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Turkey in the Slaw and Other Leftovers
What do you do with your Thanksgiving leftovers? I imagine some of you get quite creative.
It’s possible desperation, not creativity, inspired the day’s menu presented below, but for your delectation, I thought I’d share it:
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Menu:
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Breakfast:
Popcorn and Pie with Caramelized Cream
What it is:
What it says.
Why you eat it:
Because the family needs a breakfast taking near-zero preparation in order to get out the door on time. Plus, both popcorn and pie taste good with coffee. The cream is caramelized because someone topped the pumpkin pie this year with a thick layer of whipped-cream frosting, a layer which melted and browned when you warmed the pie slices in the oven. Popcorn, a classic New-World food, is a fitting addition to any Thanksgiving feast, and is probably better for you than many breakfast cereals — not that “better for you” is really operative when you’re starting the day with dessert.
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Lunch:
Thanksgiving Mashup
What it is:
Stuffing mashed with squash, sweet potato, gravy, chopped turkey and green beans.
Why you eat it:
Because even the cuisinier agrees that this year’s stuffing, while flavorful, turned out denser than plutonium and stickier than fly paper, so that mashing it with leftover squash and sweet potato actually lightens it. The gravy adds much-needed lubrication, while the chopped turkey and green beans complete the flavor profile — it’s an entire feast in every bite!
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Dinner:
Turkey in the Slaw
What it is:
Slaw veggies combined with shredded turkey, then tossed with your choice of slaw dressing — we mixed ranch and vinaigrette.
Why you eat it:
Because the post-Thanksgiving blizzard delayed your weekly trip to the grocery store, and you’ve used up nearly everything in the fridge but the Thanksgiving turkey shreds, a single packet of ranch dressing (acquired from heaven knows where), and a forlorn bag of undressed slaw. This salad, born of pure desperation, turns out to be surprisingly tasty.
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Dessert:
Chocolate-Covered Pineapple with Grape Kebabs
What it is:
Exactly that — fruit, on a stick, with some chocolate.
Why you eat it:
Because someone brought one of those Edible Arrangements for a Thanksgiving centerpiece, and eventually an Edible Arrangement ought to be eaten. Half the pineapple rounds, cut into decorative shapes, have been dipped in chocolate, a combination tastier than it might sound. Grape kebabs are apparently the baby’s-breath of the Edible Arrangement world, artfully filling out the arrangement without distracting the eye too much from… well… stuff like the chocolate-covered pineapple.
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Well, there you have it. An entire day’s worth of Thanksgiving leftovers. In truth, we had these leftover meals interspersed with other meals over the span of a few days, rather than packing the menu into one day of marathon leftover-eating. It did use up all our leftovers, though.
What have you done with yours?
Published in Humor
Our thanksgiving leftovers are a distant memory.
Alas, I have no such imagination. With the turkey, its turkey-n-swiss sandwiches at least once a day for a week or so. As for the rest of the fixings, its reheat and eat until such time as they become moderately unsafe to eat (a point in time which is not always obvious until intestinal disaster strikes).
I have about 3-4 sandwiches left before even I stop trusting the meat. And then I’ll stop … ahem … cold turkey.
One friend inadvertently made ultra-luxury dog chow out of his leftovers:
Recipe
Use turkey leftovers to make a delicious turkey-pot pie.
Leave pie on counter to cool.
Get called away by an errand.
Return to find an empty pie dish and some very happy dogs.
What leftovers? In our family, the kids get the leftovers. And there was next to no turkey left this year.
I made turkey tetrazzini last night. Husband raved over it. We didn’t have many leftovers, either, @thereticulator. Our crowd is a growing bunch.
Right now, our part of the family is “the kids”, I guess. So we got many of the leftovers — and were glad to, since we’re at a time when ready-made food is more appreciated than usual.
Turkey Garam Masala Curry: A fragrant and fairly mild curry (unless I sneak in some chillies).
Otherwise the kiddos pretty well wiped out the leftovers in the first 36 hours.
I usually make a shepherd’s pie with the leftovers – stuffing crust, turkey and veggies mixed with gravy, and topped with mashed potatoes. Or I make up lunch containers – meal in a dish.
