily a bad thing.
"It's a shame to throw the carcass away, because there's lots of flavor to eke out," says Jennifer McLagan, chef and author of "Bones: Recipes, History & Lore" (HarperCollins, $34.95, 257 pages).
"Bones are underrated because everyone thinks they're too much trouble to cook with, but the saying 'The nearer the bone, the sweeter the meat' is really true."
Although American cuisine has largely moved away from cooking meat in its original shape – with the norm being skinless, boneless cuts packaged in foam and plastic – Thanksgiving is a holiday for which the roasting of a whole turkey is still the tradition.
So it makes sense to glean every morsel possible from that sacrificial bird.
"In the past, every bit of bone, gristle, cock's comb, guts and feet was used in one way or another," says food historian Francine Segan. "No one should chuck the carcass; it's filled with yummy flavor and nutrients."
And if turning bones into stock seems tedious, Segan suggests breaking up the carcass, putting it inside cheesecloth and tossing it into the pot when boiling water for pasta.
"It'll add a lot of flavor to your turkey tetrazzini," she says.
Firehouse executive chef Deneb Williams makes stock from his turkey at Thanksgiving, and all the turkeys and chickens served at the Sacramento restaurant.
"It's one thing I really preach in my kitchen – don't waste anything," Williams says. "There's a lot of people where that half-loaf of bread or little bit of dinner can make a difference."
The little pieces of food not served to customers are used for the four family-style staff meals each day, added to a vegetable stock bucket or put into the demi-glacé.
Williams learned lessons of frugality from his grandmother, who lived through the Great Depression. She ground up heels of bread into breadcrumbs, froze bits of vegetables to be made into vegetable stock, and made two meals from everything – it might be roasted chicken one day and pot pie the next.
"Once our country became really affluent, we became wasteful, and that's a real shame," Williams says.
Poultry bones at the Firehouse are made into a reduced stock and then frozen in ice cube trays to be used whenever Williams is making something that might need a simple boost, like rice.
"You can substitute stock for water in almost every recipe and it becomes more flavorful," he says.
"I think the main thing people have lost sight of is the nutritional value. There is a lot of great nutritional value in the bones and all those little pieces of meat stuck to the carcass. You can actually sustain yourself just on turkey broth."
It's a tradition for May Wong of Sacramento to make jook from her skeleton of festivities past. The Chinese rice porridge, also known as congee, is a perfect comfort meal the day after a belt-loosening Thanksgiving meal.
Wong, 76, is the mother of Curtis, Mason and Alan, who own the restaurants and nightclub that make up the Park Downtown. She learned her jook recipe from her father and grandmother: boil the whole carcass into stock, strain the fat, throw in some dried bean curd, Chinese sausage and rice, cook for about two hours.
"I don't have a recipe," Wong says. "The Chinese don't really write down recipes. We throw everything together, we kind of guess here and guess there, and it always turns out."
For the most part, Americans seem to have forgotten how to cook all the parts of an animal, says McLagan, author of the book about bones.
"People are always looking for quick and fast, and steak off the bone is simpler," she says. "But how much nicer is a T-bone than a tenderloin steak? It just shows more thought and interest by the chef."
Call The Bee's Gina Kim, (916) 321-1228.
