It’s that time of year again for me, time to tackle the leftovers.
A Turkey Sandwich
The first thing I do with turkey leftovers is a sandwich. This one is made with a soft and fresh home made granary loaf, home made tangy mayonnaise, cranberry sauce, cornichons and shredded dark meat. I had this on Boxing Day, and didn’t want anything else! Utterly gorgeous
Making Turkey Stock from Leftover Turkey
Soon after, I always strip the turkey carcass, getting off as much meat as I can
There is usually a fair old amount on there, including a lot of the dark meat, which I much prefer. All the bones and skin go into the big stock pot, together with three bay leaves from the garden and a couple of litres of boiling water from the kettle. Bring to the boil and blip slowly for a couple of hours to extract as much flavour as you can.
When it’s had a couple of hours, let it cool, then, very important, strip off any remaining meat, discarding the bones, cartilage, skin and anything else. You should be able to get a good 200-300g of extra meat this way. Either add that meat to the general store of stripped off meat, or make little potato rissoles with it, or just pop back into the stock
Turkey Stock Soup
Soup made with turkey stock is my absolute favourite and a real seasonal treat. To the stock, add a couple of big handfuls of red lentils, pearl barley or white beans. Prepare and add in a couple of onions, 3 or 4 carrots, no need to peel, 3 or 4 medium potatoes, no need to peel. Then whatever you have handy – a chopped pepper; chopped unpeeled swede; chopped green beans; a tin of tomatoes etc etc
Simmer until everything is cooked through and soft, season with salt and pepper. I usually get a vat of this, so you’ll probably need to freeze in portions, unless you have hungry hoards to feed
Turkey liver paté from leftover turkey
If you are lucky enough to get giblets and gizzard etc with your turkey, the liver and any other soft parts (not the gizzard) make beautiful pate.
To the giblets, I add 70g softened butter and a generous splash of red wine, then whizz it all up. Generous salt and pepper later – deliciousness. Sometimes, I’ll add large dollops of horseradish sauce, just because. Also delicious! So now you’ll have a large jam jar of turkey liver paté sat in the fridge. I shall probably have some for breakfast for the next couple of days, then freeze the leftovers and use it over the next 2 or 3 months.
Cottage pie from leftover beef
Next up was the remains of a slow cooked joint of beef. I absolutely love Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstalls recipe for shepherds pie made with leftover roast lamb. So I decided to make a cottage pie with some of this. I found a promising looking recipe on BBC Good Food and set to.
Chopped up some of the beef, quite small, about 200g. Then sautéed an onion and a large carrot in some vegetable oil until soft. I forgot I had the beef dripping set aside, or I would have used that. Then I added about a tea cup of the juices that were in the slow cooker after cooking the beef and left it all to simmer gently for an hour. Then I added some freeze dried tomato powder in lieu of tinned tomatoes and tomato purée.
While that was cooking, I peeled a couple of large potatoes and cooked and mashed them. Then added leftover carrots, swede and parsnip. The veg had been cooked in oil, honey and mustard, so added more flavour. On tasting the mash, it still needed more seasoning, so I added a generous lump of butter, salt and pepper. Once happy with the mash, it went on the top of the meat mix.
We’ll have that this evening with some green veg.
There is still about the same amount of roast beef leftover again as I’ve just used, so if the cottage pie is really really good, I might do that again, or something else entirely, don’t know yet.
Keep the fat
Do you keep all the fat? I keep all the fat when I roast a turkey, or anything else, or slow cook a joint, and skim it off the top of bones simmered for stock. The fat is packed with flavour and can be used for all kinds of things. There is nothing quite like dripping, complete with dark, jellied juices, on a piece of thick toast, and maybe sprinkled with the merest hint of crunchy salt!
Any saved fat can be used to fry things in for added flavour, or as the fat on the outside of a toasted sandwich, in pastry etc etc. Too good to throw away!
Have you made anything lovely with your leftovers yet?
Other ideas for leftovers
Christmas Leftovers – part 1. Soup, a Turkey & Cranberry Toast Topper, a Cheesy Tart
Christmas Leftovers – part 3. Turkey Burgers; Cheesy Pasta; Parsnip Dahl; Parsnip soup
And here are some more ideas in a post I wrote for Skint Dad
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