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Why You’ll Love My Recipe
This Turkey Carcass Soup is the best way to use up your leftover roast turkey! It’s loaded with healthy vegetables, turkey meat, and homemade broth made right from the carcass. I also add wild rice to make this a hearty meal in a bowl!
If you want to make turkey soup from scratch, you’ll need some leftover turkey to get started! Use the leftovers from my Deconstructed Turkey and Stuffing With Vegetables in ONE Roaster or Thanksgiving Turkey recipes. And if you have a lot of extra turkey on hand, put it to good use in my Turkey Pot Pie!
Reader Review
My husband and I make this several times a month AND we do it year round! It’s one of our absolute favorite soups! Thank you so much for the recipe! We love to make corn muffins to go with this! ❤️
Karlynn’s Recipe Notes
- Skill Level: This soup is super easy to make – basically set it and forget it while the broth cooks!
- Total Time: It takes about 4 hours and 10 minutes from start to finish, but luckily, most of that is simmering time.
- Variations: Swap the wild rice for egg noodles for a fun twist, or add extra seasoning like paprika and cayenne for a little kick. Feel free to throw in extra vegetables like frozen peas, green beans, or corn, too! Serve your soup with my Simple Crostini Recipe and a Caesar salad for the perfect dinner.
- Tools For This Recipe: You will need a large lidded stock pot, a knife for chopping, a fine-mesh strainer, a soup pot, and a ladle for serving.
What You’ll Need for Ingredients
Turkey Carcass: The turkey carcass is used to make the homemade stock, and any meat you pull from it is saved and added back into the soup!
Vegetables: You’ll need onion, carrots, and celery for both the stock and the soup. The veggies in the stock help flavor the broth, while sautéed diced vegetables are added to the soup later on. Karlynn’s Tip: Feel free to add extra vegetables to the soup, like green beans, potatoes, or peas!
Wild Rice Mix: Using a hearty wild rice mix makes this turkey soup extra filling.
Seasonings: You’ll need peppercorns, salt, bay leaves, and parsley for the stock, then poultry seasoning for the soup. It adds a ton of flavor and enhances the broth! Karlynn’s Tip: Use store-bought poultry seasoning or make my Homemade Poultry Seasoning Recipe, and don’t be afraid to add any other seasonings you enjoy.
How To Make Turkey Carcass Soup
This is a quick overview of the recipe. The full list of ingredients & complete step-by-step instructions are in the recipe card below.
- Take your roast turkey, remove all the meat from the bones, and place it in a container.
- Break the turkey carcass apart at the joints, and remove the skin and fatty parts.
- Place the turkey carcass pieces in a large stock pot.
- Add the seasonings and vegetables, then cover the turkey with water up to the top of it.
- Simmer for 3-4 hours until the turkey bones break down, the meat falls off the bone, and the broth is nicely colored.
- Carefully remove the carcass from the stock pot and set aside. Strain the broth through a fine-mesh strainer and return it to the pot.
- Choose a soup pot, add butter, and fry diced onions until soft
- Add diced celery and carrots, fry for 4-5 minutes, and add in the poultry seasoning.
- Add the turkey meat, broth, and rice, and simmer until the vegetables are soft and the rice is completely cooked.
- Serve and enjoy!
Karlynn’s Tips and Tricks for the Perfect Turkey Carcass Soup
- Remove the Fat First: The key to making this turkey carcass soup in one day is removing the fat before you make the broth. A lot of recipes have you cool the broth and skim the fat off the top, but when I’m making soup, I want to eat it that day! Remove the skin and excess fat and clean up the bones before making the broth. This leaves you with just the right amount of flavor from the turkey fat without having to wait for the broth to cool.
- Prep the Turkey as You Go: As you’re removing the meat from the carcass, chop it into small pieces for the soup and measure out two cups as you go. It’ll save you a ton of time later!
- Make More Broth: If you want to make a larger batch of soup, you can add more water to the broth, but you’ll need to compensate for the diluted flavor. Add some store-bought chicken or turkey stock to bring the flavor back up. This is super helpful if you have a smaller turkey but want to make a big batch of soup!
Storage Instructions
Refrigerator: Store leftover turkey soup in an airtight container in the fridge for 3-4 days. Reheat individual servings in the microwave or warm the soup gently in a pot on the stove.
