You know what’s as important as choosing the right Thanksgiving recipes? Choosing the right recipes for using up your Thanksgiving leftovers. From recreating your Thanksgiving dinner glory with a twist to making something entirely new out of what manages to not get eaten on the night of your holiday feast, these Thanksgiving leftovers recipes will not disappoint.
Related: 9 mouthwatering Thanksgiving leftovers recipes that prove turkey is better the second time around.
If you’ve had enough of traditional Thanksgiving flavors, use your leftover turkey to make these Healthy Creamy Turkey Enchiladas at Muy Delish (above). They look delicious and, if you ask me, can even stand a little mashed potatoes in the stuffing as well. I promise: potatoes go great with salsa verde and you can get rid of some of those too!
One of the great things about this Thanksgiving Cobb Salad at Girl in the Little Red Kitchen is that it can help you use up nearly anything you have leftover. The salad dressing even calls for cranberry sauce. Genius! Play with this one: It’s a really adaptable recipe.
Turkey soup is a gimme, but if you ask me,traditional cream of turkey soup is so heavy. Instead, give this Peruvian Cilantro and Turkey Soup (Aguadito de Cava) at The Little Ferraro Kitchen a try. I know that cilantro is polarizing, but if you’re a fan like me, this is sure to be a slam dunk.
One more twist on turkey soup, this time one that pulls from my personal roots: Turkey Avgolemono Soup at Running to the Kitchen. If you’ve never made Avgolemono, it’s a lemony Greek-style soup that gets it’s richness from whipped egg, not cream, and it’s totally delicious. If you make this with your leftover turkey, I promise you’ll be hooked. Then you’ll know how to make it with chicken — from scratch or with leftover store-bought rotisserie — all winter long.
Soup is not the only way! Take on a kitchen project with family this long weekend and make homemade pizza dough (or just grab some at your local pizzeria) and make this BBQ Turkey Pizza at White on Rice Couple. This is especially great if you have tweens and teens in the house, or maybe a bunch of college kids who have descended upon your home for the long weekend.
Once Thanksgiving is over, I’m done with traditional holiday flavors, but get that not everyone feels the same. If you want to keep the classic turkey day flavors going, we’ve got recipes for you too, starting with these Leftover Thanksgiving Stuffing Waffles at Shared Appetite. It’s a pretty genius way to put all of your holiday dinner elements back together again, and everything is better with an egg on it. Chris suggest this for breakfast, which yes, but there’s no saying that this can’t make a killer dinner too.
If you like the sound of those waffles, but want to skip the egg for something more strictly lunch or dinner, this Stuffing Crust Turkey Potpie recipe at Taste of Home is the way to go. If you don’t have quite enough to make a full recipe, maybe make a mini-pie or two for lunch…just for yourself. Sounds pretty heavenly.
If you find yourself with mostly stuffing left over, I love the idea of turning it into mini stratas using a muffin tray like in this recipe for Sausage, Fennel, and Gruyere Miniature Egg Stratas at Strawberryplum. The recipe gives directions for making a stuffing from scratch, which will not be neccessary, but you can add some elements and adapt the general idea. So smart and the perfect post-Thanksgiving brunch.
If you have a mountain of mash leftover (not sure how that could be, but I suppose stranger things have happened), you’ll want to whip out the waffle maker to make these Mashed Potato Waffles at Hilah Cooking. Yes, she adds more cheese, more milk, and more other good stuff to mashed potatoes, and that’s why this recipe is so good. Trust, Hilah. We do. She never steers us wrong.
