Rachael Ray shares 5 easy ways to turn your Thanksgiving leftovers into delicious meals
- Rachael Ray shared her go-to recipes to transform Thanksgiving leftovers into delicious meals.
- Curry, chili, and ragu are a few of Ray's favorite methods for using up leftover turkey.
You don't need to let a fridge full of Thanksgiving leftovers go to waste.
Insider spoke to celebrity chef Rachael Ray at Burger Bash, an event during New York City Wine & Food Festival in October, about her go-to recipes for transforming Thanksgiving leftovers like turkey, stuffing, and cranberry sauce into delicious meals.
Here are five easy ways to transform your Thanksgiving leftovers, according to Rachael Ray.
Curries and chilis are an excellent way to utilize leftover turkey.
Turkey curry and chili are two great options for day-after-Thanksgiving recipes, thanks to how easy they are to prepare.
"Curries, chilis ... those are your basics," Ray told Insider.
Ray's recipe for turkey corn chili takes only 25 minutes to prepare and uses simple ingredients like cooked turkey meat, chopped onion, chopped bell pepper, crushed tomatoes, chicken stock or broth, and frozen corn.
Ray said "any kind of ragu" is a useful way to use up leftovers.
Who doesn't love the smell of a pot of ragu simmering on the stove during the colder months?
Ray's recipe for turkey porcini ragu uses dried, sliced porcini mushrooms, a pound of leftover Thanksgiving turkey, turkey or chicken stock, red wine, onion, garlic, crushed tomatoes, and more.
She recommends making a matzo-ball-style soup out of leftover stuffing, cooked meats, and vegetables.
For this recipe, Ray recommends rolling leftover stuffing into a ball and dropping it like a matzo ball into broth.
Add "leftover vegetables, any sort of meat, turkey, chicken, or ham, and you have the equivalent of a matzo-ball soup," Ray told Insider.
Ray also suggests making a burrito with your leftover turkey.
One of the simplest ways to reuse leftover Thanksgiving turkey is to make a sandwich, wrap, or even a burrito, which Rachael Ray told Insider is one of her favorite methods.
You can add other Thanksgiving fixings like turkey, cranberry sauce, stuffing, and gravy to your tortilla, or you can go a more standard route with fillings like shredded cheese, turkey, lettuce, and tomato.
You can also make a waffle out of leftover stuffing.
One of the most unique ways to use leftover stuffing is by making a savory stuffing waffle.
"You can put your leftover stuffing in your waffle iron, and then just put the turkey or the pheasant on top of the crispy stuffing once you take it out of the waffle iron," Ray said.
"[Top it] with a little bit of fruity maple syrup, like cranberry sauce and maple syrup, or some sort of warm honey drizzled over the top."
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