Tasty Ways to Repurpose All the Thanksgiving Leftovers
Leftovers are prepped ingredients, ready for their next dish
I was on NPR’s Morning Edition with some of these tips. Go here to listen.
Thanksgiving leftovers are one of the best parts of the holiday. Yet, this year, Americans will waste nearly 312 million pounds of food—608 million dollars’ worth—according to ReFed.
The following recipes and ideas will help you enjoy all your leftovers, save money and keep planet-heating food out of the waste stream.
Turkey
I think even vegans would agree that when people cook a turkey, none of it should go to waste. Here are just some ideas to eat every bite:
Turkey pot pie. This recipe from Bon Appétit calls for leftover vegetables, turkey and gravy. But you could also top it with leftover mashed potatoes or leftover stuffing.
Turkey soup. Here is my adaptable, clear-out-the-fridge soup recipe.
Turkey Tetrazzini. My daughter MK has made the TT recipe from The Joy of Cooking many times. I found it online here at Sunset Magazine.
Turkey a la king. Serve this creamed turkey over leftover split biscuits, toast or rice. Here is a recipe from NYT Cooking. It would be great on sourdough biscuits!
Turkey shepherd’s pie. Sauté a chopped onion and sliced mushrooms. Stir in chopped turkey and gravy. Spread this mixture in the bottom of a glass dish (the size depends on the amount of leftovers). Add a layer of leftover green beans, carrots or brussels sprouts. Top with leftover mashed potatoes. Cook until the mashed potatoes are golden.
Turkey pitas. Fill homemade pita bread with turkey, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, stuffing and green beans.
Turkey bones
After you’ve removed every last morsel of turkey from the carcass, make turkey stock with it. The bones will become very soft after several hours of simmering, at which point you could make this doggy treat with them.
Carby sides
Stuffing
This turkey soup recipe calls for stuffing dumplings. For the dumplings, you need only stuffing, flour, eggs and baking powder. What a brilliant idea! I am making these on Friday if we have any stuffing left.
Leftover rolls and bread
Day-old bread makes wonderful bread pudding. Or make breadcrumbs by running very dry bread through a food processor or grating them by hand with a grater. Add them to veggie burgers or sprinkle them on macaroni and cheese before baking. Or store them in the freezer to use later.
Macaroni and cheese
Macaroni and cheese pie sounds completely decadent—and delicious. Fill a par-baked pie shell with leftover macaroni and cheese and bake it. You don’t need to bake the filled pie for very long. Go here for a single-shell, semolina pastry recipe.
Mashed potatoes
Aside from simply reheating them along with other Thanksgiving leftovers, my hands-down favorite way to repurpose mashed potatoes is to bake potato bread with them. Potatoes and bread, all in one bite! Here is my recipe for sourdough potato focaccia. And these Amish rolls from King Arthur flour look fabulous. (You’ll want to reduce the salt a bit due to the salt in the leftover mashed potatoes.)
Baked potatoes
My siblings and I loved the home fries our mom made with leftover baked potatoes. Heat oil or a combo of oil and butter in a skillet over medium-high heat. (If you use cast iron, you’ll conveniently layer more seasoning onto the pan as you cook.) Add the diced baked potatoes, sprinkle on salt, stir often until browned and serve hot. Sprinkle homemade vinegar on top (more on that later).
Vegetables and fruit
Mashed sweet potatoes
This sweet potato pie recipe calls for 2¾ cups of mashed sweet potatoes. If you don’t quite have that much, you could scale the recipe down and make tarts with leftover pastry.
Pumpkin purée
I cook sugar pie pumpkins in my oven or in my pressure cooker (in 8 minutes!) to make purée. The flavor is worth the extra effort. Since I already have my equipment out, I like to cook a couple of pumpkins so I’ll have extra purée for:
More pumpkin pie
Pumpkin soup
Roasted, sautéed or steamed vegetables
In addition to some of the previous ideas, soup made with leftover cooked vegetables and leftover broth comes together quickly. Combine, season and if desired and purée for a meal in minutes. Freeze some to extend the shelf-life of your leftovers for a few months! Or, make a quick frittata with those prepped vegetables. Find the frittata recipe here.
Leftover salad
Dressed salad has a short shelf-life. If you do dress it, after dinner, before it goes limp and sad, whir it up in a blender with broth and adjust the seasoning for a sauce or soup. If you don’t dress it, you basically have a bowl of chopped fresh vegetables you can make almost anything with.
Fruit salad
Give fruit salad a second life in a fruit crumble. Spread the fruit in a baking dish, sprinkle on a crumble topping and bake. Go here for an adaptable crumble recipe.
Cranberry sauce
Scoop a couple of spoonfuls of leftover cranberry sauce into a small glass jar and top it with yogurt for fruit-bottom yogurt. So yummy! Or use leftover cranberry sauce to fill jam thumbprint cookies. A spoonful on the side of dal adds a hint of sweetness.
Dessert
I doubt leftover desserts go to waste often. But just in case…
Pumpkin pie
If for some reason the pumpkin pie doesn’t vanish, try his leftover pumpkin pie casserole from Oh She Glows.
Baked goodies that aren’t pie
Freeze leftover cookies, brownies, cake, cupcakes and so on to enjoy later when you crave something sweet.
Wine
Leftover wine does happen.
If you have a mother of vinegar (MOV), you probably already know how to make this. If you don’t have a MOV, in a wide-mouth jar, stir 1 cup of wine (any type) vigorously for a couple of minutes to help remove sulfites (they can affect the fermentation). Stir in 3 tablespoons of Bragg’s apple cider vinegar. You must use apple cider vinegar with the live mother. Cover the jar securely with a cloth to keep out nasties. Wait. It’s ready when it tastes like vinegar, in about a month (depending on your kitchen’s temperature).
If you see a blob forming on the vinegar that resembles a jellyfish, congratulations. That is a MOV. Think of a name. To make more vinegar, use this solid mother instead of the Bragg’s. Go here for instructions on making wine vinegar.
Ask your guests to bring a container for taking home leftovers
Or give them each a reusable container to fill. You’ll deal with a big pile of leftovers all at once and your guests will enjoy their second Thanksgiving dinner the next day.
Happy Thanksgiving to all who celebrate!
