After eating to your heart’s content, there are almost always leftovers from Thanksgiving. Instead of just reheating your food in the oven or microwave, try these innovative ways to reuse your stuffing, turkey, mashed potatoes, and cranberry sauce!
- Stuffing Waffles
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If you have a waffle iron, one of the easiest ways to use up leftover stuffing is to make some waffles! All you have to do is preheat the iron and cover both sides with vegetable oil. While it’s preheating, combine 4 ½ cups of stuffing with two eggs in a bowl (you can also mix in ¼ cup of parsley), then pack it into the iron. Once cooked, you can top your waffles with mashed potatoes, gravy, and cranberry sauce. See the full recipe here!
- Thanksgiving Panini
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This recipe uses almost all of your leftovers! If you don’t have a panini press, you can also make this sandwich like you would a grilled cheese. This recipe recommends using sourdough bread, swiss cheese, and dijon mustard in addition to your leftover turkey, gravy, cranberry sauce, and dressing. However, you can add or substitute any ingredients that you want.
- Fried Mashed Potato Bites
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For leftover mashed potatoes, easily turn them into a delicious appetizer or snack filled with cheese, bacon, and onions fried to perfection! This recipe requires a few more ingredients, but will only take 30 minutes.
- Cranberry Pop-Tarts
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If you had these as a kid, then these will bring back some memories! This recipe calls for ½ cup of fruit jam, but you can definitely use cranberry sauce as your filling and topping. You’ll get six pop tarts in 30 minutes making this a great breakfast addition!
- Turkey and Wild Rice Soup
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My mom makes some of the best wild rice, so I wanted to include this one for anyone else out there who also loves it, but wants to repurpose it in a new recipe!
- Fried Green Beans
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If you have leftover veggies, give them a new life by frying them! All you need to do is combine 1 pound of green beans (leftover or raw) with salt, cayenne pepper, and buttermilk and let them soak. Then dredge the green beans in cornmeal seasoned with more salt and cayenne and deep-fry in vegetable oil until golden brown! See the full recipe here!
More recipes:
- Country Living – 60 Best Thanksgiving Leftover Recipes
- Food Network – Best Thanksgiving Leftover Recipes
- Delish – 25 Genius Ways to Use Up All Your Thanksgiving Leftovers
These are only a select few of the many recipes I came across. While it might be intimidating to cook again, many of these recipes only require a few extra ingredients and steps and might become one of your go-tos when it’s not Thanksgiving!