Bathroom scales don’t lie. No matter how you may rationalize that homemade bread isn’t as fattening as store-bought stuff – therefore you can eat a bigger slice for toast with butter and jam– the scales simply tell it like it is. You eat more calories than you burn, and you’ll gain weight. Period.
Weighing every day, recording it and trying to eat sensibly – not on some super strict diet – allowed me to drop almost 50 pounds in a little over a year. Now, after the holidays, it’s time for me to get serious again and lose those last 10 pounds that have crept back on.
This new category in CvilleBuzz, “A Losing Proposition” highlights foods and dishes that taste good and are filling, but will help in a weight loss regimen.
Today, we’ll be winging it. Wings, that is. Turkey wings. They make great soup, and turkey and rice soup for lunch or dinner can help you drop a few pounds – IF – you can get the grease off the top of the soup.
If you’re cooking chicken, it’s relatively easy to pull the skin off for a healthier entrée. But turkeys are a different story. Turkeys like their skin and they hold on tight. It is almost impossible to pull turkey skin from a turkey wing before it’s cooked.
So it’s into the pot – skin and all – when you boil the turkey wings to make soup.
Once cooked, the skin peels off easily, but the grease and fat are now embedded in the soup.
The easy way to get the fat off after the soup stock has been cooked is to put the pot in the fridge or on the back porch until it gels with the fat on top, then scoop it off. But that’s a two-day deal and if you only have a day to cook your soup, we go to plan B.
First, let the pot cool down somewhat, so it’s not hot to the touch. Next, put a dozen or so ice cubes in the soup. For some reason, the fat particles cuddle up to the ice cubes and when you scoop out the ice, much of the fat goes with it. You can do his two or three times. For mop up duty, take a large metal spoon and put it in some ice-cold water. When you place the cold spoon on the top of the soup, the remaining fat will stick to it.
That’s how I get the grease (for the most art) out of our soup.
Here’s how I cook it.
Take two or three turkey wings, cut off the tip ends and discard. Next, in a pot of liquid (about 2/3 water and 1/3 chicken broth), add three stalks of celery, lots of Kosher salt and coarse pepper. Add the wings to the boiling concoction and cook for an hour or so, or until the meat is ready to fall off the bone. Remove the wings from the broth, and try to cool the pot as best you can before giving it the ice treatment.
With the skin removed, cut the turkey into bite size pieces, put it all back in the pot, add a bag of rice and cook another 20 minutes or so.
This is a great and filling meal for the winter months that will also help you lose weight.
Turkey Wing Soup
2 or 3 turkey wings
1-quart chicken broth
2 quarts water
3 stalks celery
1 bag quick cook rice
Salt and pepper to taste