So who's everyone? Who forgets? (Huge laugh emoji here)
After about 4 days with the turkey's breast and thigh meat gone, we pick the thighs, wings and carcass clean of any remaining meat, make a stock from the carcass and use the two to make a huge tray of prepared turkey tetrazzini, which we then freeze. On Dec 23rd, we cook the frozen casserole for dinner and leftovers for lunch on Christmas Eve. We've done this for the past couple of decades and its a great use of the remaining bird to two holidays.
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I am not Korean, but I eat at Korean restaurants a lot, and in my experience "jeon" are called pancakes rather than fritters. Wonderful food by any name, of course!
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No one can ever - ever - have too many onions.
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A post-Thangsgiving wish to all: stay with your excess purchases, recycle the leftovers, and let the holiday roll.
Until the next gluttony event of Xmas on Dec. 25, 2018, and Jan. 7, 2019.
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Someone, please tell me what I should do with my 6 remaining stalks of celery!
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Ants on a log!
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Here's what to do with leftover pecans (or any nuts). When you first buy them, roast them all in the oven (10-15 minutes @ 350) and then freeze them. Now when you need nuts for whatever kind of recipe you are making, in whatever quantity you need, you've got them.....already roasted to bring out the flavor, frozen to preserve them (they defrost in minutes). Easy-peasy!
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I enjoy spreading leftover cranberry sauce (that I’ve spiced up with orange zest, cardamom, and cinnamon) in a layer of sweet roll dough. Makes a wonderful breakfast addition on Christmas morning.
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I just made shepherds pie with turkey and veg leftovers and leftover mash potatoes on top with a little cheese. Really it combines all the best of the leftovers.
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Too many cranberries? Make Laurie Colwin's Nantucket Pie! This is really more like a coffee cake, takes no time to make and is delicious, both fresh out of the oven or room temperature. It can be breakfast, brunch, dessert, or a delicious snack.
I love to take those last bits and pieces of the turkey, lightly warm them in a little butter, add fresh mushrooms, cook it down a bit and then add dry vermouth. Cook that off, and then add this mixture to a big pot of wild rice - the real kind, not a mix. One can even use the instant kind - it's sold at my local Target. Add a bit of cream, throw in some peas and one has a delicious one-dish dinner that reheats well if any is left over.
As for that leftover cranberry relish, add some balsamic vinegar to it and it becomes a delicious chutney to serve with roast chicken (grocery store rotisserie) or pork. Fabulous!
Be a bit creative, folks!
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Fabulous article. This is a perfect "after turkey day" kind of read I find enjoyable and relaxing. "Ms. McTernan, who calls kabocha her “soul-mate squash,” said that a few years ago she told her mother all about the fabulous new squash she’d discovered in California. Her mother informed her that she had been eating it all her life, under the name “Japanese pumpkin.” Only a mom could take the wind out of a daughter's sail which she thought she had invented or perfected. Ms. McTernan's mom sounds a lot like my own mom - direct, honest and so matter-of-factly. Great story.
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Use up onions? They are a staple in my house and they last a long time. Squash? roast it with some sausage and mix with any leftover stuffing for a tasty meal. Sweet potatoes are delicious in wraps, with black beans, rice, maybe some crunchy sliced cabbage. I don't understand people who complain about leftovers; it's good food, and it's already made so there's less work.
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Cranberry-orange relish goes very well with latkes.
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Uncooked cranberries survive nicely in the freezer. Whole berries cooked with a chopped orange, half the sugar called for on the package, are wonderful with your morning oatmeal. Once cooked, they also keep quite well in the refrigerator.
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Leftover pumpkin, squash or sweet potatoes (that haven't been cooked with fat or onion) can be roasted and fed to your pups. Healthy!
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Gravy mayo is the bomb! Whisk mayo and cold gravy together... turkey,stuffy cranberry sandwich with gravy-mayo. Sublime.
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I want to know more about lining a bottom pie crust wtih graham crackers, please. Who can help?
I put leftover cranberry sauce in homemade yogurt. It's delicious, and a nice change from the high calorie cookies and muffins.
Onions get chopped up and put into the freezer for later. Scallions and celery usually go on the compost pile, but this year, I'm going to try rooting the leftover celery hearts. Maybe I can have two celery plants, and harvest the stalks when I need them, instead of being forced to buy two full celery hearts when I only need two stalks.
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I’ve put leftover cranberry sauce into homemade chocolate Cake batter. Yummy cake!
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Weofferup: Mandrill and Peos are the chief cooks during all holidays (here in the Southern hemisphere we observe every countrys' special days). The two of them take the leftovers, especially special cuts of meat such as kangaroo tail and pouch-linings, aardwolf tenderloins, ruffin liver, emu steaks, etc., soak them in a 10 percent solution of sodium hydroxide and coke (sweetens the resulting product) and water, then pulverize and freeze the product. Warming and future cooking takes place in our communal solar powered heater. The meals to be made from the leftovers are scrumptious.
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Those leftovers would scare the bejeezus out of us in the Northern Hemisphere .....but carry on, hopefully with some equally unique wines.
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Ham soup?? ("a whole 18-pound ham that her supermarket throws in along with her enormous Thanksgiving order. She soaks it, portions it and freezes it, for a whole winter’s worth of soups and sandwiches.")
Really? It's so salty. Such a little of it goes such a long way. I do chop some into pea soup, but what else can be done with it? Not a good thing to toss into the last paragraph of an article!
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@MLChadwick
It's a perfectly fine thing to toss into a last paragraph. The cook is likely referring not to ham soup (!) but to ham bones and other bits used to flavor any of half a dozen soups--black-eyed pea, bean, etc.--and to fill all manner of sandwiches. Standard fare in many kitchens.
