At our house, turkey pot pie and turkey soup are both go-to dishes.
A few years ago, I was boning out a turkey carcass to make turkey pot pie - a big batch, so that we could bring a pot pie to friends for dinner the following night in addition to our own dinner (she'd had a stroke, and he was many things, but no cook, and our turn to bring them dinner on the church lady list was the next night). Somehow, I managed to cut my thumb. The tip of the small knife I was using had caught briefly on some rib bone or other, then released. If there is anything I know how to do (really know, as in wise hands, rather then a smart head), it's sharpen a knife. Maybe not all knives, since I still haven't found a method which provides an acceptable result for serrated knives, but a non-serrated knife will have a proper edge on it when I am satisfied that it is sharp and ready for use.
In any case, I cut my thumb pretty deeply. I don't know if the blade was actually stopped by the bone, though that was my perception at the time. Usually, I clot fairly well, and I know the tricks (direct pressure, elevate, pressure point, etc. - as a last resort, apply tourniquet to neck - I'm joking! I'm joking!). It refused to stop bleeding, no matter my Boy Scout tricks. My wife came home and decided to that a run to the ER (A&E for those of who speak English, rather than 'Murican) was in order. Several hours later, we returned home with a thumb which was no longer bleeding. I think my wife finished boning out the carcass the next afternoon, to mix the cubed meat with the vegetables and white gravy (made with a roux of turkey fat and flour), and put the pot pies together. My thumb never hurt (no stitches, but butterflies and some sort of pine sap adhesive - the doc decided that might work better than Super Glue, given the location and orientation of the cut, and the fact that I don't actual work for a living - as in, not much in the way of physical labor to earn my daily bread), but it did take quite a while to regain sensation in the distal portion of my thumb, beyond the gash.
I say all of this as a lead-in. We no longer cut meat from a poultry carcass to de-bone. Instead, we cook a bird in our Instant Pot pressure cooker. A bit of
water or, better, broth in the bottom, the wire rack to keep the parts mostly up off the bottom so that there is less risk of scorching, and the bird bits on top of that. If you want to add some garlic and herbs at that stage, that's fine, or you can just cook it down with whatever seasoning remains from the initial roasting to keep the flavors more neutral, depending on your intended use. You can do exactly the same thing with a stove top pressure cooker, or with some additional time, just simmering in a stock pot on the "back burner", but those will require a bit more attention, whereas the Instant Pot is like a heat seeking missile - fire and forget. After a couple of hours (usually around 45 minutes on high, with natural release and the "keep warm" setting seems to work pretty well), and time to cool after the lid is off, the bones can be picked clean by finger pressure alone - no sharp implement required. Though, if you want to cube up the meat once free of the structural elements, that can be done, of
course. You will need to pick carefully, since a lot of connective tissues break down, and many small bones will be more or less free floating. A lot of gelatin will cook down out of the carcass this way, as well, which makes for a richer and more nutritious broth.
I'm sure doing it this way is just catching up with the rest of the world, and what I ought to have been doing for the first half of my life, but if you haven't tried cooking down a bird frame this way, it is the easiest, most painless way of using "everything but the squeal" on a bird. Or, at least, the easiest I've yet to find - I'm still open to other suggestions. Cooking down chick peas for hummus has never been easier, either, with the same heat schedule.
I've picked up several stove top pressure cookers from thrift stores over the past four years (some given away, at least two here at the house), but haven't yet used one of them to cook down a bird, though I am confident it will work equally as well, even if it will require someone to be in or around the kitchen during the "at pressure" stage. Or maybe, I am just not yet very good at the careful regulation of temperature needed to hit the sweet spot - a bit of jiggle of the weight, but not too much. Another skill to hone - which is half the fun. Pressure cookers in general are fabulous if you live at elevation. We currently live at about 600 feet above mean sea level, so a pressure cooker is a mere convenience, but when I was a kid, we lived at around 6,000 feet - that's high
enough to appreciably lower the boiling point of water, and reduce cooking temperatures accordingly. A pressure cooker is a dandy method of altitude compensation - a turbo-charger for your cooking, as it were.
Anyway, turkey pot pie and turkey soup, with the turkey frame cooked down in a pressure cooker.
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