23 Thanksgiving Leftover Recipes to Use Up Every Last Morsel of Food

As beloved as Thanksgiving dinner is, it’s the leftovers that we really get excited for. After all the stress of the holiday, there’s something incredibly comforting about eating cold stuffing straight from the fridge. Plus, after you’ve spent the past couple days cooking, it’s nice to be able to mindlessly spread some leftovers onto bread and call it lunch. But if you aren’t burned out on cooking, there’s so much more that can be done with your leftovers, like frying up turkey into carnitas, stuffing veggies into a grilled cheese, or turning mashed potatoes and stuffing into waffles. Keep reading for our favorite ways to use up every bit of those Thanksgiving leftovers.

Breakfasts and Sweets

Stuffing Waffles

This recipe is so good that I’ve made batches of stuffing solely to waffle—a Belgian waffle iron maximizes the crispy, crunchy bits that are the best part of stuffing. You could serve these with maple syrup like regular waffles or use gravy to play up the Thanksgiving theme, but the best idea is to use both.

Turkey and Stuffing Waffle–Croque Madame

Stuffing waffles not enough for you? This recipe turns them into a croque madame variation by topping them with leftover turkey and a Mornay-style sauce of grated cheese melted into gravy. Don’t forget the fried egg!

Waffled Mashed Potatoes With Bacon, Scallion, and Cheddar

Leftover mashed potatoes are almost always a disappointment—they lose their fluffy texture when reheated. You can, however, repurpose them by mixing in eggs, buttermilk, and flour to make a waffle batter. You could keep the waffles simple, but you’ll be far better off throwing in scallions, cheddar, and bacon.

Sweet Potato Pancakes Made With Leftover Mashed Sweet Potatoes

Mashed sweet potatoes have the same trouble with reheating as regular mashed potatoes. We rescue them in a similar way, by mixing them with milk, eggs, flour, and a few more ingredients to make a pancake batter. Sour cream adds enough tang to balance the sweetness of the spuds, while baking powder and baking soda help with rising and browning.

Leftover Cranberry Sauce Cake

Every family has their Thanksgiving must-have, and in my house that dish is my mom’s cranberry sauce. She always makes tons of it knowing that we will be happy to spread it on everything the week after Thanksgiving. If there’s a little too much, we’ll put it to use in this sour cream coffee cake topped with an aromatic sugared-almond crust.

Sandwiches and Such

Thanksgiving Turkey Reuben Sandwich

Thanksgiving dinner meets deli classic in this turkey Reuben. We pair pulled turkey meat with gravy-spiked Russian dressing and a tangy sweet and sour cranberry sauce-sauerkraut mixture. It’s all smothered in melted Swiss cheese and sandwiched between two slices of toasty, buttery rye bread.

Hot and Numbing Sichuan-Style Turkey Salad

Inspired by Bang Bang chicken, this spicy turkey salad is tossed in a dressing seasoned with Sichuan peppercorns, toasty sesame paste, and hot chili oil. Topped with slivered scallions and served on its own or sandwiched between a couple pieces of bread, it’s guaranteed to catapult you past turkey palate fatigue.

Thanksgiving Leftovers Grilled Cheese

If you’ve never loaded food straight from the fridge onto bread, you’ve never really experienced Thanksgiving. But if you have had plenty of experience with the classic leftovers sandwich and want something more elevated, try pairing your leftovers with cheddar and griddling up a golden-brown grilled cheese.

Roast Turkey and Black Bean Quesadillas

Turkey is a traditional ingredient in Mexican cooking, so it’s no stretch to make Mexican or Tex-Mex food with your leftovers. Here, that means quesadillas, which we stuff with roast turkey, black beans, and grated cheese, plus bright pickled jalapeños and fresh cilantro leaves.

Cheese-Free Sweet Potato “Quesadillas”

Creamy mashed sweet potato replaces cheese in this lightly spicy quesadilla. It’s a perfect recipe for the day-after-Thanksgiving festivities, when you’re exhausted, hungry, and desperately trying to figure out what to do with the 10 pounds of sweet potatoes in your refrigerator.

Easy Turkey and Brussels Sprout Quesadillas

If you want your quesadillas to taste more like Thanksgiving, try pairing leftover turkey with shredded Brussels sprouts. We also bring back the pickled jalapeños here—their acidic bite is essential.

