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Thanksgiving Leftovers, Anything But Boring!

Thanksgiving Leftover Pie

By now you’ve completed your Thanksgiving menu. The table is set and there’s a timeline in place to get the meal to the table on time.

But there’s one thing you can count on but hard to plan for – leftovers. Just A Pinch’s fabulous home cooks have shared some super tasty ways to reinvent Thanksgiving dinner.

Rachel Goulart (North Dighton, MA) has created a yummy Thanksgiving Leftover Pie to use some of her leftovers. “Try this ‘pot pie’ and I’m sure everyone will love it as much as the original feast (maybe more!),” thinks Rachel.

This was a big hit in the Test Kitchen! She mixes her leftover mashed potatoes, turkey, veggies, with some spices and butter to create one creamy filling. We used peas because we had them on hand, but most any veggie would be delicious. This easy dish may become a family favorite leftovers recipe.

Was cranberry sauce on sale and you purchased too many cans? Use the extra for Mama Robin’s (Dana Point, CA) Leftover’s Sauce. “[This is] a very flavorful way to use leftovers,” Robin shares.

Robin’s sauce is made with three basic ingredients – cranberry sauce, orange juice, and onion soup mix. So easy! The cranberry and orange flavor combination is great. In the Test Kitchen, we added this to leftover turkey and it made a delicious sandwich. But try it on chicken or pork too as Robin suggests.

Mashed potatoes are one of the most popular sides at my family dinner, but I always make too much. What to do with the extras? Make a batch of Gina Collier’s (Shelbyville, TN) Leftover Mashed Potato Cornbread. “I made this last night out of leftover mashed potatoes,” Gina explains. “It turned out to be very tasty!”

When I was a kid, I loved potato pancakes and corn cakes. This easy recipe is a great combination of both of them! Serve alongside leftover turkey, but they’d be good with some pork chops and apple sauce too.

“I try not to waste anything, so this is a different sandwich I came up with using cranberry sauce, apple sauce, turkey, gravy,” says Lisa G. (Buffalo, NY). “Dinner rolls can be used to make sliders.”

Lisa definitely found a way to not waste a thing with her Cran-Apple BBQ Pulled Turkey Sandwich. I used whole berry cranberry sauce, and I liked the extra texture it added. But jelly would work too. This sandwich is the ultimate leftover reinvention!

Everyone seems to have a recipe they adore for cooking a turkey. In case you are still up in the air on how to cook yours, here are a couple great last minute recipes.

Can you really cook a turkey in two hours? You can if you follow Torrey Mosley’s (Dallas, TX) 2 Hour Turkey, Really recipe. “I was very skeptical that one could actually cook an entire turkey in about two hours and have it edible,” Torrey reveals. “Well, not only does this actually work, it produces the best roasted turkey.”

The flavor is all that you would expect from a well-cooked Thanksgiving turkey, but the technique is so wonderfully different! When testing this recipe, the Crew and I cooked a 14 lb turkey in 1 hr 15 minutes. This is a great timesaver for Thanksgiving day.

Right before Thanksgiving, Michelle Teel’s (Danville, KY) oven stopped working so she had to improvise cooking her turkey. She put it on the grill and her Turkey on the Grill recipe was born! “My whole family loved it and it was the juiciest, most tender turkey I have ever cooked,” share Michelle.

I love this cooking method. If you live in a warmer climate or are lucky enough if it’s a warm Thanksgiving, I highly encourage you to try this recipe. The turkey came out perfectly moist… and tasty too. Plus, by cooking the turkey on the grill it makes more room in the oven. And aren’t we all wishing we had a second or third oven at the holidays!

When opening up the fridge on Friday and seeing it packed with leftovers, the million dollar question is what to do with them. Hopefully, one of these easy recipes will suit your family’s taste buds. Do you have a go-to recipe for leftovers? Make sure to post it … I’m always on the hunt for new ideas!