12 Great Recipes to Use Leftover Turkey

A couple of years ago during a pantry challenge, I had a craving for enchiladas. We had cheese, corn tortillas, and chicken, but no sauce. I decided to make my own creamy sauce, adding a different type of enchilada to our repertoire. These creamy enchiladas are a great way to use leftover turkey instead of chicken.

This easy casserole comes together in minutes, freezes beautifully, and tastes amazing. All the ingredients are pantry staples. Just add turkey.

This recipe for Chicken and Chile Enchiladas makes two big pans of homemade enchiladas. No crowd? Stash one pan in the freezer for later.

Burrito making is a simple affair. You need large tortillas, a filling (like beans, turkey, and cheese), and a ziptop freezer bag if you plan to freeze them.

You can freeze these flautas on a lined tray prior to baking or cool baked ones and freeze those. Either way, you’ve got convenience at your fingertips.

This salad, which you can make with turkey or chicken, is full of sesame, ginger, and soy. It’s delicious served in lettuce or cabbage leaves for a low-carb option. My kids liked it wrapped up in tortillas. You could also serve it on a salad or in a roll.

Chicken or turkey salad, chock full of veggies and nuts, is served in cabbage leaves instead of bread, making it low-carb, yet filling meal. It’s also perfect to serve for family or guests who are going gluten-free.

This recipe for sweet and sour pulled chicken sandwiches was originally designed for the slow cooker. To adapt for already cooked turkey, heat up the sauce ingredients to dissolve the sugar, add the shredded or sliced turkey, and reheat.

This turkey pot pie is the perfect meal to repurpose leftovers from a large turkey or chicken dinner. If you’ve already got vegetables, meat, and gravy, all you need to do is whir up the crust in the food processor and slide this baby in the oven.

This chili redolent with spices and bursting with chicken (or turkey) and white beans comes together quickly in 30 minutes or less.

This fried rice is great to use up leftover cooked meats and any cold, cooked rice you have on hand. It has to be cold rice, otherwise it won’t work. The ultimate beauty of this recipe is that it comes together in less than 30 minutes.

Flash freeze slices of turkey to use later in soups, salads, and sandwiches. This tutorial explains how to do this.

Making a homemade stock is one of the most economical things you can do. Essentially, you’re getting all the flavor you possibly can from something you might otherwise chuck. Stock is also one of the easiest culinary feats you can pull off. And yet, the resulting turkey or chicken stock adds rich flavor to soups, stews, sauces, and rice dishes.