What’s the best way to use all that leftover turkey?
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Got turkey leftovers?
Food writer Bill Lohmann and sports columnist Paul Woody make a chipotle enchiladas with leftover Thanksgiving turkey.
Related Info
Chipotle-seasoned Turkey Enchiladas
Preheat oven to 350°.
Heat 3 tablespoons of oil in a heavy large saucepan over medium heat. Add 1½ cups onions and saute until tender, about 5 minutes. Add enchilada sauce, tomatoes and chipotles. Cover; simmer 20 minutes, stirring often. Remove from heat. Stir in ½ cup cilantro. Season sauce to taste with salt and pepper.
In a large bowl, stir together turkey, 1½ cups cheese, sour cream, remaining ¼ cup onions, and ½ cup cilantro. Season to taste with salt and pepper.
In medium skillet, heat ½ cup oil over medium heat. Add 1 tortilla and heat until pliable, about 20 seconds per side. Transfer to paper towels to drain. Repeat with remaining tortillas.
Spread ½ cup sauce over bottom of 13-by-9-by-2-inch glass baking dish. Spoon ¼ cup turkey mixture down center of each tortilla. Roll up tortillas. Arrange enchiladas, seam side down, in prepared dish. Spoon 2 ½ cups sauce over enchiladas. Sprinkle with remaining ½ cup cheese. Bake enchiladas until heated through, about 30 minutes.
Makes 6 servings
Rewarm remaining sauce and serve with enchiladas. —Bon Appetit: Fast Easy Fresh Cookbook
Turkey (or chicken) Corn Soup
Makes 6 servings.
In a large pot, combine all of the ingredients except eggs, salt and pepper. Bring to a boil and simmer until potatoes are tender. Add egg. Season to taste. —Joanne Brothers
Turkey Pot Pie.
Stew:
Biscuits:
Preheat oven to 400°.
Stew: Combine vegetables in stock, cook and drain and set aside.
In a large pot, combine stock, milk, flour and butter. Stir in turkey and vegetables, and then pour into 3-quart casserole dish.
Biscuits: Combine whole wheat flour, all-purpose flour, salt, baking powder, baking soda and buttermilk powder and stir together. Cut in shortening or butter. Stir in water, and fold dough about eight times. Roll out to fit casserole dish, cut in pieces and carefully lay on top of turkey mixture.
Bake until biscuits are done, about 20 minutes. Serve with biscuits beneath stew.
Turkey Pot Pie —Joanne Brothers
We have reached the season of the year when we must peer deep into our souls and ask ourselves a question of great magnitude:
What do we do with the leftover turkey?
My answer is simple: Eat it.
I'm perfectly happy to graze at the open refrigerator door and pick off whatever I need. Or better yet, make one of those Thanksgiving dinner sandwiches that Dagwood might concoct if using Thanksgiving ingredients.
But some people prefer a more refined dining experience, even when it comes to leftovers.
"First choice in my family for using up the Thanksgiving Day leftovers is Friday dinner: Everyone serves himself a plate of tasty foods from the refrigerator and heats it in the microwave," said Joanne Brothers of Midlothian. "It's the best meal for the least effort all year!"
But there are more imaginative options. Brothers has called on old standbys such as turkey a la king, turkey soup and turkey salad, as well as turketti -- a turkey and spaghetti casserole. On occasion, Brothers has made a turkey pot pie -- an adapted chicken pot pie recipe that is a family favorite -- that features biscuits cooked on top of the turkey-and-vegetable stew. When served, the biscuits are placed on a plate with the liquid ladled over it.
"It's a recipe I came up with," she said. "It looks incredibly wet when you cook it, but it works."
Barbara Fairchild, editor in chief of Bon Appetit magazine and author of a new cookbook, "Bon Appetit: Fast Easy Fresh," is looking forward to a big, traditional Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow.
And then what's left.
"There's usually a lot of turkey left over," said Fairchild, who visited Richmond last week during a tour promoting her book. "I find people aren't so keen about the turkey. They eat it, but everything else is what they really want: the stuffing, the spuds and the cranberries, [and] any vegetable that has cream or cheese in it."
So, what does Fairchild do with the remaining turkey?
"I love making something sort of Tex-Mexy the next day," she said.
It just so happens the massive new cookbook, featuring a collection of recipes from the magazine, has a section on turkey and includes several tempting possibilities for leftovers, such as a risotto dish that calls for dark meat and turkey-cheese burritos with salsa and cilantro. I decided to make chipotle-seasoned turkey enchiladas.
Like most other recipes in the book, the enchiladas recipe contained fewer than a dozen ingredients and was laid out in a straightforward manner. It took less than 90 minutes to put together and bake, and you can even plan ahead by assembling the enchiladas the night before, refrigerating them and then baking them at your convenience.
You can watch sports columnist Paul Woody and me make turkey enchiladas and talk turkey -- in particular about his pre-season Super Bowl predictions that deserve to be roasted -- in our monthly "Words Worth Eating" video on TimesDispatch.com.
You can also watch us eat the enchiladas. They were quite spicy -- the chipotle chilies fire it up a bit -- and quite good.
If Fairchild still has turkey left after the enchiladas, she's thinking about making a stew or a soup. She even might consider adding a new twist to a strata -- a traditional breakfast casserole featuring baked eggs and bread.
"I might actually create something new in the strata realm with stuffing and turkey," she said. "That could be interesting."
Contact Bill Lohmann at (804) 649-6639 or
.
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