Thanksgiving Leftovers

Published Nov 23, 2021, 8:00 AM

In this “Leftovers” episode, Bobby and Sophie break down all of the great Thanksgiving leftovers tips you’ll need for this week’s festival of food. Listen for leftover recipe ideas, famous turkey sandwiches, and find out why Sophie prefers leftovers to thanksgiving itself. 

For more information on "Always Hungry" follow the hosts on Instagram here:

Bobby Flay's page: https://www.instagram.com/bobbyflay

Sophie Flay's page: https://www.instagram.com/abc7sophie

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

All right, guys, welcome to Always Hungry from My Heart Radio. My name is Bobby Flay, and I'm here with my daughter and co host, and I'm always Hungry. Sophie and I gather around my stove to cook together. Well, you cook, I asked the questions, and eat the food. If does any food left, you come to the table together to share a meal, connect as a family, and tell the stories that matter to us. Okay, So Thanksgiving leftovers such a good topic. Are you leftovers fan? I'm a Thanksgiving leftovers fan. I'm not a huge leftovers fan unless it's like Chinese food or like tie. But I love Thanksgiving leftovers. Okay, I'm totally with you. Usually, like if it's the Thursday night, and then like I shouldn't say thursdaycause that's always Thanksgiving. If it's a Tuesday, if it's a Tuesday night in the middle of March, I'm not need to think leftovers. I'm just not. I just never eat them. People put them away in my refrigerator and then I wind him throwing them out three years later. However, Thanksgiving as a different ball game. I make enough turkey with leftovers of mine. Well documented my Thanksgivings can be epic totally usually have three turkeys per Thanksgiving. They way between twenty and thirty pounds each. No, there's no joke, okay, and then you know all the side dishes and don't I do not make dessert. No, you have everyone bring dessert or wine, right, it's deserted wine. That's you get. You get an assignment if you want to be a guest and and you know I've talked about this too, will just go over really quickly. It just helps. Thanksgiving is impossible. If you feel like you're not accomplishing what you want to Thanksgiving, don't feel bad. You're in You're in the same boat with everybody. It's so difficult, especially if you're feeding more than a handful of people and you're really going all out because like, you know, eight side dishes, turkey, gravy, stuffing, you know, all kinds of salads and appetizers. You know you're making dessert, you have wines, cocktails. I mean, honestly, it's like insane. But now it's gonna be the day after, and you know, it's a good way to to think about, like what should you do with the leftovers? You know, and some people eat leftovers for way too many days, and they should, but you know, you have to be careful. But like at least the day after, you know, maybe the next day, like you know, everybody's inundated with you know, turkey sandwiches, et cetera. I have a couple of things to say about leftovers. I don't like dishes where take all of the ingredients from Thanksgiving and put them in a casserolee. I'm not interested in. No, I'm not down with that, Like you know, the sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, turkey, cranberry sauce, you know, cast role, they throw it in in the oven and like, oh it's turkey, it's Thanksgiving castle. No, No, I don't want that. So I take each into each individual ingredient and take a look at how I can utilize that ingredient. Is if it was the only thing I had, So Brussels Brounce, Brussels Brounce, nacho. Okay, this dish is a Katie Lee exclusive gear cast role. It's like everything on top, but it's not everything. It's just a couple of vegetables and some cheese, sauce and turkey, right, and cheese sauce from you cranberries on top, but you put the you put the pomegranate seeds on top because they look pretty okay whatever, but but okay, so for instance, like obviously, let's let's let's go with let's go with the obvious, which is turkey, Okay, turkey tacos, turkey sandwiches, turkey enchiladas. Yes, obviously, turkey sandwiches. I'll tell you what my turkey sandwich is right now, dark meat, white meat cooked like reheated in the gravy in a pan on top of the stove. Then I make toast. I have good quality like Brios, your white bread or something country bread, something like that. I toast it mayonnaise and cranberries. Oh yeah, that's it's great. Or you can make a cranberry mayonnaise. Sometimes I put stuffing on