What To Do W/Leftovers

“These things are good if you ran out of gravy and can't do Thanksgiving dinner over the next day.

Mashed potatoes, simple, potato pancakes.

Turkey bones, simple answer, soup by using the bones. Make as you would chicken soup.

Turkey meat, make panini sandwiches. Take firm slice bread, put mayo, turkey, salt, pepper w/a slice of your favorite cheese like swiss or jarlsburg etc. Brush both sides on the outside of the sandwich with olive oil and pan fry, and you have yourself a panini. It should be cooked slow enough to melt the cheese.

Another one, make turkey like you would chicken salad mashed up with mayo, onion and celery to put on a roll.

Then of course there is the turkey, mayo and bacon if nothing else is appealing.”

“What? Did everyone eat their whole turkey in one day, lol:) I have a whole side+ left over. I bought a 13.5 Butterball for me and hubby and Capri (my chihuahua).

They sell these tiny plastic pop up timers you stick in the thickest part of the breast of the turkey that make cooking turkeys fool proof. I had never seen them before but used it this year and it worked out great.”

“We did a smoked turkey second year in a row. Love them! They are small too-so they feed everyone and give 1-2 leftover meals :-)
We are about out now! Dang! Oh well..there is Christmas ;-)”

“invite friends over for dinner.
worked for us LOL”

“Leftovers? You mean your not suppose to eat the entire bird in one sitting?”

“Luber, eating the turkey in one sitting is why people may only have it once a year. The technical name for it is "turkey burnout". Okay, so I made that up, but it still applies:)”

“really... I always thought it was just a really big pheasant under glass kind of thing :)

Perhaps you should deep fry it instead - very tasty that way. Sure helps prevent burn out. and a favorite snack is the mid summer leg slow cooked in the microwave.

Actually eating the whole thang may be why I gain so much this time of year, or it could be all the pies and so on :)”

“Lumber, I like it baked because the flavor from the bacon I drape over the top filters down into the breast and that's the part I eat.

Smoking the turkey sounds kind of interesting where it adds flavor where frying doesn't seem to do that, but I hear those fried turkeys come out very tender.

What do people do with all that leftover oil? It's peanut oil right? I would think the juices from the turkey and putting meat in oil would taint the oil where it would have to be thrown out and from what I saw in the store, it costs a lot for peanut oil to cook a decent size turkey.

I actually have a turkey pot w/a stove under it w/a timer, but my husband bought it to cook the dungeness crab he catches in it outside. In a way it doesn't matter. When he eats the crab, it still sinks up the kitchen. Salmon really stinks when he poaches it. You have to open up every window and door in the house.”

“I'm thinking of making one serving turkey pot pies with turkey, cooked carrots, and sauteed onion and celery. Peas and potatoes would be good, too, but I'm too lazy to drive to the store. Roll out the pie dough, put in a scoop of meat and vegies, fold the pie dough over the top and bake. Seems easy to freeze and send home with our son when he heads back to college tomorrow. Sort of the Thanksgiving starving student solution.”

“wannabp, I saw a cooking show making turkey pot pies. I like the chicken ones, but since I'm not a big meat/poultry eater, I really just like the crust:)

Don't you have any other veggies in the house even if they are not the conventional ones you would put in a pie that your son would like, maybe corn?

I saw some cookies shows make things I did not list, because I did not like them like turkey bolognese, turkey panini w/stuffing, cranberry sauce and basically the whole turkey meal in a sandwich using Italian bread and buttering each side and browning it. It looked gross, maybe because I don't like cranberry sauce and it just looked sloppy.”

“Deep frying at 350 kills anything nasty so you have several options....

toss it
strain it and store at room temp - could get nasty...
strain and freeze it (if you have the room)

oh and yes its peanut oil. it does seem to make almost any turkey very tender. The skin get seered closed in the first few seconds so the juices stay in and the oil stays out.....”

“LH, if you haven't done a smoked turkey, they are the best. Synchro got me hooked after we met.
That and all you do is reheat them! No cooking involved..whoo-hoo!
Moist, tasty and smaller so not so much left overs...”

“LH, I opted out of the turkey pot pie. Instead, I sauteed onions, celery, and fresh sage in butter, added shredded turkey and the tiny bit of leftover gravy we had. Then, I made a whole wheat biscuit dough and put the turkey mixture between two layers of biscuit, pinched the layers together, and baked the whole thing. Sort of like a piroshki, but with quick bread. We had it for breakfast, and it was a success, so the extra goes home with our son. It would be a great sandwich for a cold-day hike.”

“Wannabp... that sounds yummy!

I didn't cook (went to relatives' houses) so my cupboards are bare...
Was trying to see if I might be able to make a pizza using biscuit dough... Might try making something like you mentioned, but with pizza and chicken filling instead...
I'm getting hungry!”

“pink, I use a frozen bread dough called Rhoades or Rhodes. It comes with 5 loaves of frozen bread loaves for under $5. You can use them for pizza, calzones, etc. You just defrost them and let them rise.

You can also get good fresh dough from your bakery. Just ask for bread dough. You can use semolina that they use also. It's just the same as pizza dough. I've even gotten pizza dough from my pizzeria in NY to make pizza with.”

“Pink, the biscuit recipe is so simple that I take it bping. I combine the flour, baking powder, and salt with powdered milk before I go. Once there, I add oil to the bag, scrunch it in, add water, scrunch some more, then spoon dough into my skillet and fry the biscuits. Great with that vacuum-packed bacon. I don't eat bacon at home, but on a cold morning outside, it's great. This is good for a short trip, too much fuel and weight for a long trip.

