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Left-Overs, Tips While Carving your Turkey

“When they are carving the turkey, I have a soup pot nearby, and I already have onion, celery and carrots in there. We throw the bones in, and then while we're having dinner and cleaning up, the pot is simmering on the stove.”

She only has to strain the broth and throw out the bones, and the next day she decides what to do with all that turkey stock – freeze it or use it for soup.

“That has been a real help to me,” she said. “I have not thrown out the carcass since I started doing it.”

Here are some other tips about handling leftovers:

• Don't put the whole turkey back in the refrigerator. Remove the stuffing, carve the meat from the bones, and wrap the stuffing and turkey separately. The idea is to cool the leftovers to below 40 degrees as quickly as possible to prevent bacteria from growing. Leftovers cool more quickly in shallow containers.
  
  Clingman takes things a step further by putting her turkey in the refrigerator unwrapped to cool, then taking it out and wrapping it. The meat cools faster without insulating wrapping.
  
  
• Use refrigerated turkey, stuffing or gravy within three days.
  
  
• If you plan to store leftovers longer, freeze them. Wrap them in heavy foil or freezer wrap or place them in freezer containers. Be sure the food is wrapped tightly. “With frost-free refrigerators, they are sucking moisture out of everything, so if you don't have something really well wrapped, it's going to dry out,” Clingman noted.
  
  
• For the best quality, consume frozen stuffing in about a month and turkey in two months. After that, the food is still safe to eat, Clingman said, but the quality will begin to decline.
  
  
• If you accidentally leave something perishable out for a long time, throw it out. “It may look good and taste good, but it could really make you sick,” Clingman said.
  
  

Sometimes, she said, the Talk-Line gets calls from people who have left an item out and are reluctant to toss it. “We have people who say, 'Just how sick would I get?' They feel bad about throwing something out. I wouldn't feel bad about it at all.”

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