Thanksgiving Leftovers: Turkey Sweet Potato Hash

I've got one more recipe for your before the big turkey day.  This one also uses up some of those Thanksgiving leftovers.  Not only turkey, but also sweet potatoes, if you haven't mashed them all, that is.  This one uses cubed sweet potatoes.  I created this recipe last winter.

Turkey Sweet Potato Hash

Ingredients: 

1 tbsp olive oil

1 Golden Delicious apple, peeled, cored, and diced

½ large onion, chopped

2 tbsp flour

1½ cups turkey or chicken stock

2 cups cooked turkey, cubed or shredded

1 lb. sweet potatoes, cut into 1” cubes and cooked

½ tsp poultry seasoning 

½ tsp salt

Biscuits

Directions:

Heat olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat.  Sauté apple and onion until soft.  Add flour and stir until incorporated into the oil.  Slowly whisk in turkey stock.  Add turkey, sweet potatoes, poultry seasoning, and salt.  Cover skillet and bring to a boil.  Reduce heat to low and cook for another 5-10 minutes or until gravy is thickened.

Serve over warm biscuits.

This is really yummy.  I love how the sweet and savory flavors meld together so well.  The sweet potatoes and apples bring a little sweet, but the onion, turkey, and buttery biscuits make it decidedly savory.  

If you don't have leftover cooked sweet potatoes, it's really easy to make some.  Cube up 1 lb. of sweet potatoes (1" cubes) and you can either steam or boil them on the stove top.  I actually use my Pampered Chef Microcooker, which is used in the microwave.  Super easy.  Any way you do it, make sure to leave the potatoes a little bit al dente, since they will continue to cook after you add them to the skillet.

I'm listing this as one of my "mock Thanksgiving" recipes because it is reminiscent of Thanksgiving flavors if you make it at other times of the year.  Put some cranberry sauce and green beans on the side and you're good to go!

I wish you all the happiest of Thanksgivings!

Read More

Slow Cooker Cranberry Chicken

I just love Thanksgiving food.  Turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce. Mmm.  I love it so much that I don't save it for only one day a year; I make Thanksgiving-type food all year round.  I call these meals "mock Thanksgiving" meals.  They contain the best flavors of Thanksgiving without the hassle of cooking a whole turkey and making all the sides.  

This is a Better Homes and Gardens recipe I discovered on Recipe.com and tried last month.  It's a winner!  Throw some chicken drumsticks in the slow cooker with cranberry sauce and when it's done, serve it with some StoveTop stuffing.  

Slow Cooker Cranberry Chicken

Ingredients:

8 chicken drumsticks, skinned

1 (16 oz.) can whole berry cranberry sauce

2 tbsp dry onion soup mix

2 tbsp quick-cooking (instant) tapioca

Directions:

Place chicken in slow cooker.  In a small bowl, stir together the cranberry sauce, onion soup mix, and tapioca.  Pour over the chicken and turn the chicken pieces so they are evenly coated.

Cook on low for 6 hours.  Rearrange pieces halfway through cooking if you are able.

Serve chicken drumsticks with sauce.  Stuffing goes really well with this chicken.

Makes 4 servings.

Here's something shocking: I didn't change anything about this recipe!  That is pretty rare.  It's just perfect the way it is.  The onion soup mix gives the cranberry sauce just the perfect amount of savory-ness and cuts down on the sweetness.  The instant tapioca thickens the sauce beautifully so you can coat the tender chicken with it.  Have you ever used it before?  It's pretty great for slow cooker dishes.  Cornstarch doesn't work in the slow cooker because it has to come to a boil and slow cookers don't usually get that hot.  But the tapioca softens and thickens at a lower temperature so it's perfect.

Of course, you could serve this chicken with rice, but I think it's so great with the stuffing.  And using the boxed stuffing (I always get the reduced-sodium chicken variety), makes this meal perfect for busy weeknights.  My favorite veggie to go with this is green beans.

While I like to make this meal whenever I am craving Thanksgiving food outside of Thanksgiving season, it would also be great for those who aren't doing the whole big Thanksgiving celebration but still want something to make the day feel like Thanksgiving.  It would be perfect for a couple or a small family who is staying home that day and doesn't feel like going all out with the turkey and everything.

Here are some other "mock Thanksgiving" meals I have shared with you in the past:

Turkey Stuffing Meatloaf with Cranberry Glaze

Turkey and Sweet Potato Burritos

Spicy Cranberry Glazed Chicken

Speaking of Thanksgiving, next week will be this year's installment of my annual Thanksgiving Week here on my blog.  I have five great recipes that will liven up your Thanksgiving table.  Are you tired of the same old, same old?  I have three awesome side dishes, one turkey-alternative main dish (good if you are hosting guests who don't like turkey that much), and a super easy pumpkin dessert.  So be sure to check all of that out next week.

Read More

Turkey Stuffing Meatloaf

I love Thanksgiving food. Turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce. Mmmm. But I only make a turkey with all the trimings once a year. So the rest of the year, I like to make meals that mimic Thanksgiving flavors. I call them "Mock Thanksgiving" meals. They combine the foods and/or flavors of Thanksgiving in easy, weeknight-friendly preparations. I have already posted one of these recipes, Spicy Cranberry Chicken. Here is another one of our favorites.

