The best recipes using Thanksgiving Leftovers for the day after Thanksgiving and beyond.
Happy Wednesday! I’ve been convalescing from the cold I picked up weeks ago, so we haven’t chatted since last Monday. How was your Halloween? How was your weekend? Did you enjoy your extra hour of sleep this Sunday? (My answers to those questions are: great, fabulous, and YES!)
Now that October is in the rear-view mirror, we start saying goodbye to pumpkin and pumpkin spice everything ( 🙁 ) and looking forward to Thanksgiving (yay!).
Today though, we’re looking one day past that to the day after Thanksgiving–maybe the day after the day after. Whenever it is that your refrigerator is still stuffed with turkey day leftovers, but fixing yourself another plate of turkey, mashed potatoes, and green bean casserole starts feeling like less of a feast and more of an obligation.
When you get to that point, this post will be here for you, full of ideas to take your boring old Thanksgiving leftovers and turn them into something tasty and new.
I asked a bunch of fellow food bloggers for their best recipes using Thanksgiving leftovers, and oh man, did they deliver. Here we go:
Recipes Using Leftover Turkey
Easy Leftover Turkey Tetrazzini from Platings & Pairings
Creamed Turkey for Two
Wild Rice and Leftover Turkey Soup from The Seasoned Mom
Turkey Pot Pie from Living Lou
Turkey Chowder from Sugar Spun Run
Thanksgiving Leftovers Hand Pies from Hungry Enough To Eat Six
Savory Cornbread with Turkey and Cheese from The Worktop
Thanksgiving Leftovers Risotto from Three Olives Branch
Cheesy Turkey Enchiladas from What A Girl Eats
Easy Leftover Turkey Casserole Recipe With Mayonnaise from Wholesome Yum
Recipes Using Leftover Sides
Kale and Stuffing Strata from My Kitchen Love
Cranberry and Cream Cheese Monkey Bread from Meg is Well
Leftover Turkey and Stuffing Croquettes from Just a Little Bit of Bacon
Leftover Mashed Potato Rolls from NumsTheWord
Leftover Cranberry and Turkey Quesadillas with Asiago and White Cheddar Cheese from Coffee & Crayons
Eggs Baked in Mashed Potatoes from The Kittchen
Cranberry Sauce Oatmeal Bars from Savory Tooth
Next Day Stuffing Waffles from Pack Momma
Leftover Mashed Potato Cheesy Vegetarian Hash from The Live-In Kitchen
This Chai White Hot Chocolate is smooth and creamy with a warming chai flavor that makes it just about the coziest drink ever.
Happy Halloween Eve Day, my friends (that’s a thing, right?). As we sit here on the evening of our most chocolate-filled holiday, I hope all of your Halloween plans are falling into alignment. I hope your costume is just the right level of creepy/cute/ironic, your bags of candy are yet unplundered, and your enthusiasm for the night not dimmed by poor weather or obligatory party appearances (<–my worst nightmare).
But before we all candy ourselves out tomorrow night, you should take a minute of me-time today and make yourself a cup of this Chai White Hot Chocolate (or pin this recipe and come back to it in a week when the candy coma has worn off.) 😉
I have quite a few drink recipes on the site for when the weather turns colder. Pumpkin Spice Lattes are classic October, White Chocolate Peppermint Mochas and Eggnog Lattes are a must for December, but Chai White Hot Chocolate? This is the perfect drink for heading into November.
It’s smooth and creamy, with a warming chai flavor that makes it about the coziest drink ever. It’s the sort of drink you’ll want to pour into a travel mug and take along on a rambling walk some chilly November morning.
This Chai White Hot Chocolate also couldn’t be easier to make and needs only three ingredients: milk, good-quality white chocolate, and a chai tea bag.
To make the hot chocolate, you just heat the milk on the stove, steep the tea, and then melt in some of your favorite white chocolate. In about three minutes, your cozy perfect November drink is ready to go.
More Warming Fall Drinks
- Hot Chocolate
- Homemade Mocha
- White Chocolate Mocha
- Chai Latte
- Rich and Thick Hot Chocolate
- Baileys Hot Chocolate
Chai White Hot Chocolate Recipe Notes
- As with my Pink Hot Chocolate , good quality white chocolate is a MUST in this recipe. Cheap white chocolate chips don’t make for good hot chocolate (trust me).
