Leftovers
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Shipmate
It is the day after the Christmas Feast. What do you do with the leftovers from Christmas and other days? What are your favorite second-day meals? What leftovers are even better the second time around? My favorite is Turkey soup. I like it better than when the turkey was the main meal.
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My mum used to cook a turkey and a ham at Christmas and we'd have the meats cold on Boxing Day with chips. She always said she preferred that meal to Christmas dinner as it was easy and she could relax about it. I served it up one Boxing Day early in our marriage and it was met with such disapproval I've never done it again.
Didn't roast a turkey for either Thanksgiving or Christmas this year, but am planning to get a small one just to make the soup, plus having turkey sandwiches!
Picked over the carcass this morning, decided I couldn't be faffed to make stock. Sorry, I say every year that I'm going to, and every year I decide I have better things to do. However, lots of meat left, so @Hugal is currently making some delicious potato-topped pies for eating tonight, and some to freeze for future meals.
Agreed! This was our lunch today and enjoyed it more than yesterday's hot roast.
/slight tangent/
Dessert today was a chocolate reindeer, and a chocolate penguin. Now, I hear that the Holy Christmas Penguin (sometimes appearing in Pink) forms a part of the Christmas story these days, but for some sinister reason this has been suppressed by the Church.
Why is this? Enquiring minds need to know...
He did give me a meal of lasagne to bring home, which was excellent.
Besides, I certainly didn't want to cook today, and likely nobody else did, either!
We don't have Thanksgiving here and so turkey is very much centred on Christmas. Or vice versa. There is a bit of a rebellion against it in some quarters but I've never felt the need to deviate. Rib of beef is popular but I can't abide it personally as dissecting the meat out of all those fatty areas in that particular cut is just too much of a pain in the arse. Lamb requires a mortgage arrangement and pork is just a bit boring. So turkey it is.
I’m getting used to Turkey. We always had goose growing up - not to be posh, just because it’s what my parents had grown up with and there was helpfully a goose farm down the road so long before it was fashionable we had yearly access to one at a sensible price.
Mrs B does not like goose, so goose is over for me and at this time of year o do feel a bit sad about that.
Goose seems to need to be ordered months in advance. I'm insufficiently organised for that.
I've said elsewhere that we never eat turkey at any other time but for me it's not Christmas dinner unless it's turkey with the other essential, pigs in blankets. One year we were with our daughter and son in law and they did duck (something else I never cook). It was nice but for me it just wasn't Christmas dinner.
I shall do some kind of casserole this evening with the remainder of our turkey and serve it with jacket potatoes.
Parties on 12/24 and 25! I made chicken shawarma (for 12/24) and The Great Bean (for both days). Our guests used up my hoard of plastic take-out dishes, swapping things to take home.
I ate pumpkin pie for breakfast yesterday. A left over croissant and a banana today.
We ate shawarma yesterday for supper with hummous, a village salad, toum, yogurt and carrots I fried slowly. We'll eat my sister's creamed spinach with fish and potatoes today.
Left over beans are in the freezer for another time. Yum!
I had cooked the remaining shawarma marinade and pan juices from the chicken together, defatted it after it cooled and will use that in an lentil soup later.
Ham we brought home from my cousin's is in the freezer for a delicious something in the future.
Prick it and then drench it with boiling water, rub with salt for a crispy skin.
We have gone back to turkey after flirting with goose and venison. I never eat beef. It seems to have had all its flavour removed since I was a kid. Lamb is for Easter, no room for discussion on that. Pork is not special enough.
We had a capon one year. A sort of a giant chicken. Last year it was salmon as our veggie son and d-i-l were with us. It made a good change - two sides of salmon stuffed and tied together.
Lamb is for when I win the bloody lottery.
The last couple of times I did goose before admitting defeat* with Mrs B they were from Aldi for roughly the same price as a turkey. Obviously I’m not remotely trying to convert you but it can be done!
*Essentially I cooked the whole Christmas dinner on the basis that meant I was allowed to choose to have goose.
Disappointing. For one thing, you can't be exactly sure what meat you're hitting with the temperature probe. The temperature you want a chicken breast to reach may not be the same that you want a duck breast at. So to avoid listeria you end up having to overcook it.
Said Mother Maniac managed to order a turkey crown (effectively just the breast and wings) for 3 of us that was larger than the entire turkey that Mother Knotweed ordered for 9.
I really, really have no idea how she manages to do some things so well (like cooking it to a turn) and get things like the size needed so wide of the mark. Thankfully she has a freezer, so the carcass was stripped, the meat packaged into one-portion bags, and the bones boiled for stock before we left.
That too!!!!
When I was growing up, it was always country ham for Christmas dinner. My wife and I have done various things from year to year, but settled some years ago and a stuffed beef tenderloin. The leftovers last night, all gone now, were great.
Do they sell parts of goose, rather than a whole one, so you could have a breast of goose on the side, or the like?
I usually have turkey bubble and squeak for about 3 days after Christmas and curry the carcass.
An excellent idea - useful for sandwiches, too, if you have enough left over from the main meal.
Do you have the usual vegetables, and other trimmings? I think even pigs-in-blankets can be bought ready prepared.
I rather like goose, but the kids wouldn't eat it, so it's not worth the faff just for me and Mrs C. If I get organized this afternoon, there will be Turkey PIE...
We have some excellent cooks and chefs, from Foreign Climes, amongst our Faithful Few...
There's some other sort?
We enjoyed our turkey casserole with jackets potatoes and cauliflower, followed by mince pies with brandy butter and cream. I also opened the second selection box of chocolates. That's the turkey used up; plenty of mince pies and chocolates still to go, though.
We have eaten all the ham and chicken and only a scrap of lamb left. I made a massive rice salad, which we have enjoyed. Rather than let it go to waste, I've frozen half of it (for stir-fry to be consumed later).
The other half bowl was turned into a stir fry eaten last night. It fed 3 of us, but the texture seemed a bit off. However, I think the husband may have added a couple of eggs to the mixture. I always worry that rice is something that doesn't keep well, so I'm glad we've eaten it all promptly.
We had heated up leftovers yesterday at my sister's; I got the carcass (I'd asked for it if nobody else wanted it), and today turned it into 5 takeaway cartons of stock. I'll make broccoli and cheese soup with one tomorrow, and the rest will go into the freezer.
There was enough meat on it that I should be able to make a decent fricassee too.
We used 2 packets of proper chicken slices( 2 for £5). stuffing, 5 prepared pigs in bankets each. Aunt Bessie parsnips, mashed potatoes and sprouts off the stick. Preparation and cooking time 40 minutes.