Slow Cooker Turkey Bone Broth Recipe

If you make a roasted turkey don’t toss out that leftover carcass! Put every part of your roasted turkey to use by making your own homemade Turkey Bone Broth. This easy to make turkey bone broth recipe uses a slow cooker to create flavorful broth to use in soups or stews.

Homemade turkey bone broth can be made in a large stock pot as well as a slow cooker. Both methods of making turkey broth are easy.

However I’m a big fan of the slow cooker method. Just toss everything in, set it to low and 12 or more hours later you have a delicious flavorful turkey broth. It doesn’t get any easier than that.

Easy Turkey Bone Broth Recipe

Homemade turkey bone broth is so easy to make using the bones from your thanksgiving leftovers .

Once you’ve enjoyed your roasted turkey remove any remaining turkey meat. You can set it aside to use in other dishes such as Turkey Rice Soup. The leftover turkey bones can now be put to good use in creating this delicious turkey bone broth.

You can even make turkey bone broth in your crockpot overnight and use the leftover meat to make soup the next day. It’s a great way to get the most out of the foods you purchase.

Ingredients for Turkey Bone Broth:

When making turkey broth you want to include ingredients that add to the turkey flavor of the broth. Including fresh vegetables and dry or fresh herbs helps to add in extra flavor. Here’s what I like to include when making my turkey broth.

Turkey Bones – save the leftover bones including the leg and wing bones after you’ve made a roasted turkey. You can also add in the neck, heart and gizzards that are usually included in the turkey when you purchase it. These are a great addition to the turkey broth and provide flavor as well as extra nutrition.

Vegetables – I like to include onion, celery, carrots and garlic to add flavor to the broth. You can add in other vegetables you have on hand.

Herbs and Spices – try adding in black peppercorns, bay leaves and thyme. Other herbs that you might want to add in include rosemary, sage, oregano and basil.

How to make Slow Cooker Turkey Bone Broth:

Step 1: It’s so easy to make your own homemade turkey broth in the slow cooker. Start by placing all the turkey bones as well as the neck, heart and gizzards into the slow cooker.

Step 2: Add in the vegetables. You can leave them coarsely chopped and don’t have to be bothered removing ends or peels (see the note below about how I save all my vegetable cuttings to make broth). (coarsely chopped).

Sprinkle in the herbs and spices.

Step 3: Pour cold water to almost fill the slow cooker. How much you use will depend upon the size of the slow cooker. Add as much as your slow cooker will hold.

Turn the slow cooker on low and allow the ingredients to cook for 12 to 18 hours. While the broth is cooking the water will turn a golden amber color, the vegetables will soften and whatever meat was left on the bones will fall off.

The broth will now have a delicious turkey flavor.

You can continue to cook the broth longer if desired. However the broth can take on some odd flavors once you start cooking it longer than 24 hours.

At that point the bones become almost mushy and begin to fall apart. I prefer to stop cooking the broth before that point. It does not seem to add much additional flavor to the broth.

Once the broth is done it’s time to remove the bones and strain out the broth to remove all the small bits and pieces in the liquid. Using a slotted spoon remove the larger bones from the broth. Pour the remaining broth through a strainer to get the larger pieces.

If you want clearer broth you can restrain the liquid through a fine mesh strainer to remove any small pieces of debris that made it through the previous straining.

How to store Turkey Bone Broth:

Your homemade turkey broth can be stored 5 to 7 days in the refrigerator in a covered container.

Turkey bone broth can also be frozen. I like to use a freezer safe plastic container to freeze the broth. You can also freeze in smaller amounts by using an item such as ice cube trays or silicone freezer trays such as Souper Cubes (this is an Amazon Link). This is my favorite type of silicone freezer tray and is great for making bone broth cubes.

You can also store the turkey broth in mason jars. While you can freeze the broth in these types of jars I prefer not to use them as there’s too many opportunities for them to break while in the freezer. You also must leave enough space in the jar for the broth to expand when frozen.

