This turkey bone broth recipe was born of practicality. I’m the kind of person that doesn’t like to see things go to waste. We compost our kitchen scraps, we recycle as much as we can, and our freezer is full of meals initially made too large for our small family. When I roasted my first turkey last Christmas, I noticed a lot of the meat was still left on the bird after we had cooked it – so I used my favorite Instant Pot soup stock method to make a rich and savory turkey bone broth.

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This turkey bone broth is the perfect leftover turkey recipe. It requires minimal hands-on time and results in a rich, collagen-filled broth than can be used immediately or frozen for later. This leftover turkey bone broth is my favorite to base for turkey rice soup, but it works well for any soup with a poultry base, like chicken noodle.

A mason jar sits in the foreground and a wide glass bowl sits in the background. Both are filled with turkey bone broth, made using Thanksgiving or Christmas leftovers. They sit on a wooden surface.

Ingredients

1 turkey carcass – make sure your turkey bones have been roasted, and the meat has been largely removed before using it for bone broth.
2 onions
2 carrots
2 ribs celery (optional)
2 bay leaves
2 teaspoons salt
1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar
8 cups water

How to make turkey bone broth

Start by roughly chopping your vegetables. Peeling them is optional; because this is stock and not soup, you can technically include the less edible parts of the vegetables (like the crispy shell of the onion) for additional flavor. However – if doing so, make sure your vegetables are extremely clean. Some bacteria within soil can withstand high temperatures and make people sick.

Once your vegetables are chopped, place them in the bowl of your Instant Pot.

Next, and most importantly, you will need turkey bones. If you’re using Thanksgiving leftovers, you can simply break apart the carcass of your roasted bird and place it in the bowl of your pressure cooker.

If you are like me, and was too busy to cook yet another recipe immediately after the holidays, you can put your turkey carcass in the freezer and make this turkey bone broth whenever the time feels right. If using a frozen turkey carcass for this bone broth, make sure to defrost it and break it apart before placing it in the bowl of your pressure cooker.

One optional ingredient for turkey bone broth: the giblets. When you roasted the bird, there were probably several items within the cavity – the neck, the heart, the gizzard, and the liver. If you threw them away, that’s fine. If you happened to keep them for stock, you are welcome to add most of them; it will add to the turkey bone broth’s richness. However, do not add the turkey liver. Due to the high concentration of iron and other metabolites, the liver will give your turkey bone broth a bitter flavor.

Once all of your turkey parts are in the bowl of your Instant Pot, add the bay leaves, salt, and apple cider vinegar, and cover with water. While you are welcome fill the Instant Pot to the “max fill” line, I recommend limiting the water to 8 cups for optimal collagen distribution. I’ve added closer to 10-12 cups of water in the past, and it resulted in a more watery broth that never gelled completely.

Once all of the ingredients are in your Instant Pot, seal the lid and set to “high pressure”. Cook for 2 hours and allow to natural release. If you want to make this turkey bone broth in a slow cooker instead, you can cook it on “low” for 24-48 hours.

After the Instant Pot has naturally released its pressure, open the lid. Strain out the solid ingredients from the stock using a mesh sieve or colander. Allow the broth to cool, ideally in wide glass containers.

Once the leftover turkey bone broth has cooled completely, remove the film of fat that has collected on the top of each jar. You can discard this fat, or you can save it in the refrigerator to use when cooking.

The cooled Instant Pot turkey bone broth should have a visible gel-like texture. This comes from the collagen of the turkey bones. Collagen is a crucial component of bone and muscle tissue, and it has a number of health benefits.

A mason jar sits on a wooden surface. It is filled with turkey bone broth, made using Thanksgiving or Christmas leftovers. A spoon holding some of the turkey bone broth is hovering over the jar; this lets you see that the texture of the bone broth is slightly gel-like.

Store your turkey bone broth in labeled zip top bags, Pyrex bowls, or mason jars. If freezing this stock, be sure to leave extra room at the top of each container, as the liquid will expand as it freezes. You could also pour cooled turkey bone broth into ice cube trays, if you only wanted to cook with a small amount at a time.

I hope you enjoyed this turkey bone broth recipe! If you make it at home, feel free to tag any pictures on social media with @WhiskAverseBaking, or leave a message in the comments below. You can also click “Pin Recipe” to save this for when you need a Thanksgiving leftovers recipe. 🙂