How to Prepare Thanksgiving Leftovers

Guide Note: This page will show you how to prepare Thanksgiving leftovers in a number of creative ways, and will also discuss how quickly the food should be stored and how long it'll keep.

Table of Contents:

Introduction

(Creative Commons photo by Iwona Erskine-Kellie)
(Creative Commons photo by Iwona Erskine-Kellie)
  • Thanksgiving dinner. A beloved family event overflowing with warm feelings and goodwill. A majestic celebration rife with ceremony and tradition. It's nice...really nice.
  • But hey, for lots of us it's just as much fun the day after (or perhaps later that night) when the pomp and circumstance goes out the window and you're free to rip open the fridge and
    tear into those tempting Thanksgiving leftovers like a hungry badger! If, that is, you've preserved your remaining bounty the right way...

Safely Store Your Leftovers

  • Mmm...yummy yummy salmonella! The word may not sound so horrible (is it salmon glazed with a vanilla cream sauce, per chance?), but it's actually a pesky strain of harmful bacteria that happily infiltrates Thanksgiving leftovers every year.
  • To avoid a bout of food poisoning this holiday season, there are three numbers to keep in mind. On WebMD, a clinical dietitian from Temple University Hospital cites the "2-2-4 formula."
    • 2 Hours: This is how long your food can sit out before you refrigerate or freeze it. And that's two hours after cooking, not after you've gone back for seconds, thirds and fourths.
    • 2 Inches: Cooling food quickly and evenly is the name of the game, so store your leftovers in containers that are shallow (shoot for two inches).
    • 4 Days: If you know you won't plow through all those leftover goodies by the end of the weekend, freeze 'em (they'll usually keep in the freezer for three to four months).
The smaller pieces, the better. (Creative Commons photo by Aidan Beanland)
The smaller pieces, the better. (Creative Commons photo by Aidan Beanland)

More Storage Tips

  1. Break up the bird. The meat will take too long to cool to safe temperatures if you throw the whole carcass in the fridge.
  2. Make sure the fridge is cool enough. A quarter of all home refrigerators are too warm; keep yours at 36 to 38 degrees to ensure your food will maintain a temperature of 40 degrees F or below.
  3. You can't see, smell or taste the bad stuff. Food that's gone bad usually looks and even tastes just fine.
  4. Nuking your food an extra 30 seconds ain't gonna cut it. Microwaves don't heat evenly, so expecting the extra cooking time to kill off bacteria is an inexact science at best.

Fun with Leftover Turkey

  • OK, so you've taken the proper precautions to store your food safely. Now, let's see what we can do with it! We'll start with a few ideas for that leftover turkey you preserved so immaculately after the initial feast.
  1. The turkey sandwich: Gotta start with the obvious leftover treat. The fixings included here can vary to your tastes, of course, but if you've never tried the classic Thanksgiving leftover turkey sandwich — that is, warm up the turkey, warm up some stuffing, and put it all between two slices of sturdy French bread you've slathered with cranberry sauce — you're missing out!
  2. Turkey soup: A close second on the list of ways to use up leftover turkey. One popular tactic calls for making turkey stock from what's left of the bird first, then making the soup by adding veggies, shredded turkey, maybe some rice and/or noodles, and whatever other herbs and seasonings you think might work. Turkey chili is also a great choice.
  3. Shepherd's pie: The turkey version of Shepherd's pie has become an after-holiday casserole favorite in many households. Here are some ideas from a couple of folks you may have heard of: Emeril Lagasse and Martha Stewart.

Fun with Leftover Cranberry Sauce

Vodka cran, baby! (Creative Commons photo by Paul Kist)
Vodka cran, baby! (Creative Commons photo by Paul Kist)
  • It may seem like the only role for a cranberry sauce comes once a year as a Thanksgiving turkey garnish, but not so!
  1. Mix it up with other ingredients to make a tangy cranberry-citrus sauce, a slightly tart cranberry mustard or mayonnaise, or a unique cranberry chutney or salsa.
  2. If you're over 21, you might try a few adult beverages mixed with cranberry sauce, like a cranberry vodka or a cranberry margarita — just don't try to outdo your Thanksgiving Day food hangover with a real one! (And if you do, check out Mahalo's Guide on How to Cure a Hangover.)
  3. Something a bit more conventional: the always-tasty cranberry muffins make for a nice, light, low-fat selection on the morning after Thanksgiving.

Fun with Leftover Potatoes

  • If there are any mashed potatoes you didn't manage to engulf with gravy and devour during your main Turkey Day feast, there are a few fun ways to use them up...and don't let those sweet potatoes go to waste, either.

Mashed Potato Ideas

  1. Any number of soups can be made with mashed potatoes, including a flavorful herbed potato soup and a similar "next-day potato giblet soup" that also makes use of leftover gravy.
  2. Broaden your breakfast-time horizons with a batch of more-savory-than-sweet mashed potato pancakes. And since they're not as sweet as regular pancakes, you can even fry up an egg and slap it on top (with some grated cheese on top of that, of course).
  3. Can't have too many muffin choices on those lazy mornings during Thanksgiving vacation — potato cheese muffins are another fine choice that requires only a small amount of leftover mashed potatoes.
(Creative Commons photo by Brian Snelson)
(Creative Commons photo by Brian Snelson)

Sweet Potato Ideas

  1. Super-simple: wrap some mashed-up sweet potatoes in wonton wrappers and cook 'em in chicken broth to make oh-so-succulent sweet potato ravioli.
  2. Cook up a sweet potato bisque that's ultra-low-cal and ultra-delicious.
  3. Another variation on the after-Thanksgiving Day breakfast item, albeit one that's ever-so-slightly less calorie-conscious: sweet potato waffles!

Fun with Leftover Stuffing

  • Other than using it in our "classic" Thanksgiving leftovers turkey sandwich, leftover stuffing's a little harder to find recipes for. But, there are a couple go-to gourmet routes to explore.
  1. For all the different variations of soup available to us after Thanksgiving, it might come in handy to have some kind of fancy bread item to sop it all up with. It's pretty easy to make croutons from stuffing squares, or you can go for something more substantial in stuffing dumplings.
  2. Taking the dumpling idea a step further, you can actually cook up some leftover stuffing a second time with additional olive oil, vegetables, parsley, bay leaf and other ingredients and plop a big ball of the stuff into the above-discussed turkey soup to make, yes, "turkey and stuffing soup." It's a bit like matzo ball soup...
  3. Then there are stuffing frittatas, Italian-style open-faced omelets given a special fragrant bread-y base by the sage-seasoned stuffing.

Resources for How to Prepare Thanksgiving Leftovers

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