We're offering you a few fresh ideas for your Thanksgiving leftovers today and tomorrow, anticipating that you have some turkey or cranberry sauce sitting around in your fridge. But I have to confess that I am closest in sympathy to Linda Brandt of the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, who writes, "It is a mystery to me why, after spending Thanksgiving Day in the kitchen, the person who prepared the meal would want to spend another day in the kitchen making it unrecognizable to serve again, especially if it was good the first time."
Indeed! I adore leftover cranberry sauce, cold and straight from the fridge, smeared on a piece of hot toast. I love warmed-up sweet potatoes, and slivers of mincemeat pie for breakfast. So my own love of Thanksgiving leftovers leans less towards entirely new recipes (unless, of course, I have three pounds of shredded turkey left over!) and more towards creative ways of heating up and reusing them. There are some great ideas in Linda's piece, by the way; here's a link:
But my own favorite way of enjoying left over Thanksgiving food (in fact, I hoard it for this) is pan-fried bread stuffing.
This is a great way to heat up leftover stuffing and to make it, if possible, better than it was on Thanksgiving. Instead of warming it up into a soggy mass in the microwave, you heat up a frying pan and sear lumps of stuffing until they are warm inside and crispy-chewy on the outside. Eat with an egg on top for breakfast — heaven!
Here's how I do it.
• 1 Heat up a heavy frying pan over medium heat, and add a little vegetable oil to it.
• 2 Spoon out some stuffing and pack it into a tight, firm cake.
• 3 When the pan is hot add the lump of stuffing and cook without turning for 4 to 5 minutes. Check occasionally to see if it is browning. When it seems well-browned, flip over with a sharp spatula and cook for about 5 minutes on the other side, pressing it down occasionally.
Flip out when done serve with an egg or gravy and enjoy!
More Fresh Ideas for Thanksgiving Leftovers:
• Quick and Easy Turkey Pot Pie
• Sweet Potato & Cornbread Hash with Veggie Sausage Gravy
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This year my husband made THE BEST gravy, and my mother's recipe for dressing (what we call it here in the south) came out great. I love this idea. I could even see jazzing up the dressing with sauteed yellow onions, to ever-so-slightly sweeten the flavor. (I have been accused of being addicted to sauteed onions though.)
Serving with the gravy, but I wonder if there's a cream-based sauce, maybe in the texture of a remoulade, that would also go well with the flavors of sage and poultry? Kind of a Thanksgiving no-crab cake...
The leftovers grow less enchanting by the day as they lose their freshness. What I wind up doing is to make turkey hash, with the last bit of gravy, the chopped up brussels sprouts (or other veg), a bit of stuffing, and ideally, sweet potatoes, but I don't have any of those left over this year, so I'll probably cook a few for the hash--all to a base of sauteed onion, garlic, celery. It's a transcendant end to the leavings...I think this year it will be Sunday breakfast.
Then there is the turkey carcass, and that's going into split pea soup to eat the rest of the week (with some bacon since I don't have leftover ham).
In total agreement on pie for breakfast!
If you make whatever you anticipate will be 'leftover' stuffing in a loaf pan, for Thanksgiving dinner, it can be easily sliced & pan-fried for breakfast the next couple days (top it with some asparagus and a sunnyside up egg). That for me has always been the easiest method and I deliberately make enough to have leftovers for the holiday weekend. For Thanksgiving dinner, I bake the stuffing in muffin tins, it's pre-portioned and crispy on the outside while moist on the inside. For some reason there never seems to be any leftovers of the muffins but I suppose those could be crumbled & pan-fried easily enough!
Between leftover pie and leftover stuffing, well, yum.
we go ahead and fry up balls/patties of stuffing/mashed potatoes/turkey...sometimes even throw some corn in...delicious!
For several years, the morning after Thanksgiving is a traditional breakfast of Scrambled Eggs and Dressing. I put a couple tablespoons of butter in a skillet to melt, then add some dressing to brown it up. Pour on the eggs and stir until set. Delicious. We make an extra pan of dressing to have enough for the next day.