Instant Pot Day-After-Thanksgiving Turkey Carcass Southwestern Soup. Save the bones, and make this soup with hominy, beans, and chili powder.
Did I remind you to save your Thanksgiving turkey carcass? No? Dang it, I slipped up this year. I hope you did save the bones, though, because here’s what to do with it. (I’ve got a spare carcass in my new freezer, so I can make another batch of soup in a month or so.)
This is my day after Thanksgiving sorta-posole, a Southwestern style soup inspired by the cans of hominy in my pantry. Hey, Thanksgiving was busy, and I wanted an easy after-the-bird soup this year. While I was in the pantry, I grabbed a can of Ro-Tel tomatoes and a can of black beans and went to work.
You have to be willing to get rough with the turkey carcass to fit it in a 6-quart pressure cooker; I break the backbone away from the breast to get it to fit. If you have an 8-quart cooker, you can just drop it in there.
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The key to this soup is the add-ins; I crumble tortilla chips into the bottom of the bowl, ladle in the soup, and top with shredded cabbage and cheese. It’s a great way to disguise turkey leftovers. The Southwestern theme takes the flavor profile away from the stuffing and gravy of Thanksgiving dinner. Or, at least my kids weren’t complaining about “Turkey Again?”
🥫Ingredients
- Carcass from a roasted turkey, plus a little leftover meat
- Onion
- Celery
- Carrot
- Bay leaf
- Fine sea salt
- Vegetable oil
- Garlic
- Chili Powder
- Diced Tomatoes with Green peppers
- Hominy
- Black beans
- Dried thyme
- Tortilla Chips
- Shredded cheese
- Sliced Jalapeños
See recipe card for quantities.
🥘 Substitutions
Turkey Carcass: If you don’t have a leftover turkey carcass from Thanksgiving, you can make the broth with a few pounds of turkey backs or turkey wings. Or, substitute 2 roast chicken carcasses - or a store-bought rotisserie chicken.
If you don’t have turkey broth or a carcass, you can substitute homemade chicken broth. If you’re desperate, you can use store-bought low sodium chicken broth - but skip the 1½ teaspoons of fine sea salt with the broth, because store-bought broth is salty enough.
Onion, Celery, Carrot (for the broth): I like a mix of all three vegetables in my broth. The only thing that is essential is the onion, to add a hint of sweetness, but the celery and carrot give the broth more flavor, if you have them. You can substitute a few unpeeled cloves of garlic for the onion, or add them if you like extra-garlicky broth.
Bay leaf: You can skip it if you don’t have it. I like the hint of herbal flavor it adds to the broth, but it’s not essential.
Diced tomatoes with green peppers, AKA Ro*Tel tomatoes, are a spicy mix of diced tomatoes and green chilies. If you can’t find them mixed, get a 14- to 16-ounce can of diced tomatoes and a 4-ounce can of diced green chilies.
If you want to cut the heat, skip the chili powder, and replace the diced tomatoes and chilies with plain diced tomatoes.
Hominy and black beans - I use canned in the ingredients list, but pressure cooking them from dried is fantastic. The problem is, that’s a lot of extra steps. So, I make batches of make-ahead hominy and/or make-ahead beans, and keep them in my freezer for recipes like this one. Because homemade beans and hominy are much better than canned.
If you don’t have leftover turkey, you can substitute shredded cooked chicken, or just skip it. That said, if all you have is the carcass, you’ll be surprised how much turkey you can pull that’s clinging to the meat. (That’s where I usually get my 2 cups of shredded turkey, because the rest of the leftover turkey is being used up for sandwiches.)
Add-ins, garnishes, and accompaniments - As you can see in the ingredients list, I like tortilla chips, shredded cheese, shredded cabbage, and sliced jalapeños - but use whatever you want. Hot sauce is good, diced onion is great, and sour cream is also a favorite in my house. Think of what you’d use as taco toppings, and add them in to the soup.
🛠 Equipment
This recipe fits best in an 8-quart pressure cooker, so there. Is enough room to fit the carcass without having to break it down too much. That said, it can fit in a 6-quart pressure cooker, but you will have to break the carcass into smaller pieces to get it to fit.
📏Scaling
This recipe is too big to double in a pressure cooker - break out the second Instant Pot if you have two carcasses. You can halve the recipe easily…on the soup side. Halving the broth is possible, if by some chance you only have half a turkey carcass, but to get it to fit in a 3-quart pressure cooker you are going to have to break the carcass down into some pretty small pieces. I’d just cook the full batch of broth, freeze the broth, and make the soup in smaller batches.
💡Tips and Tricks
- Breaking down the turkey carcass is the key to this recipe. I use kitchen shears and brute force. And an 8-quart pressure cooker comes in handy, because it will fit the whole turkey ribcage and keel bone without needing much work. (I once broke a cheap pair of kitchen scissors trying to cut through turkey bones - they’re a lot stronger than chicken bones.)
