Cheesy Turkey Casserole

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 Planning, prepping, cooking and serving a large holiday meal is a challenging undertaking, but coming up with creative and tasty ways to use the leftovers? Um, hello scary. I find a fridge full of leftovers intimidating and a lot of the time our tasty odds and ends from big dinners languish in the fridge just to be tossed out a few days later. I know, it’s terrible – I hate to even admit it.

Part of the problem is the amount of food we cook. For example, we piled our table high with all sorts of dishes for Christmas dinner – enough to feed a small army. In planning I try to limit the amount of sides, but inevitably I end up with all sorts of stuff because “we have to have this” or “we can’t have Christmas dinner without that”. Especially now that we are merging two cultures together – Steve likes to have his traditional English Christmas dishes and I have a few American must-haves, as well. That’s how you end up with three kinds of potatoes. It gets a little out of hand.

So now we have a fridge of leftovers, but I refuse to be intimidated by them this time. We’ve already had a few rounds of sandwiches and I made an awesome “turkey bowl” – mashed potatoes topped with veggies, cheese, turkey, and a dollop of cranberry sauce. So we’re making progress – the goal is to use it all up.

Next on the list? Cheesy Turkey Casserole.

Don’t you think casseroles are the best way to use up leftovers? They’re versatile, easy to make, and can be frozen for future dinners. I made this one with the goal to use as much as possible without making it a freak show of ingredients – leftover turkey, pancetta, yorkshire puddings, spinach, and a block of cheese all found their way into this and all together it tasted delicious.

It all starts with a simple cheddar cheese sauce and to it you add the leftover turkey, spinach, some herbs, and tiny bit of dijon mustard. Then you mix in the pasta and pour it all into a baking dish. But, wait, there’s more! I had quite a few yorkshire puddings leftover, so I popped those into my brand new handy-dandy Cuisinart food processor (thanks, Santa!) and ground them up into breadcrumbs. Don’t have yorkshire puddings sitting around? It’s okay – just use whatever type of bread you have hanging around. After sprinkling the breadcrumbs over the top I added some crispy pancetta (bacon works, too!) and a bit more shredded cheddar. After about 40ish minutes in the oven it came out hot, bubbly, and cheesy. We each devoured a bowlful for lunch and then I wrapped up the remainder to store in the freezer to reheat for dinner on a busy weeknight. Done and done. Thank you, leftovers!

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