Freezer: Turkey soup can be frozen for up to 3 months following USDA food safety guidelines. Let the soup cool completely before transferring it to a freezer-safe container, leaving a little room for expansion. Thaw overnight in the refrigerator before reheating!
More Delicious Soup Recipes
Soups are some of the coziest meals you can make year-round, so if you want a warm hug in a bowl any day of the week, try one of these Soup Recipes next:
- Swap out the wild rice for noodles and make my comforting Turkey Noodle Soup this fall!
- This hearty, rich, and satisfying Ham & Potato Soup is bound to bring a smile to everyone’s face around the table.
- My quick and easy Chicken Corn Soup is a delicious option for lunch or dinner any day of the week!
There you have it, folks! This turkey soup is the perfect way to turn your leftover turkey into a nutritious, filling meal that the whole family will love.
Don’t toss that turkey carcass after your next holiday dinner! Make this big pot of soup instead, and let me know how it turned out in the comments below.
Happy Cooking!
Karlynn
How to Make Turkey Carcass Soup
Ingredients
Turkey Stock Ingredients
- 1 turkey carcass, cleaned of skin, fat and meat
- 1 large white or yellow onion, peeled and quartered
- 2 carrots
- 2 stalks celery
- 2 tablespoons salt
- 5 peppercorns
- 3 bay leaves
- 2-3 sprigs fresh parlsey, or 2 tsp dry
- water to top
Turkey Soup Ingredients
- 1 tablespoon butter
- 1 cup diced white onion
- 4-5 large carrots, diced large
- 3-4 stalks celery, diced large
- 2 teaspoons poultry seasoning
- 2 cups diced turkey meat
- 8-10 cups turkey stock
- 1 cup wild rice mix
Instructions
- Break the turkey carcass apart at the joints where you can, in order to be able to fit it into the soup pot. Remove all the skin and fatty parts as well.
- Place the turkey pieces into a large lidded stock pot. Add the onion, the carrots and the celery stalks ( if you have the leafy tops those are amazing for flavour, add them in!) .
- Add in the salt, peppercorns, bay leaves,,fresh parsley, and then cover the turkey with water, just to the top of it.
- Simmer, covered, for 3-4 hours until the turkey bones are starting to break down, the meat is falling off the bone, and the broth is looking cloudy.
- Remove the carcass from the soup pot carefully and set aside. Strain the broth through a fine mesh strainer then place in another pot.
Turkey Soup Ingredients
- Chose the soup pot that you want to use, then add in the butter. Fry the onions until soft, then add in the celery and carrots. Fry for another 4-5 minutes, then add in the poultry seasoning. Fry for 1 minute.
- Add in the turkey meat, the broth and the rice, Stir. Bring to a low simmer and cook until the rice is done and the vegetables are soft.
- Serve and enjoy.
Notes
- If you want to reduce the stock, after you strain it you can return it to the same pot and boil it until it’s reduced. This will make it stronger tasting.
- I have estimated that you will have around 8-10 cups of broth when you are done cooking to use in your soup. If you made more than that, simply store the extra in a container and freeze for later!
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
Debbie says
Do you cover the pot after adding the rice?
Cathleen says
Karlynn … thank you so much for sharing your tried & true recipes with us I enjoy all your recipes! I make what I call “Turkey Bone Soup” every time I have a leftover turkey carcass. I add frozen cut green been and barley to mine. The best soup and economical a turkey … so versatile! Thanks so much for taking the time to sharing your gift with us, greatly appreciated! Thankful for your culinary blog … well done! 🦃🦃🦃🦃🦃🦃
Cathleen says
I saved this recipe Karlynn … & love your pictures/photos … always! 🥰
Pat Maddock says
Replace rice with egg noodles. Toward the end, add those into broth with the other ingredients and cook (as directed on noodle packaging) as you are finishing cooking the overall creation. Consider wrapping parsley, celery, peppercorns, bay leaves in cheesecloth to be removed after first stage of cooking while mashing cooked carrots and leaving them in the broth along with the cooked onion pieces.
Edie says
Can I use white rice instead of wild rice?
Karen says
Who would have a coment?
Peter Hambleton says
absolutely delicious, mother in law used my turkey racks to make turkey soup, now she is gone I am carrying on,the recipe is great, followed it, nice broth, cut the veg and turkey chunky, will be after Thanksgiving and Christmas always, thx