Happy Thanksgiving everyone! I hope the day is going splendidly and your bellies are stuffed. Since the upload day for my videos and blog fall on this particular holiday it would be kind of silly for me to do a recipe for Thanksgiving, but since most of you will be seeing this post after Thanksgiving I thought it would be a good idea to shoot a video/write up a post with a few recipes for your leftovers! I want to point out that since I made this video before Thanksgiving, instead of using a turkey I cooked a while chicken instead. The recipes are still the same, just pretend I'm using turkey meat/bones instead of chicken! I didn't cook a turkey for two reasons: I couldn't find any whole ones at the grocery store when I was going to make this video and because these meals were made for just me and my husband, so even if I could find a turkey, I didn't want to cook all of that meat and then have it go bad since we couldn't possibly eat it all by ourselves.
Keep reading for the full ingredients and recipes!
- 1 cupcranberry sauce
- 1 red jalapeno finely diced
- 1 red bellpepper finely diced
- 1 tsp lemon juice
Throw the jalapeno, red bellpepper and lemon juice into a pot and heat over medium heat until they start to just soften. Stir in the cranberry sauce. Crank the heat to high and bring to a boil. Lower the heat to med-low and simmer for about 10 minutes or until thickened.*
*My cranberry sauce was quite loose, so I simmered mine for a little bit longer. And some people who have thicker sauce may need less time, but 10 minutes is a good general time.
- 1 cup leftover mashed potato
- 1 1/4 cup flour
- 1 egg beaten
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
Dump salt and 1 cup of flour onto a cutting board and make a well in the middle. Dump your leftover mashed potatoes on top and make a well with them also. Pour the beaten egg into the well and using a scraper start bringing in the sides of the flour and mashed potato into the middle to mix with the egg until it comes together like a dough. You could just mix everything together in a bowl, but it's more fun this way! Also, depending on your mashed potatoes you may need to add the additional flour. Just add a little bit at a time and knead it in until you have a dough that doesn't stick to your hands. Divide the dough into quarters and roll into long snakes and cut into 1 inch pieces. Gnocchi have lines in them that are typically created with a special paddle, but if you're a more casual gnocchi maker, you can get away with just using the back of a fork. What you want to do is place a piece of dough on the back of a fork, towards the base of the tines and using your thumb, roll the dough down. An alternate method is to just poke them in the middle to create a little dent. Place your finished gnocchi on a lightly floured baking sheet until you're ready to use them! If you're not going to use them that day, you could freeze them for later use.* To cook, bring a large pot of salted water to a boil and dump them in. Since they're fresh they won't take very long to cook, usually they take about 2 to 5 minutes. They'll float to the top of the pot when they're done. Use a slotted spoon to fish out the cooked gnocchi and place directly into your sauce. If you like a little bit of crispiness, you could also take them out of the water and put them into a saucepan with a bit of oil and saute until lightly golden. Then top with your sauce. Or you could also use them as the "noodles" in soup like I'll show you later in this post.
*To freeze, place in a single layer, try not to have them touching, and throw the whole sheet pan into the freezer. Once they're frozen you can throw them into a ziplock bag in order to save valuble freezer space. Once ready to use, let them defrost a bit on a baking sheet in a single layer and then cook like normal.
- turkey bones
- 1 onion
- 2 large carrots
- 2 or 3 celery stalks
- 4 garlic cloves
- 3 bay leaves
- a few sprigs of rosemary
- a few sprigs of thyme
- water
- salt to taste
After you've picked all of the meat off of the bones throw it into a pot. Fill with water. You'll want to use enough to cover the bones. Crank the heat to high. Roughly chop your veggies and chuck them into the pot. Toss in the herbs as well. Bring to a boil and then lower the heat to med/low and simmer for 6 to 8 hours. Place a collander over a bowl and pour the contents of your pot in. Discard the bones and veg and herbs. Add salt to taste.
- bread
- turkey meat
- cranberry pepper jelly
- lettuce
- turkey jus or gravy
Build your sandwich! Spread a bit of the jus onto the bread. Alternatively you could skip this and just dip the whole sandwich in the jus while you eat it. Place the lettuce and spread the cranberry pepper jelly onto the other half of the bread. Throw the turkey on top of the lettuce, close the sandwich and there you go!
- 1/4 cup olive oil*
- 1 onion diced
- 4 garlic cloves minced
- 1/4 cup flour
- 4 cups turkey broth
- 1 large carrot diced
- 1 celery stalk diced
- 1 cup turkey chopped or shreaded
- 1lb gnocchi (conveniently my homemade recipe makes roughly this much)
- 1 can coconut milk
- 1 sprig thyme
- 1 teaspoon dried parsley
*1/4 cup might seem like a lot of olive oil, but you need it because we're going to be making a roux!
Heat olive oil in a large pot over medium/high heat. Throw in the onions and garlic and cook until the onions are translucent. Stir in the flour. Stir constantly for about 5 minutes. Stir in the turkey stock. Dump in the carrots, celery, turkey and herbs. Lower heat to med/low and simmer for about 20 minutes. Pour in the coconut milk and let simmer for 5 minutes. Fish out the bay leaf and any other herbs. Season the soup with salt and pepper to taste. Throw in the gnocchi and cook for about 5 minutes, or until the gnocchi starts to float to the top. Ladle into a bowl and enjoy!
I hope you all liked these recipes!