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@susan..I always use leftover ham bones; onions and carrots etc with baby Lima beans along with a can of Italian plum tomatoes to make soup. Waste not want not!
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Cranberry used as the filling for a fruit crumb bar. Stuffing patted into rounds and griddled crisp as a base for creamed turkey with vegetables. whole onions topped with a bit of butter and drizzle of gravy then baked to soft deliciousness. Thanksgiving Food reimagined and just as delicious during round 2.
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We had dinner early. I have since made and froze turkey bolognese which will be wonderful with homemade pasta. The carcass made a wonderful matzo ball soup with leftover parsley, celery, carrots and onions. But what do I do with the leftover stuffing!
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Gobble it gleefully!
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@Vickie
The day after, have pumpkin pie for breakfast and cold stuffing for lunch. Yum.
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@Vickie
Reheated stuffing goes very well with poached eggs for breakfast.
We deliberately make too much cranberry sauce, because it's so good stirred into a bowlful of steel cut oats the next morning.
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Uh, no. My Italian mother made cranberry sauce almost every week while the fresh berries were in season. It was served as a side with many dinners and considered extremely nutritious with myriad health benefits. This was decades ago.
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@FunctionalIlliterate: frozen cranberries are really just as good -- cranberries freeze brilliantly -- and they can be enjoyed year-round.
Cranberry sauce makes great muffins- sour cream batter with a little almond extract, a dollop of batter, a dollop of cranberry sauce, a dollop of batter- almonds on top if you have them.
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I relish the opportunity to make turkey soup Friday after the big day. One year we faced four days without electricity, with a fridge full of leftovers and extra ingredients. On our gas stovetop we made a luscious soup with everything from the fridge that wasn't pie or cranberries. The crowning ingredient was the leftover stuffing, which thickened, flavored, and stretched the soup far enough to invite all the neighbors whose electric stovetops meant no hot food. That was the year that we all gave thanks the day after Thanksgiving.
I've been making stuffing for soup ever since.
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The best part of thanksgiving is Turkey Hash the next day. Left over turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing and gravy mixed together and lightly sautéed until heated trough.. cranberry sauce on the side.
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We make it in layers: gravy, turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes,gravy, and then bake it. Same delicious results!
@Tracy Perez
Yes! ...we do this and then spoon it all (including the cranberry sauce) onto bread and make hot sandwiches. My favorite part of Thanksgiving is the leftovers!
@ Josh Philadelphia and all others
A pre-holiday thought: I saw it mentioned in Food Section that Frank Bruni used to report here. A few weeks ago, I wrote to one of his political columns that he would do all a great service, if he returned occasionally to this Section with articles on "the connection -- if there be any -- between the politicians' food preferences and their plarforms".
Who knows, perhaps there is a correlation between the extreme right and moonshine guzzling with cheap-cigar chomping, and between a haute cuisine and the leftist radicalism of effete Democrats?
Happy Thanksgiving with minimum of unused stuff!But
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'...ham that her supermarket throws in along with her enormous Thanksgiving order. She soaks it, portions it and freezes it, for a whole winter’s worth of soups and sandwiches.'
this sounds great! how to, please.
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Ah, the dilemmas of the privileged...hunt down shelters, free food pantries and other places that serve the people with real problems (and hungers) and donate.
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Please! Those of us who actually do this work do not need your table leftovers. Those should be enjoyed as shown here, and if not, composted. Those we serve are people, not pigs eating leftover slop.
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@Mary Sojourner why not enjoy your leftovers and donate? they aren't mutally exclusive.
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Onions are a STAPLE in any pantry. I fail to see the need to get rid of them.
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@ jhbev western NC
A good thought. What is the shelf-life or refrigerator-life of such things as pecans, chocolate, onions, and garlic? Why throw away the excesses of holiday shopping, instead of using them to make the holiday last longer?
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@Tuvw Xyz
1. store nuts in the freezer, but first, toast them.
2. eat the chocolate.[t really lasts forever when kept cool]
3. use the onions, garlic, celery, carrots as you would any other time of the year.
but the real question is why buy to such access?? in theory, thanksgiving is a family get together; p.b. & j, tho not quite as filling, would be as satisfying.
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@jhbev Thanksgiving is a feast, shared with family and good friends. PBJ? No, no, no!
A great wealth of wonderful advice to all who overstock and overprepare themselves for the holidays, unnecessarily confirming the words of Ecclesiastes (7:29), "God hath made man upright; but they have sought out many inventions".
The 3rd photo from the top shows a plate of spaghetti. Perhaps Ms. McTernan's consanguinous ties to the Far East may help explain how does one ELEGANTLY transfer noodles from the plate to the mouth?
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@Tuvw Xyz
With your fork you twirl several noodles on a large spoon into bite size circles. My Italian father in law was very impressed the first time he saw me eat a plate of spaghetti. I learned this technique from my Irish mother when I was just a small child. Try it, you will never cut up your spaghetti again.
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I’m grateful that you’ve stopped remarking on tattoos. Is it too much to hope that you’ll consider no longer commenting on how to eat noodles and, if you’re really feeling generous, stop referring to “America, the land of hamburger-with-ketchup eaters”?
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@ Josh Philadelphia
I am truly grateful for your attention to my little thoughts. Indeed, I no longer comment on the tattoos, after having promised this to more than 35 readers of this column. But there are things, about which I feel that "I cannot keep silent" (L. N. Tolstoy, 1908), and the two points, to which you refer, must be such. :-))
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