Six Ideas for Your Christmas Leftovers

We spend a lot of time thinking about Thanksgiving dinner and the Thanksgiving leftovers. Little consideration is given to what happens to the Christmas meal the next day. But that leaves some fun opportunities on the table.

The only thing better than Christmas dinner is Christmas leftovers. It’s one of the few times of the year that everyone looks forward to having leftovers. Thankfully, there are tons of ways to use traditional Christmas food creatively in leftovers.

Wraps

Almost anything is good in a wrap. The best part is that you can use different things for the wrap such as lettuce, cabbage, jicama, tortillas, seaweed, and more. Be creative about it.

Go out of your comfort zone and choose an ingredient from an entirely different country. You can use cooked sweet potatoes and other roasted veggies to make vegetarian sushi rolls, or put it all inside some butter lettuce and crunch away.

Soup

You have veggies, you have gravy, you have meat. Well, this is all you need to make a delicious soup. Put it all in the pot, add some broth, and it’ll be done as soon as it’s all hot since the ingredients were already cooked.

It’s a fast way to enjoy soup. Leftover ham, potatoes, and some corn can become corn chowder. Or leftover mixed veggies and turkey can become veggie soup. Leftover turkey, gravy, and broth can become dumplings. It’s easy if you think of the flavors and ingredients.

Casseroles

If you have leftover veggies and leftover meat, you can combine it in different ways into a casserole. For example, try any of these leftover turkey casseroles: https://communitytable.parade.com/447935/lorilange/10-casserole-recipes-using-leftover-turkey-or-chicken/

Old-Fashioned Sandwiches

Try turkey, cranberry sauce and stuffing on sourdough. It’s going to be delicious and will make any leftovers go super-fast. Try toasting the bread first to make it handle more fillings and give you that satisfying crunch.

Pizza

Anything can go on top of a pizza. Yes, even leftovers. Think outside the box. Putting anything on crust tastes delicious. You don’t even need to add cheese if you don’t want to, but of course, cheese makes everything even better.

Get creative on the type of cheese you use. For example, goat cheese would pair great with turkey, and leftover ham will pair well with cheddar.

Put It in a Pita

Another way to serve up leftovers is inside pita bread. Try this recipe, subbing turkey for the chicken:

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/leftovers-in-a-pita-recipe-1957510

You could also put ham and pineapple in a pita and it’s going to be super-delicious.

Investigate Other Ideas

There are so many ideas out there about how to use Christmas leftovers that you can find if you do a quick Google search. Try here for starters and your imagination may be ignited for even more ideas: https://www.thespruce.com/christmas-leftovers-recipes-479641

Budget-Friendly Options

Using leftovers is a great way to stretch your budget. If you go into planning your Christmas dinner knowing what you’ll do with the leftovers, it’ll help you increase your budget because you are going to use every ounce of ingredients longer than just the one dinner.

The holidays are not over yet. You have New Year celebrations next. In a future post, we will look at some fun meal ideas that will make your party amazing.