Yesterday was a doozy of a day, trust me.  And when you have a doozy of a day, you get to eat comfort food.  We went with one of Scott’s all-time favorite foods last night–his mom’s turkey hash.  It’s traditionally a Thanksgiving leftovers type of meal, but we had a turkey carcass, and it was rainy and gross.  The day was begging for some turkey hash.

Remember that turkey we smoked a week or so ago?  Well, we kept the carcass (with a small amount of meat still connected to said carcass), and we had some standard turkey leftovers.  That’s where we’ll start.  I’m going to attempt to rebuild a family recipe.  From memory.  Whew.

Ingredients

• 1 box of chicken broth
• chicken bouillon
• 1 medium yellow onion
• 2 celery stalks
• 3 medium carrots
• water
• 1 turkey carcass
• 1-2 cups of chopped up turkey leftovers (if available)
• 1 lb. chicken gizzards or turkey giblets
• salt and pepper
• mashed potatoes or bread for serving

Instructions

1. Place turkey carcass into large pot (largest one I had so the carcass would fit) with one box of chicken broth.  Warm up almost to a boil (doesn’t hurt if it does boil). 
2. While you’re letting the carcass get hot in step 1, chop up the onion, celery, and carrots.  Then sautee them in a pan with a tablespoon of olive oil. Add gizzards (or giblets, if you saved those from your turkey–ours was gibletless, so we bought gizzards at the store) to the pan and sautee with veggies until cooked through (more or less).
3. While your gizzards are cooking away, it’s time to hang out with the carcass again.  Take the carcass out of the broth and let it cool enough to touch (or use forks/knives/tools for the next part).  Get as much of those good leftover turkey bits as you possibly can off of the carcass, and put them back into the broth.  Supplement with leftover turkey chopped up into small pieces.  You want this to be hearty, so don’t be stingy.
4. Stir about a tablespoon of bouillon into the turkey/broth mixture.  Or more.
5. Take a deep breath, because you’re cooking without clear instructions, and that takes guts.
6. Take the gizzards out of sautee pan and chop some of them up, getting rid of any hard portions.  You want some of that earthy flavor, but you might not want a whole pot of gizzard stew.  Put however many gizzard pieces you want into your turkey/broth mixture.  I went with 10-ish small pieces.  Discard the rest of the gizzards (you’re in it for the gizzard flavor, not the gizzards themselves).
7. Add flour to your sauteed veggies, mixing with some additional water–about 1/2 of a cup at first.  Sprinkle in some salt and pepper to taste.  This should look like a thick roux (like the picture below plus veggies):

   

8. Finally, you’re almost there!  When you’re happy with your roux (add more flour and water until you like its consistency), add it to the turkey/broth pot.  Everything is all together, and you just have to wait until it’s the right consistency.  That should take about 15-20 minutes, and the time will also allow the flavors to blend together.  In the end, you want something that looks like thick-ish gravy with lots of good stuff thrown in.
9. Serve on top of mashed potatoes (The Pioneer Woman’s “Perfect Mashed Potatoes” are pretty perfect, although I take out some of the butter and all of the sour cream.  The recipe for them is sadly not online.  Her other options online are probably equally delicious, however.).  Or you could serve it with bread–rolls, biscuits, whole wheat, whatever your heart desires.  I happen to prefer the mashed potatoes, because soggy bread isn’t up my alley at all.  But Scott says that hash with bread is perfect, too.

Ta da, the perfect dinner for a rainy doozy of a day.