Leftover Turkey Recipes
You’ve navigated the Thanksgiving turkey flowchart. You’ve chosen to roast the bird to a burnished bronze and calculated time per pound. Or you’ve opted for smoked. Or you’ve delved into deep-frying. Regardless of how many guests were at your table, hopefully, a pile of leftovers awaits once the last smear of cranberry sauce has been devoured. Now is the beginning of what some would dub the best portion of the holiday when savvy repurposing shines.
10 Leftover Turkey Recipes
Try these 10 leftover turkey recipes to fall in love with your Thanksgiving meal all over again — and reward your effort.
Turkey and Cornbread Casserole
Whether you use leftover cornbread cubes, incorporate a package of your favorite cornbread mix, or choose a slightly more laborious route, plucking a recipe that includes making new cornbread, this Southern classic is the ultimate post-gratitude-giving comfort dish.
Leftover Turkey Tamales
I can think of nothing more seasonal in Texas, land of Tejano traditions, than a tamale-making tamalada. A mole filling — rich with pasilla and ancho chiles, spices, and dark chocolate that meld with shredded turkey — is iconic. You can also experiment with a tangy tomatillo sauce (especially nice with a smoked turkey), a nouveau-mole with guajillo chiles, cranberries, and pecans, or even a tamale whose masa is tinged with butternut squash and robed in a pipian verde sauce.
Turkey Enchiladas
Snuggling into tortillas under a blanket of sauce and speckling of toppings can be your fowl’s fair destiny, whether you opt for a tomatillo verde, creamy white, or classic red sauce.
Turkey Salad
Because, sometimes, the day after Thanksgiving calls for zero heavy foods and a complete detox, give yourself the gift (and grace) of a break from richness with a twist on a classic chopped salad. Choose a bowl that’s bursting with crunchy romaine and tangy with feta, a slaw that’s crisp and vibrant, or a fall salad that showcases seasonality with ruby radicchio and pears (or persimmons) and the satisfying nuggets of hazelnuts and pomegranate seeds.
Turkey Posole Verde or Rojo
These rich bowls are topped with a feisty plethora of garnishes: cabbage, slivered radish, cilantro, and avocado. The hominy, in its red or green depths, blends perfectly with the turkey you’ve salvaged.
Turkey and Rice Soup
Chicken soup with rice may be better known, but it’s worth getting to know its cousin, whether that’s a simple, soothing version (with just a touch of bacon) or a savory congee with crispy shiitake mushrooms that finds other ways to up the umami ante.
Collard Greens With Turkey
Especially if your turkey is smoked, consider making a batch of true, classic Southern collard greens; the smoked turkey takes the place of the habitual ham hock.
Turkey-Stuffed Sweet Potatoes
Think of them like game-day potato skins: If you grind your leftover turkey in a food processor, you can mimic the texture of ground turkey or beef. Tuck it into sweet potatoes baked in their jackets, and top with sour cream, black beans, and all the Tex-Mex fixings you adore.
Turkey Sandwich
Yes, this list includes a leftover turkey sandwich. But have you considered the potential beauty not of a stack toppling with mashed potatoes and everything but the kitchen sink, but rather a cranberry sauce and brie turkey melt or a twist on a Monte Cristo that substitutes turkey for the ham and perhaps even (gasp!) uses Texas toast?
Leftover Turkey in a Taco
Because we live near Mexico and revere the taco as a truly enlightened vessel, how could we not try artfully piling all the elements of the meal into a blistered corn tortilla?
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