What to do with leftover turkey (beyond sandwiches)

Leftover turkey ideas by how much is left

Start from the amount, because that decides the dish. A cup of scraps is a lunch. Four cups is a pot of soup for a crowd. The amounts below come from published leftover-turkey recipes, so a bag labeled “2 cups” matches a recipe that asks for 2 cups.

The 2-cup dishes are Butterball's skillet enchiladas and four-cheese turkey mac and cheese and NDSU Extension's turkey and broccoli Alfredo. The pot pie takes 3 cups and the dumpling soup 4. The casserole for small amounts is the USDA MyPlate leftover turkey casserole that N.C. Cooperative Extension reprints, with cubed bread, eggs and milk doing most of the filling.

The same extension lists add chili, tacos, wraps and stir-fry, and turkey works in most recipes written for cooked chicken. When you have 3 cups and the recipe wants 2, the free recipe scaler multiplies everything else by 1.5, fractions included.

Breast or dark meat: which goes where

Put breast meat where it's eaten cold or heated briefly, and dark meat where it simmers. Dark meat has more fat than breast, and the fat is also why it usually has more flavor, as an anatomy professor at Lancaster University explains in The Conversation. Thigh and drumstick meat copes better with a second long cook. Breast has less fat, so keep its second cooking short.

• Breast goes in sandwiches, wraps, turkey salad and fried rice, and makes a dinner plate reheated in gravy. How to reheat turkey has the oven and stovetop methods that keep it moist.
• Dark meat goes in soup, chili, enchiladas, tacos and pot pie filling, shredded and stirred in near the end.
• Mixed scraps make soup and stock. Drumstick and thigh bones, with some meat and skin still clinging to them, can go in the stockpot with the carcass, as America's Test Kitchen's stock recipe allows.

The skin goes soft in the fridge. America's Test Kitchen re-crisps it on large pieces after reheating, skin side down in a lightly oiled skillet over medium-high heat. Small scraps of skin are better in the stockpot.

Freezing leftover turkey in recipe-sized portions

Freeze it shredded or diced, in bags labeled with the number of cups, so a bag comes out ready for a recipe. Two cups per bag covers the enchiladas and the mac and cheese, and two bags make the soup.

• Freeze it early. The USDA's freezing guide says freezing stops bacteria from growing but doesn't kill them, so whatever grew in the fridge is still there when the bag thaws. Freeze on Friday what you won't eat by Monday.
• Cover sliced breast with gravy or broth before freezing. It keeps its quality for 6 months that way and 4 months plain, by the USDA's figures for cooked turkey dinners. NDSU Extension adds that gravy or sauce over leftover meat helps it keep its flavor.
• Press the air out, lay the bags flat to freeze, and write what's inside and the date on each, as NDSU Extension suggests.

Shredded turkey can go into a simmering soup straight from the freezer. The USDA says frozen leftovers can be reheated without thawing, as long as they reach 165°F. For enchiladas or a casserole, thaw the bag in the fridge overnight.

NDSU Extension's last tip is to keep an inventory of what's in the freezer so the bags don't get forgotten. A freezer inventory list covers how. In Hedgehog Chef's pantry, the freezer is its own location, so “turkey, shredded, 2 cups” can sit there with a use-by date 4 months out.

A plan for the four days after Thanksgiving

For a Thursday dinner, Monday is the last day to eat the leftovers or freeze them, and stuffing and gravy run out sooner, as how long leftover turkey lasts explains. Give each day one job and the turkey is eaten or frozen by then. The plan below is for a medium or large bird. For 2 to 4 people and a smaller cut, small Thanksgiving dinner has a shorter version.

The carving comes first because the USDA asks for it. Slice the breast, leave the legs and wings whole, and store the stuffing apart from the bird. For Friday's stock, America's Test Kitchen's simple turkey stock breaks up the carcass of a 12- to 14-pound turkey, adds 10 cups of water, brings it to a boil and simmers it covered for 2 hours, which gives about 8 cups. It keeps 2 days in the fridge by their count, so Friday's stock is Sunday's soup, or it goes in the freezer. How to make turkey stock from the carcass covers the simmer, why stock goes cloudy and how to cool a big pot.

In Hedgehog Chef's meal planner, Plan leftovers… on Thursday's turkey puts the leftovers on a later day and meal you pick, and makes the turkey recipe cook enough for them. In the pantry, give the cooked turkey Monday as its use-by date, and What can I make? lists your saved recipes by how much of each the pantry already covers.