Home › Soup's On! › Poultry Carcass Soups
Poultry Carcass Soups
The best feature of a duck, turkey or guinea fowl dinner is the aftermath, the rich flavorsome soup made from the carcass, leftover dressing and gravy. Cover all with cold water and add the bird's feet, after scalding and skinning, with 1 sliced onion and 1 sliced carrot. Let simmer for hours and strain before dishing it around.
The feet of any bird are essential in its soup. They make a strong gelatinous broth or cold consomme, and should never be thrown away.
A camp-and-kitchen carcass stock in four sentences. The one thing to take from it is the point it makes twice: bird feet are almost pure collagen and skin, and they are what turns thin broth into something that sets.
- Finding the feetSupermarket poultry is sold without feet, so ask a butcher, a farm stand, or a Chinese or Latin American market, where chicken and duck feet are ordinary stock. If you cannot get them, wings, necks and backs carry the most collagen of the remaining parts and will do much the same work.
- Scalding and skinningDip the feet briefly in boiling water, then rub the yellow outer skin away and clip off the nail tips; the recipe calls for this explicitly. Cooks generally hold that unskinned feet give the pot an off note, though the recipe itself says nothing about why.
- Cold water startThe recipe specifies cold water. Starting cold lets proteins leach out slowly and rise as scum that can be skimmed, which is the usual argument for a clearer broth. Keep it at a gentle simmer rather than a boil.