top, which I think is weird because you have bread too much on bread. But my father, your grandfather, likes that, so I make that for him. I'd maybe use the leftover cheese sauce that you have from your potatoes. You know. Another good one is like a cranberry bris and turkey sandwich. So good. Yeah, that works really nicely. And and and the cranberry sauce like it has its place, but it's not. It shouldn't be everywhere. A really good thing to do. I did this for Misfits the other day. Cranberry relish that you make. Use it for your next cheese plate. So good. You know, it's tart, it's sweet, depending what else you put in there where it's really nice with cheeses and crackers and toasts and things like that. You know, you can make a turkey soup, of course, always good to make some turkey soup, turkey pot pie. See what I'm saying. You see where I'm going here. So you're taking the ingredient and you're making another dish with it. You know, I feel you don't feel like you have to use everything that you had on the table the night before. Doesn't have to be doesn't have to feel like Thanksgiving. There's a lot going on here, DoD wit. When you say there's a lot going on, there really isn't a lot going on. What feels like we're making some chicken, brussels brouts and sweet potatoes on one can. Yeah, I'm making I would say one of my most successful Thanksgiving leftover dishes. So we have some leftover turkey, we have some leftover roasted sweet potatoes, so left left over roasted roasted Brussels sprouts, and we have um, some queso sauce from my mashed potatoes. Okay, and I made this dish the first time for my good friends Kaylee. Okay, you know Katie Lee from the Kitchen on Food Network. She's been a friend of mine for you know, a very long time. She's also one of the hungriest people I know. Um. She came to my house for Thanksgiving a few years back, and then next day she literally knocked on my door and was she was like, what's up to the leftovers? And so I made her this dish. It's basically Brussels sprouts nachos. What do you think it sounds good? Yeah? I don't think I found this dish though. I don't think you have. You know what a Kentucky High Brown is. Kentucky Brown is an amazing American sandwich. It's an open face sandwich that has warm slices of turkey, quittle g is it on a biscuit bread toast, and then it's got more morena sauce, which is a cheese sauce and slices of turkey, a griddled tomato, a couple of slices of crispy bacon and then turkey and then the morn a sauce on top and you gratan it. It was. It was actually invented in the Brown Hotel in Louisville, Kentucky, and then we served at a bar American at lunch every single day. The restaurant was open for lunch really years but popular, very popular, except that like if you were on a business lunch, your day was over. It was like you went to you immediately went to have a napp but it was you know, it's obviously one of the great American sandwiches. Um. You know. Then like the mashed potatoes, Okay, make a mashed potato gratan, bring it back to life. Put it in a cash frew dish, Sprinkle some bread crumbs with some parmersan cheese on top, put it in the oven under the broiler. Make it nice and brown, delicious, great side dish for the next night, you know, and it brings them. It brings the mashed potatoes back to life. Shepherd's pie with mashed potatoes. Right, so you have beef for lamb. You make the you make the mixture, you put it in a casual dish, You put the mashed potatoes on top, you brown them. You see what I'm saying. It's like, it doesn't have to be Thanksgiving the next day, the next day, the next day you get Thanksgiving. So now utilize the ingredients in a newer way. That's cleaner. Otherwise it's just to me, it's a miss. It's a mishmash, you know. And obviously, like I'm very into vegetable driven tacos and enchiladaes and and and tacos, tacos, enchilades, case adas, you know, sweet potatoes, Brussels sprouts, you know, thing things along those lines. You know. That's to me, that's that's the move, the best way to utilize them, I think. So do you ever? Do you ever make squash for Thanksgiving? Do I make squash? I do make squash sometimes. I love squash. What kind of squash do you like? Yeah? But what's the one that starts with the K K bootcha squash? Oh? Yes, that's really good too. Yeah, what do you do with it? I've never made what is it? But I make a lot of butter nut squash, and I make for salads. When you say you make it, you roast it. Yeah, I roast it and then with olive oil and salt and