Turkey soup

[petrea_mitchell]

It was lately made clear to me that I need a modest reduction in my salt intake, and the easiest target was my weekday sandwich. A few slices of cured meat plus a slice of cheese plus bread turns out to be rather a lot of salt.

So I had the idea of making large batches of soup and then freezing them in individual portions. Still convenient, still tasty, and as a bonus I can try out some recipes I've been wanting to try since forever. Like this one from last week:

2 cups cubed pre-cooked turkey breast
5 cups no-salt-added chicken broth (since the turkey breast had the right amount of salt already)
1 sweet potato, peeled and chopped
1 parsnip, ditto
1 turnip, ditto
2 carrots, ditto
1 onion, ditto
1 teaspoon dried thyme

The local farmers' market starts up at the beginning of February, so I was able to find parsnips, onions, and carrots there. The local mega-supermarket had the rest.

This was my first time cooking with sweet potatoes. My mom likes baked yams, but I found them disgusting as a kid. At the supermarket, I was confronted with two labeled varieties with no information about which might work best for a given purpose, so I defaulted to getting the more brightly colored one (because I am secretly still six years old). When I got home and decided to look at the general information on sweet potatoes in Fannie Farmer, I discovered I had actually gotten the hated yams. But chopped up and cooked in soup, they're okay!

I think I have cooked a parsnip before, but I didn't remember anything about a peeled one smelling like fancy soap.

The smell of thyme was so powerful after adding it that I was afraid it was going to overwhelm everything else, but the actual taste balanced out fine. Root vegetables have more flavor than I ever realized. Definitely making this one again.

Comments

Ittsa canard?

[lsanderson]

I believe the sweet potato/yam thing is a canard, and we have only one available unless you really, really, really hunt it out in fairyland, but it is early here in Mandalay, and I am too lazy to google it.

Re: Ittsa canard?

[petrea_mitchell]

According to Fannie Farmer, a sweet potato which is red or orange is also a yam, but still a sweet potato. Also the whitish ones are allegedly drier and less sweet than the yams. I don't know how much of a difference it would make in this case, but now I want to try the other kind and see.

Re: Ittsa canard?

[lsanderson]

https://www.bonappetit.com/story/difference-between-sweet-potato-and-yam

Re: Ittsa canard?

[petrea_mitchell]

Thanks, I'd never heard of purple sweet potatoes before. I got to wondering if the Okinawan potatoes were actually another name for taro, but the answer appears to be no.

Re: Ittsa canard?

[lsanderson]

The purple sweet potatoes make the rest taste like sour grapes. Asian stores often have them, but they are white until cooked.

[athenais]

I quite like yam/sweet potatoes when fried or boiled. Not a fan of them merely baked. I hope your salt reduction works well!

[joseph_teller]

Sweet Potatoes are a regular part of our diet in the Fall/Winter as I can't do regular potatoes under my diabetic guidelines (Sweet potatoes are higher in fiber, and lower in cholesterol, making them a much slower starch that has less effect on blood sugar when baked or made in to a soup ingredient).