LH, you're inspiring me. I might make some basic bread dough, roll it out for pizzas, and freeze it for quick meals. I never thought of doing that.”

“I bring the leftovers in to work. Turkey, ham and stuffing this year. I also bring some paper plates and plastic forks so that by the end of lunch time today, all the leftover food will be gone.”

“The popular thing with my family this year was making somebody else take them. Either leave them at somebody else's house or graciously push them into the hands of your visitors on their way out the door.

I ended up with nothing left over but pumpkin pie. Woo hoo!”

“Had Gobbler sandwiches for dinner last night. Turkey, mashed potatoes, yams, stuffing, cranberry sauce, and mozzarella cheese on a sub roll and then baked in the oven for 10 minutes.”

“Tahoe, that's a good idea.........but I want to eat my leftovers myself. Sheesh, am I selfish or what?

Last night, I made whole wheat scones with fresh cranberries, orange zest and raisins, just sort of adapted a recipe to what was around. They came out really good.”

“All the food is gone, and somebody even washed the containers I brought the food in.
As a side note, it is snowing now here in Reno, and during lunch I went ice skating at the new City of Reno skating rink.”

“wannabp, when you make a marinara sauce if you make your own, make enough for a few pizzas and separate them in containers, one for each pie. A great way to do this is to make a lot of marinara sauce, then use a laddle to spoon it on the pizza and count each laddle full you use and then freeze that same amount in each container for later use. It's so easy then to just defrost the dough and sauce.”

“Why is my post in a box? Anyway, if you have turkey leftover that has not been frozen when it was fresh, cease and desist in making anymore recipes with it, LMAO!!!!

I also used the leftover gravy to put over white rice and beans.”

“turkey ala king is my favorite...like a pot pie only it's cream based and instead of a crust you serve it over biscuits or toast”

“Well, my "biscuit pizza" was okay... I used a Martha White instant biscuit mix (just add milk-- or in my case, powdered milk & water)....

BUT, I learned not to use a pizza pan with holes next time... the biscuit dough squished through it, so it was hard to get out of the pan... :-) It was also very soft compared to regular pizza dough, so I think it would definitely work better on a cookie sheet vs. a pizza pan!

:-)

The dough was a bit soft--it tasted okay, though!”

“pink, if you mean the dough was not crisp on the bottom, crank up the oven and put the pizza on the bottom for a short time so it will hopefully brown the bottom without cooking the mozzarella off the pizza. I hate brown overcooked mozzarella on pizza.

I use my regular pan that I would cook a whole chicken in or bake anything else in for the pizza. There is no rule that the pizza has to be round, and I especially like the Sicillian slices which are thicker and made in pizzerias in square pans and that's what I make.”

“LH, good idea for freezing the pizza sauce.”

“I but the Rhodes dough but it's hard to find the whole wheat around here, but I can get it in Wisconsin. I use it to make family for my kids sandwiches for school when I am too lazy to make the dough myself. It's very, very convenient and the bread is quite good.”

“Jimmy, I didn't even know Rhodes made whole wheat. It's very convenient to pull out a frozen loaf for pizza and I use their "quick thaw" method, so I can make it on the spur of the moment and not have to wait 6 hours for it to rise. You have to put it in a oven that was preheated to about 200 degrees and then turned off with a pan of boiling water under the dough which would be on the rack above it in a dish.

wannabp, oh yeah, I always make pizza sauce in quantity, maybe 3 extra containers and spaghetti sauce gets made in a mega huge pot especially since I put so much meat in it, so it displaces the sauce. I put in a roast beef, pork loin and meatloaf. Sometimes I use two pots and remove the meat at the end to combine the sauce in the two pots since one pot may have the roast beef and one may have the pork loin and meatloaf. It makes he flavor better.”

“I have only seen it in Pick-n-Saves in Wisconsin. I buy it and take it back to Illinois. The manager of the freezer section of my grocery store here in Illionois says he can't get it. Probably something Rhodes does in terms of distribution but I have no idea why. I am 100% sure it's Rhodes.”

“Jimmy san, I think the thing is that there are so many products out there and so many brands, though there may not be other frozen wheat bread available, that they pick and choose what they think will sell. I think whole wheat would be a big seller, but then again, I heard this Dr. Weil who deals with nutrition say whole wheat is not really as good as people think for your health over white bread. He says people need to eat whole grain breads. He should tell that to Asians that eat white rice with practically every meal when brown rice is supposed to be so much better, but the Asians are supposed to be healthier, so I'm eating my white rice and white bread or rather, potato bread.”

“I just like the way it tastes, esp toasted. We eat both kinds of rice, esp Basmati and Jasmine rice which the kids eat like candy. I like the texture of the brown rice, kind of chewy. My wife is the same way. The kids don't care for it as much. We all love potato bread. I don't make it. I buy it generally as rolls for dinner. Nobody in my house is malnourished. We eat a huge variety of foods. I tend to not worry about such things. Then again I drank whole milk when I got married and my wife had to wean me to skim milk. I went along with it even though I still like a little milkfat in my milk. I'll buy 1% once in a while and the kids think it's the greatest. If I give them whole milk they think it's a milkshake. Funny.”

“Jimmy san, once I changed to skim milk, I couldn't go back. Whole milk tastes too rich to me now.

I really need to branch out. I've never had brown rice, basmati or jasmine. Jasmine sound like it may be too scented, but brown and basmati sound good. I put rice in home made chicken soup, or put some soy sauce on it, or a tab of butter with some grated Italian romano cheese as well as eating it w/Asian food in general.”