- Defat the broth: Turkey is already pretty low-fat, but if you want to completely defat the broth, store the pot of strained broth in the refrigerator overnight. (In Northeastern Ohio in November, I leave the broth out overnight - most years it is cold enough.) The fat will rise to the top and solidify into a fat cap. Lift the fat cap off of the broth and discard, and voila - defatted broth.
- Straining the broth: Straining the broth is easy if you have a fine mesh strainer and a second Instant Pot inner cooking pot. Any other 6-quart or larger pot will do, but the spare inner pot is my go-to choice.
Instant Pot Day-After-Thanksgiving Turkey Carcass Southwestern Soup
- Total Time: 2 hours 10 minutes
- Yield: 8 cups of soup 1x
Description
Instant Pot Day-After-Thanksgiving Turkey Carcass Southwestern Soup. Save the bones, and make this soup with hominy, beans, and chili powder.
Ingredients
Turkey Carcass Broth (Makes about 4 quarts of broth)
- Carcass from 1 roasted turkey, with clinging meat on bones (From a 12- to 14- pound turkey)
- 1 medium onion, peeled and halved
- 1 stalk celery, broken into pieces
- 1 carrot, scrubbed
- 2 bay leaves
- 1 teaspoon fine sea salt
- 3 quarts of water (or to cover, or to the max fill line of the PC)
Turkey Southwestern Soup
- 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
- 1 large onion, peeled and diced
- 3 cloves garlic, crushed
- 1 teaspoon chili powder (a chili blend is fine)
- ½ teaspoon fine sea salt
- 1 (10.5-ounce) can diced tomatoes with green peppers (Ro*Tel tomatoes), with juices
- 2 (15-ounce) cans hominy, drained
- 1 (15-ounce) can black beans, drained
- 2 cups shredded leftover turkey
- 8 cups turkey broth (from above)
- 1 teaspoon fine sea salt
Accompaniments
- Tortilla chips
- Shredded cheese
- Shredded cabbage
- Diced Onion
- Sliced jalapeños
- Limes, cut into wedges
Instructions
- Pressure cook the broth: Break up the turkey carcass so it fits below the max fill line on your pressure cooker – ⅔ of the way up the pot. Add the onion, celery, carrot, bay leaves, and salt to the pressure cooker pot, then add water to cover by 1 inch, or to the max fill line on the pressure cooker. (About 3 quarts of water) Pressure cook for 60 minutes in an electric PC, 50 minutes in a stovetop PC. Let the pressure come down naturally – about 30 minutes. (It takes a long time for all that water to cool off. If you’re in a hurry, let the pressure come down for at least 20 minutes, then quick release any remaining pressure.) Scoop the bones and vegetables out of the pot with a slotted spoon and discard. Strain the broth through a fine mesh strainer and discard the solids. Reserve 8 cups of broth for the soup, and refrigerate or freeze the rest for another use.
- Sauté the aromatics: Wipe out the pressure cooker pot. Heat the vegetable oil the pot over Sauté mode adjusted to high (medium-high heat in a stovetop PC). Add the onion and garlic, and sprinkle with the chili powder and ½ teaspoon of salt. Sauté until the onions soften, about 5 minutes.
- Sauté the diced tomatoes with green peppers, add the rest of the ingredients: Stir in the can of diced tomatoes and green peppers and simmer, scraping the bottom of the pot often, until the tomato juices thicken, about 5 minutes. Stir in the hominy, black beans, and shredded turkey. Pour the turkey broth into the pot and sprinkle with 1 teaspoon of salt.
- Pressure cook the soup for 5 minutes with a Natural Pressure Release: Lock the lid and pressure cook on high pressure for 5 minutes (“Manual” or “Pressure Cook” mode in an Instant Pot). Let the pressure come down naturally, about 20 minutes. (If you’re in a hurry, you can quick release any remaining pressure after 15 minutes.)
- Serve: Serve the soup, passing the accompaniments at the table, and squeezing a little lime juice into each bowl. Enjoy!
- Prep Time: 10 minutes
- Cook Time: 2 hours
- Category: Sunday Dinner
- Method: Pressure Cooker
- Cuisine: American
☃️ Storage
This recipe makes extra broth on purpose - there is usually enough for a second batch of soup. I freeze any broth I’m not going to use immediately in 2-cup and 4-cup containers, usually canning jars. It will keep in the freezer for up to 6 months.
The broth can be made ahead before making the soup - refrigerate or freeze as I explain in the previous paragraph - and then start the recipe with the “rinse the lentils” step when you are ready.
The soup stores beautifully - refrigerate in 2-cup containers for a couple of days, or freeze for up to six months.
🤝 Related Posts
Pressure Cooker Day-After-Thanksgiving Turkey Carcass Soup
Pressure Cooker Day-After-Thanksgiving Vegetable Turkey Soup (From the Carcass)
Pressure Cooker Turkey Soup with Rice
My other Instant Pot Pressure Cooker Recipes
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Clint Bishop
Thank you for this recipe, the family loved it with all the add-ins!