15-Minute Turkey Enchiladas

Don’t feel like making a whole casserole full of enchiladas the day after Thanksgiving? If you’re just cooking for two, try these skillet enmoladas instead. They’re super easy—all you have to do is roll up a few tortillas with turkey and store-bought mole, bake them in a pan, and serve with salsa.

Leftover Turkey “Carnitas”

You might be tempted to throw away the carcass after making turkey stock, but there is probably some super-tender meat left on the bones. Rather than letting it go to waste, pick it off and crisp it up in a skillet to make a dead ringer for carnitas—the resulting tacos will be as tasty as anything you ate on Thanksgiving Day.

Soups, Stews, and More

Brown Turkey Stock

You are making stock with the leftover turkey carcass, right? Simply simmering the bird in water with vegetables will make for a fine stock, but for the deepest, richest flavor, try roasting the bones and browning the vegetables first. We also like to add just a couple tablespoons of tomato paste to give the stock an extra savory note.

Roast Turkey Soup

If you don’t want to re-roast your turkey, this simple soup has a great flavor-to-effort ratio. All you have to do is simmer the carcass in chicken stock, then add bacon, onions, carrots, and celery. You can add in other leftovers, too—a little gravy will thicken the soup nicely.

Turkey ‘n’ Dumplings

Pretty much any recipe that normally calls for cooked chicken can be made with leftover turkey instead. Case in point: this Thanksgiving-ified version of chicken and dumplings made with broth, aromatics, and biscuit-like drop dumplings. As with the previous soup, if you have leftover gravy then throw a little in to thicken the dish

Turkey Tortilla Soup

Another recipe paying homage to turkey’s Mexican roots, this tortilla soup is made with broth, aromatics, and several kinds of chilies. The recipe uses two pasilla peppers and anchos to satisfy us spice lovers, but you can go with one of each if you’d prefer something a little less assertive.

Slow-Cooker Leftover Turkey, Lemon, and Couscous Soup

One easy way to minimize the amount of cooking you have to do the day after Thanksgiving is to break out the slow cooker, which we use here to turn turkey wings, thyme, and bay leaves into a comforting soup. Chewy Israeli couscous provides bulk, while a cup of acidic white wine from a bottle you opened the night before perks the dish up.

Slow-Cooker Leftover Turkey and Andouille Gumbo

This slow-cooker recipe isn’t quite as hands-off as the last one—sautéing the vegetables and making the roux takes about half an hour—but it’s worth the effort. Pairing the turkey with andouille, cayenne, and Cajun seasonings gives the recipe some serious Louisiana flair.

Slow-Cooker Leftover Turkey Chile Verde

Our third slow cooker recipe gives leftover turkey the chile verde treatment, cooking it with broiled tomatillos, serrano peppers, onions, and garlic, plus cornmeal and white beans to thicken it all up. The chili is flavorful enough on its own, but it’s even better garnished liberally with cilantro, sour cream, red onions, pepper Jack cheese, and crunchy crushed tortilla chips.

Turkey Paitan Ramen With Crispy Turkey and Soft-Cooked Egg

Love cooking so much that you want to spend all day Friday in the kitchen, too? It’s a bit of a project, but slow-cooking leftover turkey meat and bones with aromatics and charred vegetables makes a wonderfully rich and creamy paitan-style ramen broth. The meat used to make the broth is going to be way overcooked, so we add fresh drumsticks for a few hours to cook them, shred the meat, then crisp it up like we do in our turkey carnitas recipe.

Turkey Chintan Ramen

Our turkey paitan-style ramen is delightful, but it’s also pretty labor-intensive. For a lighter, simpler noodle soup, we turn to chintan-style ramen, which features a clear broth seasoned with a tare made of soy sauce, tamari, and mirin. With the help of a pressure cooker, and a few other common Thanksgiving ingredients like Brussels sprouts and drippings from your roast turkey, this satisfying ramen recipe takes two hours from start to finish, but only 15 minutes of active work.

Taiwanese Turkey Rice

You probably don’t associate turkey with Asian cooking, but in Taiwan, it’s traditional to use turkey in a dish very similar to better-known Singaporean chicken rice. Generally, the dish is made with steamed turkey, but leftover roast turkey works, too. If you thought ahead to save the pan drippings when you cooked the bird, you can use them to make a savory sauce.

November 2018