I saw Rachael Ray make mini turkey meatloaves that had her homemade stuffing in them (in place of the breadcrumbs that are usually in meatloaf). I thought that putting stuffing in ground turkey for a meatloaf was a brilliant idea. So I tried her recipe and I had several problems with it. First of all, while I liked the stuffing recipe she provided, there was way too much of it. Not only did the mini meatloaves turn out more stuffing than meat, there were too many of them for one meal (I think we ate them for like 2 days after that!). And it was kind of time-consuming to make the stuffing and then bake the meatloaf. (This wasn't a 30 minute meal; it was on her Cooking Channel show Week in a Day.) And instead of turning out like mini meatloaves, they turned out more like burger patties. In fact, we ate the leftovers on hamburger buns with cranberry sauce as a condiment. That was okay, but I was stuck on the meatloaf idea.

So I took her idea and came up with my own version of turkey meatloaf with stuffing in it. I use a boxed stuffing mix. I love that stuff, and while the regular versions are loaded with salt, I really like Stovetop's reduced sodium chicken variety. Here is the recipe I came up with.

Turkey Stuffing Meatloaf

Ingredients:

2 lbs. ground turkey (93/7)

2 eggs, beaten

½ tsp salt

½ tsp poultry seasoning

1½ cups prepared stuffing

⅓ can jellied cranberry sauce

2 tbsp ketchup

1 tbsp dijon mustard

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350°.

Combine turkey, eggs, salt, poultry seasoning, and stuffing. Put into a loaf pan and bake 1 to 1½ hours or until internal temperature reaches 165°.

Meanwhile, heat cranberry sauce, ketchup, and mustard in a small saucepan over low heat until cranberry sauce has melted and no lumps remain.

When meatloaf is done, spread glaze on top and bake an additional 5 minutes.

Makes 8 servings.

Rachael's mini meatloaves didn't include a glaze. I got the idea for this one somewhere online but I can't remember where. It's a Thanksgiving-y spin on the traditional ketchup and brown sugar one.

We love this meatloaf. I serve it with mashed potatoes with gravy and green beans.

Here is a pic of Rachael's mini meatloaves. You can see what I mean about them looking like burgers.

Read More

Turkey and Sweet Potato Burritos

This is a recipe I came up with one day when I had some ground turkey and some cooked sweet potato cubes in the fridge that I didn't have any plan for.

Turkey and Sweet Potato Burritos

Ingredients:

¼ large onion, diced

1 lb. ground turkey or leftover cubed turkey breast

3 tbsp adobo sauce (from a can of chipotles)

1 can black beans, drained and rinsed

2 cups sweet potatoes, cubed and cooked

1 tsp ground cumin

Salt to taste

6 large flour tortillas

Sour cream, optional

Directions:

Saute onion and ground turkey in large skillet until turkey is browned. Add adobo sauce, black beans, sweet potatoes, and salt. Heat through.

Place filling in tortillas and roll up. Serve with sour cream.

Makes 6 servings.

Super simple but really good. I consider it one of my "mock Thanksgiving" meals because it has turkey and sweet potatoes. I put in the recipe that you could use leftover Thanksgiving turkey; I've never made it that way, but I'm sure it would work.

Here's how I cook the sweet potatoes. Peel them and cut into small cubes. Then I steam them in a steamer basket on the stovetop, but you could also steam them in the microwave by putting them in a bowl with a small amount of water and covering tightly with plastic wrap.

If you like things really spicy, use one of the chipotles from the can, as well as the adobo. I like using the adobo because it has all of the chipotle flavor with just a little bit of heat instead of a lot.

Yummy filling.

Read More

Spicy Cranberry Glazed Chicken

This is a recipe I got from the magazine Cuisine at Home. It was in the April issue, but it felt like a fall/winter dish to me so I saved it until now.

Spicy Cranberry Glazed Chicken

Ingredients:

⅓ cup frozen cranberry juice cocktail concentrate, thawed

3 tbsp brown mustard

2 tbsp brown sugar

1½ tsp hot sauce

1 tsp Worcestershire sauce

4 boneless, skinless chicken breast halves

Salt

Directions:

Preheat broiler with oven rack 5-6” from the heating element. Line a baking sheet with foil and coat with nonstick spray.

Combine juice concentrate, mustard, brown sugar, hot sauce, and Worcestershire sauce in a small saucepan. Bring to a boil over high heat, reduce heat to medium, and simmer until mixture becomes syrupy, about 8 minutes.

Season chicken breasts with salt and place on prepared baking sheet. Broil for 6 minutes. Flip chicken and baste with the cranberry glaze. Broil for 4 minutes, flip again and baste. Broil until chicken begins to brown, about 5 minutes. Chicken is done when an instant-read thermometer reads 160°.

Makes 4 servings.

This is so yummy! I make a cranberry glaze for my Easter ham and we love that, so I figured this would be good too.

The original recipe called for 2-3 tsp of hot sauce, but we are not big hot sauce people, so I started with 1 tsp. After the glaze reduced, I tasted it and thought it could use a little bit more, so I added the extra ½ tsp. So if you like things really spicy, you will need to add more.

I served this with stuffing for a Thanksgiving-type feel. StoveTop makes a good lower sodium version now.

Read More