Thanksgiving Leftover Recipes Ideas

Day-after-Thanksgiving recipe ideas: turkey pot pie

Chances are you’ll still be swimming in leftovers from the delicious Thanksgiving feast you have a week after. I love a Thanksgiving sandwich as much as the next person, but sometimes (especially if you hosted the dinner) you have way more leftovers than you know what to do with. Here are some fun day-after-Thanksgiving leftover recipes to free up space in your fridge and to make your taste buds happy.

Turkey Soup

Every year after I host Thanksgiving, I make soup out of the turkey carcass. There’s nothing like homemade turkey soup. You can even use leftover mashed potatoes or stuffing to thicken up the broth if you’d like. Here’s the turkey soup recipe I used this year – it’s classic and simple but you can make it your own very easily.

Cranberry-Carrot Muffins

I always seem to make too much cranberry sauce; I really love it as a dipping sauce, but they always just seem to be too much of it. This ingenious muffin recipe uses up the tart sauce as well as leftover cooked carrots!

Turkey Pot Pie

You can literally toss whatever leftover vegetables you have into a casserole dish with shredded turkey, use a prepared pie crust and you’ll have dinner on the table in no time. Of course, you can always make your own crust or use puff pastry as well. Here are a couple of recipes to try:

Sweet Potato Pancakes

Sweet potatoes are naturally sweet as it is, but usually, sweet potato casserole is sweetened even more with brown sugar and sometimes even marshmallows. Follow this recipe for sweet potato pancakes and omit the extra sugar if your potatoes are already sweetened.

Stuffing Stuffed Mushrooms

Your Thanksgiving stuffing was so delicious, it will make perfect stuffing for stuffed mushrooms! No need to reinvent the wheel; just top the mushrooms with a little cheese, herbs, and oil and you have a delicious appetizer or side dish!

Turkey Hash

Turn your leftover bird into a delicious twist on breakfast with this turkey hash recipe. Pair it with a fried egg and a piece of leftover cornbread and you have a new fave breakfast dish.

Loaded Potato Soup

This recipe uses leftover mashed potatoes and even goes so far as to top the soup with leftover dinner rolls! While the recipe calls for ham, you can certainly sub in turkey.

Turkey Chili

While turkey chili usually calls for ground turkey, this recipe uses up the leftover shredded turkey from Thanksgiving dinner along with extra gravy! Try serving it atop mashed potatoes for the leftover usage trifecta.

Veggie Frittata

Have a bunch of leftover veggie sides that you don’t know what to do with? Repurpose them all in a mixed veggie frittata that doubles as breakfast and dinner! You can also follow this recipe for a turkey frittata that’s lighter on the veggies and uses up your leftover bird.

Turkey Quesadillas

This twist on a Mexican favorite uses turkey as well as leftover cranberry sauce. Not only does the leftover cran serve as a dipping sauce, but it also goes inside the quesadillas!

If you’re looking for even more day-after-Thanksgiving leftover recipes, check out this list of other recipes to make the most of your leftovers. That should give you enough to make a dent on those leftovers – some of these recipes are so delicious you may find yourself wanting to make more turkey or sides just to be able to try them all!

 

© Featured Photo by bhofack2 from iStockPhoto