Stick with freezer-safe containers and avoid having broken mason jars in the freezer.

Can I use other vegetables to make turkey bone broth?

You can add in just about any type of vegetables to your broth.

I like to use vegetable scraps when I make my broth. The easiest way to do this is to keep a storage bag in the freezer in which you place all your scraps from making other recipes.

Those ends of the onions, carrots or celery that you cut off? Add them to the bag.

Broccoli and cauliflower stalks? Add them to the bag.

Who hasn’t had some sad vegetables just sitting in their refrigerator at some point. Before they go bad just add them to the freezer bag. This is a great way to reduce your food waste and put all the food you have purchased to go use.

The picture below shows you some of the vegetable scraps I had on hand when I made my broth. There’s the ends of green onions, a cabbage core, some broccoli stalks, onion skins, a piece of sage stalk that I had picked from the garden before the end of the season as well as a tomato that was squishy.

You can save so many parts of your vegetables and herbs.

If your vegetables are going moldy then toss them out. You don’t want to save and cook rotten vegetables. Soft and not so crisp vegetables are fine to use. Moldy and rotten are better to be added to your compost or thrown out rather than used in your food.

Can I reuse the turkey bones to make another batch of broth?

While you can reuse the bones to make more broth you’ll find it’s not as flavorful as the initial batch. I find it’s better to just make one large batch of turkey broth with the carcass of one turkey rather than two smaller sized batches from the same turkey.

Can I make homemade chicken stock?

Yes you can use this same process to make chicken broth or stock instead of turkey. Follow the same directions as shown above only use leftover chicken bones instead of turkey bones.

What is the difference between broth and stock?

Both turkey broth and turkey stock start out using similar ingredients including turkey bones as well as vegetables, herbs and spices.

Broth is lighter in flavor when compared to stock. Broth usually is made with additional pieces of meat and is cooked for a shorter time.

Stock does not include additional pieces of meat and is cooked for longer periods.

Homemade broth is kind of a cross between broth and stock. Additional pieces of meat are not added in like they are when making broth. But the bones are cooked for a longer period of time like you would when making stock.

No matter what you choose to call it homemade broth or stock is delicious.

What’s the difference between broth and bone broth?

Bone broth is a similar to stock. It uses the same ingredients but if often cooked longer than 24 hours. The idea behind bone broth is to use the bones containing lots of cartilage. The extended cooking time will create a broth that contains more peptide proteins from the broken down cartilage.

You may notice that bone broth will gel firmer than broth or stock. It will also have a heartier flavor compared to the other two.

While I see many arguments online about bone broth being “healthier” for you the amount of additional vitamins and minerals aren’t going to have a huge impact on your diet.

Some recipes may even say to add a splash of apple cider vinegar to help pull more minerals out of the turkey bones. The amount of nutritional value and health benefits that this contributes is very small. It does not hurt to add it but the benefit is minimal.

Use bone broth if you enjoy the flavor in your cooking and if you don’t mind the extended cooking time to make it.

Why did my broth turn to jelly?

Cooking turkey bones, or any type of bone, will cause the collagen in them to break down. Collagen is a protein that provides structure to bones, skin, connective tissue and muscles.

When you cook bone and connective tissues (those fibrous bits you often find at the end of the bones) will break down and mix into the liquid of the broth or stock. When the broth or stock cools down those proteins realign themselves causing the liquid to jelly or firm up to create that gelatinous texture.

If you’ve eaten Jell-O, or any brand of gelatin, for dessert you’ve experienced the same thing you see with your broth. The hot water used to make Jell-O dissolves the collagen. Cooling it causes these proteins to realign which traps the water creating the jiggly treat.

Here are some ways to use your turkey broth:

• Soups and Stews – replace chicken broth in any recipe with turkey broth

• Use it as the main liquid when making gravy or sauces

• Swap out water used to make your rice, or other grains with this flavorful broth

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