- This recipe makes 1 cup of chai white hot chocolate, enough to fill a standard 8-ounce mug. If you want to fill an over-sized 12 to 16-ounce mug, one and a half or double the recipe.
Ingredients
- ▢ 1 cup milk any percentage*
- ▢ 1.5 ounces good-quality white chocolate chopped
- ▢ 1 chai tea bag
- ▢ Whipped cream optional for topping
- ▢ Ground cinnamon optional for topping
Instructions
- Heat milk in a small pot over medium-high heat. Add tea bag (make sure to keep tag away from the burner!). Once milk begins to steam and bubbles start to form, turn heat off.
- Let tea bag steep for 2 minutes. Press tea bag between a spoon and the side of the pot to wring any liquid from it and dispose of bag.
- Turn heat to medium and stir in white chocolate until melted and drink is smooth.
- Transfer to an 8-ounce mug and top with whipped cream and a sprinkle of cinnamon if desired. Enjoy!
Notes
This Rich and Thick Hot Chocolate for One is the creamiest, most decadent hot chocolate imaginable.
I have a very important question for you on this gray Monday morning. What is your perfect cup of hot chocolate? Is it lightly sweet? Is it sweetly bitter? Is it, as my sister so helpfully put it trying to describe her perfect hot chocolate, “fluffy,” “not hard,” and “Scottish?” (Sidebar: Whaaaaaat???)
My perfect cup goes a little something like this: thick, creamy, and decadent as hell.
If that sounds like your jam, gather round, friend. That’s what I’m sharing today.
This hot chocolate is not an everyday hot chocolate. If you want something light and chocolatey that you can sip as you go about your every day, try my Three-ingredient Hot Chocolate for One . This recipe here is strictly a special occasion drink. A coldest-day-of-the-year or waiting-for-Santa-on-Christmas-Eve sort of treat, because when I say it’s spectacularly decadent, I am not joking. It’s so rich that you’ll want to sip it slowly and luxuriously, and then probably take a nap afterwards.
I love it so much.
How to make thick hot chocolate
There are a couple ways to get really thick hot chocolate. One of them is to use a bit of cornstarch as a thickener so you get cocoa like a hot drinkable pudding. It’s very good but not what we’re going for today.
To get the smoothest, richest, creamiest drinking chocolate, we’re using real chocolate, and we’re using heavy cream so each sip is a little like drinking a bar of chocolate and a lot like heaven.
You take the chocolate and cream, heat them with some milk, a little sugar and cocoa powder, and a pinch of espresso powder and in less than five minutes time, you’ll be holding a steaming mug of the creamiest, most decadent hot chocolate of your life.
More Cold Weather Drinks
- White Hot Chocolate
- Peanut Butter Hot Chocolate
- White Chocolate Mocha
- Homemade Mocha
- Peppermint White Chocolate Mocha
Rich and Thick Hot Chocolate Recipe Tips
- If you don’t have heavy cream , you can substitute half and half or any percentage milk. It will still taste great, it just won’t be as rich and thick.
- If you don’t like your beverages very sweet, you can substitute bittersweet chocolate for the semisweet and cut the sugar in half or remove it completely.
- The espresso powder helps bring out the chocolate flavor and will not make your hot chocolate taste like coffee. If you don’t have any, you can omit it or buy it on Amazon or in the coffee aisle at your grocery store. It’s usually sold in a small glass jar next to the instant coffee.
- This recipe makes 1 cup of hot chocolate, enough to fill a standard 8-ounce mug. If you want to fill an over-sized 12 to 16-ounce mug, one and a half or double the recipe.
Ingredients
- ▢ 1 tablespoon ( 12g ) granulated sugar
- ▢ 1 tablespoon ( 7g ) unsweetened cocoa powder
- ▢ 1/4 teaspoon espresso powder
- ▢ Pinch of salt
- ▢ 1 tablespoon water
- ▢ 2/3 cup milk any percentage
- ▢ 1/3 cup heavy cream
- ▢ 2 ounces semisweet chocolate chopped, high-quality chips are fine*
- ▢ Whipped cream optional for topping
Instructions
- In a small pot, combine sugar, cocoa powder, espresso powder, salt, and water. Whisk over medium-high heat until smooth. Whisk in milk and cream and heat until steaming.
- Turn heat down to medium and stir in chocolate until melted and smooth.
- Transfer to a cup and serve topped with whipped cream if desired and enjoy!
