Thanksgiving Leftover
66 recipes found
Turkey Soup With Lime and Chile
After the overindulgence that comes with Thanksgiving, you might want to try something a little lighter and brighter with your leftover meat. This is a version of sopa de lima, the restorative and delicious Mexican soup popular in the Yucatán. It is usually made with chicken and a local lime, but turkey and supermarket lime are a magical, timely substitute.
Potato, Salmon and Spinach Patties With Garlicky Dill Cream
These patties were inspired by a trip to a Southern diner with a memorable salmon patty on the menu. The secret to their soft and creamy texture? Mashed potatoes, of course. So here is a graceful dish that gives you a way to use leftover mashed potatoes by combining them with salmon and spinach and giving them a bread-crumb coating. They end up golden and crunchy and absolutely bursting with salmon.
Turkey Hash With Brussels Sprouts and Parsnips
Though it’s derived from a French word that means chopped, hash is quintessentially American. It’s most often made with roasted or boiled meat (sometimes corned beef) and potatoes, cut into cubes and fried into a crisp-bottomed cake. Invariably, it’s then topped with an egg, poached or fried. This one, made with roast turkey, makes good use of holiday leftovers. Scallions and jalapeño lend it brightness.
Turkey and Wild Rice Salad
I often make a wild rice salad for Thanksgiving; with leftover turkey, it lasts for several days afterward. It’s one of my favorite post-Thanksgiving meals. If you have other vegetables on hand, add them to the salad, too.
Turkey Mole Verde
A few things may come to mind when thinking of mole: chocolate, long ingredient lists and even longer cooking directions. But mole verde is a bit of an exception. This version comes together in about an hour, combining a pumpkin-and-sesame-seed paste with a sauce built from tomatillos, chard, romaine and jalapeños. Cooked turkey simmers in sauce just long enough to pick up some of the green flavors. For balance, serve with white rice and corn tortillas.
Turkey Pita With Cabbage, Cucumbers and Tahini Dressing
This shawarma-like pulled turkey sandwich, using Thanksgiving leftovers, is a great alternative to the mayo-and-cranberry-sauce fallback. Or it can be made any time of year with roast turkey, chicken or lamb.
Spinach and Turkey Salad
Turkey or chicken transforms this classic spinach salad (minus the bacon) into a light main dish, welcome after Thanksgiving and before the rest of the holiday season feasting begins.
Post-Thanksgiving Cobb Salad
The classic California Cobb salad is a composed salad made with chicken breast, lettuce, avocado, tomatoes, chopped hard-boiled eggs, bacon, and blue cheese. It should never be a jumble: the elements are arranged on a platter or in a wide bowl side by side, then dressed, and it’s up to the diner to mix them together. This version dispenses with the bacon and reduces the amount of Roquefort or blue cheese called for in the traditional Cobb. Tomatoes are not in season so I have eliminated them, too, and replaced them with grated carrots. Chopped toasted almonds, which can be salted if you can handle it, can stand in for the bacon.
Stir-Fried Turkey and Brussels Sprouts
A stir-fry is always a great way to use a little bit of leftover meat with a lot of vegetables. This one is quickly accomplished because the turkey is already cooked and it’s thrown into the colorful, gingery mix at the last minute. Once you add the turkey it’s important to stir-fry only long enough to heat the turkey through or it will be dry and stringy. If you are making this just after Thanksgiving and you happen to have leftover Brussels sprouts too, then you can reduce the cooking time even more, adding them along with the turkey after you’ve stir-fried the red peppers, and just stir-frying to heat through.
Thanksgiving Sandwich
Like many restaurant workers toiling in Las Vegas, Eric Klein, the executive chef at Spago, spends Thanksgiving Day on the line, dishing out turkey and trimmings to vacationing high rollers. Time with family and friends comes after the holiday. While the rest of the city combs shopping arcades for Black Friday deals, he’s making magic with the leftovers. One of his favorites is this play on a French dip sandwich. Shredded turkey stands in for the usual beef, while gravy, thinned out to make it brothlike, replaces the jus for dipping. To this he adds the requisite leftover stuffing, and he folds the cranberry sauce into a fragrant and creamy aioli. He likes to crumble mild blue cheese over the top of his sandwich for extra pizazz, but feel free to leave it out if you’re feeling more traditional.
Turkey and Noodles
This comforting family recipe belongs to Whitney Reynolds, a New Yorker with roots in Tennessee. The Reynolds family traditionally serves the dish of thickened turkey broth and noodle-shaped dumplings as a side at Thanksgiving dinner, next to the roasted bird and mashed potatoes. The yolk-rich noodles, rolled and cut with a knife, are dried out for some hours at room temperature. That way, they become strong enough to withstand a long boil during which they soak up the flavors of the roasted turkey stock, going tender and sticky-edged. The stock reduces, until it's somewhere between soup and a thick, shining gravy. Noodle purists would never put turkey meat in the dish, but the day after Thanksgiving, when there's often a little left over, it's hard to imagine a better place for it to end up. Consider it optional.
Mashed Potato and Broccoli Raab Pancakes
A delicious way to use mashed potatoes, whether they be leftovers or freshly mashed. Use leftover mashed potatoes from Thanksgiving for these, or just steam up some potatoes and mash (that is what the nutritional values here are based on, not on your buttery leftover Thanksgiving mashed potatoes). Whichever way you go, the mixture is very quickly thrown together.
Chicken Salad With Walnuts and Grapes
A pile of this chicken salad plopped on top of a bed of greens or tucked between two slices of good bread would make a most excellent lunch or light supper. It starts with a quick dressing made of mayonnaise, chopped chives, parsley and tarragon and the juice and zest of a lemon. Combine the dressing with chopped, cooked chicken (for ease, use supermarket rotisserie chicken or Thanksgiving turkey leftovers), red grapes, red onion, celery and walnuts. It's a delightful and deeply satisfying combination of flavors (sweet, salty, tangy) and textures (cold, crunchy, juicy) that's almost impossible to stop eating.
Turkey Enchiladas With Mole Sauce
Garlic Broth With Basmati Rice, Turkey and Squash
This is the kind of soup you can whip up on a whim if you have garlic on hand and either summer or winter squash. You can make a vegetarian version of the soup just by eliminating the turkey. Otherwise it is one more healthy option for your Thanksgiving leftovers. When I made the soup the first time I used a lingering half-zucchini that I found in my sister’s refrigerator. At this time of year you might be more likely to have winter squash on hand. Either will work. Winter squash will take 10 to 15 minutes longer to cook.
Creamed Turkey With Sweet Potato Biscuits
Though this saucy, savory creamed turkey is designed for using Thanksgiving leftovers, it can be made any time of year. It’s a dish that fans of biscuits and gravy will appreciate. These biscuits are a good way to use up leftover sweet potato (or you could bake sweet potatoes for this purpose), but the turkey would also be delicious with plain freshly baked fluffy buttermilk biscuits.
Turkey Biryani
Biryani is a natural choice for Thanksgiving leftovers. With broth made from the turkey carcass and a pile of leg meat (use the white meat for sandwiches), all that is necessary is a handful of spices and some good basmati rice. If you don’t have leftovers, the recipe here can be prepared with fresh turkey legs. You can make it completely vegetarian if you wish, using roasted squash, potatoes or cauliflower, and adding legumes or green peas.
Sweet Potato and Toasted Pecan Grilled Cheese
Because sweet potatoes are a staple of most Thanksgiving tables, Chef Mauro felt it was important to make them part of a leftover sandwich. The combination of melted cheese, toasted pecans and mashed sweet potatoes creates a gooey treat that will quickly become a favorite holiday tradition.