Using the leftovers

Yesterday, I wrote Relax, you’ve got this and am following up with ideas for using up leftovers. The guests have left, the dishes are done, the kitchen floor is swept, and the food is put away. Unless you enjoy eating the same thing for several days on repeat, tomorrow you will be thinking of ways to use the leftover turkey, mashed potatoes, and other foods you cooked way too much of for the holiday. Saveur is here to help with a bevy of Thanksgiving leftovers recipes, including the ubiquitous turkey tetrazzini plus some more offbeat ideas such as Spudnuts (pictured below). If you haven’t heard of spudnuts before, they are potato-based doughnuts and they sound delicious.

For the second time in three years, I forgot to put out the cranberry sauce. That’s okay because Taste of Home has 46 different ways to use it in other dishes. I am intrigued by the smoothie but to be honest I will eat cranberry sauce on almost anything. It will probably be spread on toast as part of tomorrow’s breakfast. Speaking of breakfast, one of our favorite ways to use up excess meat of almost any kind is to turn it into breakfast hash. I don’t know why it always works, but it just does, no matter if it’s beef, turkey, or even our most recent experiment, cheddar brats. Regular or sweet potatoes work equally well.

Leftovers don’t last forever, as Newsweek reminds us with its guide to how long Thanksgiving leftovers can keep. They say turkey should only be kept for 3 to 4 days in the refrigerator! Martha Stewart has ideas for items made with leftovers that you can freeze for later, which makes that 4 day window less daunting. And with 52 different ways to use leftovers from Delish, you should be able to make use of every last bit.

If leftovers just aren’t your thing but you do not want to be wasteful, head over to Grist. There Kate Yoder encourages us to embrace the leftovers, reminding us that it is indeed a luxury to have excess food.