Anything that doesn’t go in the pie goes in the soup pot. Bones, wings, stuff I put in the turkey instead of stuffing (at any given time – onions, oranges, lemons, apples, celery with tops, carrot tops – whatever I have around). Although I draw the line at the neck and giblets. My dad used the giblets for fish bait.
Turkey noodle soup.
Simmer the turkey carcass and bones with half an onion, a chopped up carrot and celery stalk, a couple of bay leaves and a dozen peppercorns for 3-4 hours. You may have to partially disassemble the carcass to properly cover it without using too much water. Cool enough so you don’t burn yourself and strain out the solids. Put back on stove and salt to taste. Bring back to boil and add egg noodles.
Turkey curry sounds wonderful.
Boil the neck and giblets for stock to soften the stuffing and to make the gravy.
It is. Turkey has a strong flavor compared to chicken (especially here where we’re using already-cooked turkey), but it does well with the curry while still retaining itself.
I fought the slaw and the slaw won.
Turkey mashed potato soup:
Pick turkey carcass fairly clean of meat, weigh meat and set aside in refrigerator.
Put carcass in large slow cooker.
Add about 2 cups of chopped carrots, 2 cups of celery, and a yellow onion.
I went with pepper, turmeric, oregano, and rosemary. [I went easy on the salt because I was going to add garlic mashed potatoes after completing cooking.]
Cover in water and cook on low for 8 hours.
Turn off slow cooker. Extract carcass carefully.
Pick any more meat off the bones. Weigh with rest of meat, then add back into the soup.
Add in 1 pound of garlic mashed potatoes (leftover). [I could see any number of variants on this.] Serve and store as desired.
I had already portioned out and frozen the left over mashed potatoes, so adding these back in at the end brought the temperature down to table serving level.
Mayo or vinegar based? Each offers a unique form of punishment.
You people are making me hungry. I might have to add some kind of flavorful seasoning to my turkey sandwich tonight.
One of our favorites for turkey leftovers is Turkey Mulligatawny. It not only makes great use of our leftover turkey, but gives us a good excuse to cook up the carcass for a turkey stock. We’re a curry-lovin’ family here at the C.U. Household.
Turkey quesadillas.
Potato pancakes from left over mash.
mostly sangwiches.
We had several people bring pumpkin pies so there was oodles of leftover pie. The next morning, the lovely Mrs E and I were awakened to noises from the kitchen. We found her brother, caught like a deer in the headlights, eating pumpkin pie and whipped cream with coffee for breakfast. It actually looked pretty good … so we joined him. That’s where the rest of the houseguests found us as the smell of coffee brought them in. It was pie for breakfast by popular acclaim
In Mrs.Pessimist’s Canadian family the pinacle of thanksgiving leftovers was turkey aspic which we called turkey jello. Turkey congealed in broth and gelatin and then spread over lettuce and mayonnaise. Can we all say Yum Yum ?
Microwave some leftover dressing in a soup plate, top with 2 poached eggs. My husband loves this for breakfast.
Yum — and hehe…
I’ve been known to sneak a little chile into pumpkin pie. Just a wee nip of heat. It adds a certain something — most people can’t guess what ;-P
My mom didn’t make the stuffing this year — but my mom’s stuffing uses the giblets, chopped real fine, and is simply heavenly.
Mom by her own admission isn’t a great cook, but stuffing’s one of the Things She Can Do.
I dunno about the neck, but in our house giblets are something of a treat. They’re chewy.
I read recently of others doing likewise – or else adding black pepper instead. The study of it was fascinating in that it let them back off the sugar to allow a more savory flavor to come through.
It begins with turkey sandwiches, becomes cream turkey, and always ends cold turkey.
Sometimes when I look at that title, I read it as “Turkey in the Slav…” It also helps that “w” is pronounced “v” in some languages.
My DNA test results suggest I may have more Slavic and less German ancestry than I had once thought. So yes, the turkey ended up in the Slav.
My mother would boil them (except the liver) with celery tops and a few seasonings then use the broth to add to the gravy drippings. Was pretty good. Oh, and the dog would get the gizzard and liver. Whoever was in the kitchen at the time got the heart. For some reason I never used them that way – tho I would saute the heart and eat it.
We eat them!
Ba-da-Bing!