What to do with Thanksgiving Leftovers

With Thanksgiving coming up, you might have a lot of food leftover! I always do the basic reheat or sandwiches, but there is so much more that you can do with these leftovers. This week we have just the blog for you. We’re doing a Thanksgiving leftover blog and we’ll take a look at a bunch of things you can do with your turkey leftovers.

The obvious things would be your cold turkey sandwich. You can make the basic with bread, lettuce, and lots of mayo. Or you can make a warm one with stuffing piled inside of it and cranberry sauce and gravy; really utilize all of the leftovers. You can even make a toasted hot turkey sandwich. I’ve done open faced ones on toasted bread with gravy poured on top or you can add some stuffing on that as well. Make it fancy and upgrade your bread (make it a panini or pita), but you really want to use what you have leftover from dinner; don’t add too much extras. I love making clubhouses with my fresh turkey. On toasted bread with lots of mayo, I layer on turkey, bacon, avocado, tomato, and a little lettuce and sometimes cheese. So divine!

Another popular thing to make with turkey leftovers is turkey pie. Buy a pie crust or make one. Mix some of your leftover veggies (bean, corn, carrots, and peas are the best) add in some chopped onions and celery and then pour in your leftover gravy with a bit of salt and pepper and any other flavours you like. You can decide how runny you want your pie filling to be. If you don’t have enough gravy left you can add in some water, chicken broth, or cream of chicken soup until it reaches the consistency you want. Pour the filling into one pie crust and then place another one on top and brush with some egg wash and put in a few slits on the top. Bake at 375 degrees for about 40 minutes or until golden and you can see the filling bubbling.

Pasta is always popular. You can make a tomato based sauce or rose and add turkey to it along with some veggies or you can make more of an alfredo sauce with turkey added to it or you can make a baked tetrazzini.

Soup is also a good way to use up your leftovers. You can make a turkey noodle soup with veggies and your turkey. You can even add in some mashed potatoes in. If you like a really hearty soup you can make a chowder as well.  

Other less obvious but creative things to make are waffles topped with turkey trimmings, mashed potato pizza, cranberry mixed in with your oatmeal/yogurt, turkey poutine, frittata, quiche, turkey dumplings, apple/pumpkin pie milkshakes, turkey and stuffing stuffed peppers, turkey lasagna, turkey roll ups, turkey nachos, turkey chilli, enchiladas, turkey egg rolls, turkey and veggie casserole, turkey and veggie Shepard’s pie, turkey hash...the recipes are endless! 

One recipe that really stood out to me was this turkey dinner in a biscuit.

https://www.bobbiskozykitchen.com/2015/12/turkey-dinner-in-biscuit.html

Take a look here for more ideas..

https://www.google.ca/search?q=thanksgiving+leftovers&rlz=1C1PRFC_enCA731CA731&oq=thanksgiving+leftovers&aqs=chrome.0.69i59j0l5.3423j0j8&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

Quebec - Poutine

This is going to be a yummy post. We’re gonna make poutine for our Friday night game night snack.

Poutine originated in Quebec in the 1950’s. A traditional poutine consists of medium thick French fries, fresh bite sized room temperature, curds, and brown thin gravy (usually a combination of chicken and beef).

There are so many poutine variations nowadays . Some people will add chives and bacon bits, pulled pork, sausage, chicken, and in some places, even caviar and truffles are put on top. 

We are going to make the classic poutine for you tonight and one with a little twist.

We’re keeping things simple and we have some straight cut frozen French fries that we are going to crisp up in the oven so that the outsides are nice and crunchy, but the inside will still be soft inside.

Next, we have some beef gravy that we are warming up and getting all of the lumps out of. For a quick poutine just defrost some leftover gravy like we are doing. You can also make your gravy from scratch; take a look at the links at the bottom of the page that we found with some poutine how tos.

Make sure to take your curds out of the fridge so that they can get to room temperature. Apparently room temperature is the ideal temperature to be adding your curds to your poutine. The warmth of the gravy and fries will soften them without melting them completely or leaving them too hard.

Layer your fries first on the plate/bowl, then add the curds, and then pour on the gravy. That’s a classic poutine.

http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2015/03/ultimate-perfect-poutine-fries-cheese-curds-gravy-recipe.html

https://www.seasonsandsuppers.ca/authentic-canadian-poutine-recipe/