Making Turkey Stock With Suzanne Goin (Published 2013) (2024)

Updated | Nov. 25, 2013

Recipe Lab, a monthly feature, invites you to cook with the Dining section. In each installment, Julia Moskin chooses a standout recipe from a cookbook for you to try at home. Post your comments and questions about the recipe, ingredients and techniques; the next week, we’ll share answers from the recipe’s author. This month’s recipe: roasted turkey stock, made with Thanksgiving leftovers.

Although soup is rarely on her menus, the Los Angeles chef Suzanne Goin uses stock constantly, in the vegetable braises and deep-flavored stews that she is famous for at her restaurant Lucques, and for homey dishes like the turkey potpie at Tavern. (A cookbook for her restaurant A.O.C., written with her business partner, the wine expert Caroline Styne, has just been published, though this stock recipe is not in it; you see it here first.) “I don’t like to stress out home cooks by insisting on homemade stock in my books,” she said. “But when you’re making a turkey anyway, it’s the logical next step.”

This stock is interchangeable with chicken stock in virtually any recipe (except for chicken soup). It has the usual aromatics — carrots, celery, onions — plus a concentrated shot of white wine and a dried chile, which add a welcome breath of freshness. (Sometimes poultry stock can taste flat.) Roasting the bones and the vegetables in the same pan streamlines the process and adds depth of flavor.

Readers have posted questions for Ms. Goin about the turkey stock recipe; her answers are below. Feel free to continue asking questions and, as always, if you make the recipe, let us know how it turned out.

Recipe: Roasted Turkey Stock

Q. Do you simmer this stock uncovered?

A. Yes, but don’t let it simmer too hard (a bare simmer is best) because you don’t want the liquid to reduce too quickly. In fact, if you have the time, you could partly cover the pot with the lid. This will result in a more intense stock, because it will take more time for the liquid to evaporate, and the liquid and solids will cook together longer.

Q. Can you roast the vegetables and the carcass at the same time in the same pan?

A. The carcass will take longer to brown than the vegetables, and you want to make sure they are really well browned. You could get the carcass three-quarters of the way browned and then add the vegetables — this is how we do it at the restaurant — but you just need to make sure the timing is right so everything gets browned enough but nothing gets burned. It seemed safer for a home cook recipe to do these two steps separately, but if you feel confident you know the magic moment, then go for it.

Q. I’d love some tips on how to make a flavorful turkey stock on Thanksgiving Day to use in gravy. Typically, I’ll take the turkey neck that comes with the bird and make a smaller batch of stock in a similar way, with the usual vegetable and aromatics, but just the neck doesn’t seem to add much depth of flavor. Should I buy things like extra turkey wings to add?

A. Do you sear the turkey neck? The searing really makes a difference. I bet you could get a rich broth just from the seared neck (chop it up into about five or six pieces and brown them well in a pot). The addition of wings is also a great idea and will definitely not hurt!

Q. Can you eat the vegetables that you strain out? They look delicious!

A. Yes, absolutely — I like your style! Sometimes by the time the stock is done, the vegetables are mushy, but they are definitely edible.

Q. Would you use the same technique, aromatics, white wine and dried chile for a chicken stock?

A. Yes, that would be great; just remember you are making a roasted stock, as opposed to a traditional light stock. Roasted stocks are also great for making braises. You can use a roasted chicken stock in meat stews or with duck instead of the usual veal stock.

Q. I make chicken or turkey stock from time to time. A couple of other ideas I like: I toss in tons of fresh parsley into the stock and get a nice gardeny aroma; I clean the stock by putting the pot of just-cooked stock next to the sink, which has a big bowl in it. I then siphon the stock into the bowl through a sieve. Siphoning from the bottom of the stockpot means you avoid all the fat, which is floating at the top. I get the absolute cleanest stock this way without having to chill the stock and skim the fat (which never works that well for me).

A. All great ideas. Glad to hear you are making stocks at home.

Q. I’d like to know what Suzanne thinks of an alternative method for stock that appears in the most recent Lucky Peach magazine. David Chang covers duck carcasses and kombu with water, covers the pot tightly with wrap and basically heats it up in a bain marie for two hours. The idea is to avoid losing any aromatics (a gain for the broth, perhaps, but a loss for homey atmosphere). He’s happy to live without the gelatin extraction and depth of flavor that comes with a longer simmer.

A. I like that method. When I make a braise, I cover the pot tightly and place it in a 300-degree oven for three hours, which is almost the same thing. Because the pot is tightly covered, the liquid cannot escape and is more intense and flavorful — you don’t lose anything. I do this when making a rich broth for pot-au-feu as well. For a stock, however, especially a roasted stock, I actually want some of the water to escape because I do want that gelatin and a more reduced final product. I think it all depends on what you want the result to be and what you are using it for.