To eat economically, I let the market choose my meal. This week started as a struggle – I was at a very expensive (though fabulous) grocery store in suburbia and needed to find the ingredients for Cheap Tuesday. To give you an idea of how expensive they can be; an organic chicken is over $30. I thought my chances of finding anything were slim.
The moment I saw these, I knew I was set:
Almost 5 pounds of turkey necks – just over $5. If you think the idea of Turkey necks is inferior Turkey, then you`ve never had awesome gravy (unless, of course, you are Vegetarian).
We start by making a basic stock. Throw some veggies (we stayed local and seasonal – carrots, onions and celery root – we used all of the carrot tops from our week of carrots), the turkey and cover in water and simmer lightly for a few hours. We added pepper, don`t add stock at this point. We then let it rest overnight (I soaked some black eyed peas at this point to add a lot of body to our stew and take it away from being soup-like).
The next day we strained our stock and picked the turkey apart with our hands. This is easy work, even for the uninitiated. Bones and undesirables in one pot, yummy dark meat in another. We cooked the black-eyed peas separately (otherwise we would be risking our stew drinking all of the broth) and added them to the soup before seasoning with salt, pepper and hot pepper flakes.
I also grated two sweet-potatoes into the mix to thicken things and add even more flavour.
On the downside, I had too much carrot and it sweetened things up a lot.
I also made some quick scones which included our dehydrated onions and cranberries. These were a last-minute idea and a great addition.
The total cost was under $10 and is easily 6-8 hearty servings.
I know there`s not an exact recipe here. Follow what you have on hand. Don`t be afraid to experiment – any root vegetables will do here. I want to emphasize that lesser known or `desirable`cuts of meat are fantastic ingredients which often have more flavour than alternatives that others chase.
It did occur to me that I had better ingredients for pot pie than for a stew. I went for stew to lower the amount of calories we would consume in a single sitting but this would have made a divine pie if thickened a little more and had less peas added.