pepper. I mean you take it out of skin, you roast the mall. I roast a hole and then I cut it up. How about spaghetti squash? No not a fan, No, not really. That's like an alternative that I can't really get. Be hund do you do you eat spagetti squash? I like SPAGHETI sqwash. I like spaghetti squash? What I spaghet squash? If you haven't had it before you wrote, you cut it in half and you roast in the oven. And then when it softens, when you take a fork and and and harvest it out of its shell, it looks like spaghetti. You know, it's got that shape. What I want to use a fork to kind of get it out like that. I like to make like warm salads out of it where it's like hardy, hardy greens like pumpkin seeds or pine nuts or almonds or something like that, and then like I make a spicy dressing for it. You can also do something like that with your lefto risk for Thanksgiving. You know, like like like, for instance, if you have butter nut squash or sweet potatoes, the next day, you make like a healthy salad to go with it, so that so the greens are already make like a spicy dressing with it. Put a couple of knots. Maybe if you have some pomegranates he's left over the night before. That's you know, that's that's really key. The other thing you can do with Thanksgiving leftovers, it's just heat up the stuff and serve him, serve it again. I mean, I think that sometimes you overthink that the Thanksgiving left over things like how creative can I be with creating something that's never been done before with all these ingredients and put them all on one dish. It's not going to happen. You already spent so much time making it as it is probably delicious exactly. But I feel like with you, like I don't know, I feel like the last Thanksgiving, the last few Thanksgivings, like you have invited people to bring their tupper were to take home leftovers, So how many leftovers you're really left with? Now? Well, basically what happens is before I let people start taking it, I take what I want, And then I'm like, does anybody want to take this home? Then then then they're helping you clean up, right, So basically I have a whole opinion about I mean, first of all, we'll get we'll get we'll get to the the leftover situation for Thanksgiving. But but this is a dish that you probably a little hungover at the very least you're exhausted, yeah, the other Thanksgiving. So this is a really good, you know, day after dish. And so basically what I do is I take the queso sauce instead of melted cheese, I just pour it over the nachos. Okay, pour it over the chips on that, and then we take so I have so in this case, I the turkey sweet potatoes and the Brussels sprouts and I'm gonna put them on top of the nachos. M hm, oh my gosh. Do you roast to this? Now? What do you roast this? Is it done? It's done? I mean when I say it's done, I'm also so I'm gonna put a little more cheese on top. And it's so colorful, it's beautiful. And I'm gonna take some pomegranate seeds. Have left over and the brush of sprouts and just put them on top. They're beautiful. So did you just wing this or how had you made this before when you showed up at your door. I never made this before. I was winging it. Put all the pepines up, and you can put some like slancho on top if you want. If you have some slanzo. There we go, pretty taken picture of that. So I was gonna wait, I've never seen you make nachos before. I love nachos too. Who doesn't like nachos has a taste He's like Thanksgiving. He's like Thanksgiving on a nacho. Come. So there's also something called the Monte Crystal sand, which where it's like sliced turkey, ham cheese and then you cook it like a French toast. Okay, it's like it's like battered like an egg batter, and then yeah, it's so good. We used to serve that at Joe Allen's like thirty years ago. Oh, but it's a very like it's a very sort of the day after brunch, what are you using from your leftovers to make for breakfast the next day? Because sometimes you have a lot of people staying with you, I know, but see, but here's my feeling, Like, do you think people want turkey eggs benedicts? I might, I love expandedict. No, no, I understand you, Like, but do you want like I'm just making I'm making a point, got it? So? So maybe like, oh, actually, you know what I just thought of something sweet potato expended a sweet potato and turkey hash. Oh that sounds delicious because I used to Mason Grill. We did sweet potato and chicken hash with like hall like with with chipotles in it. And that was like the like we made a cake out of it, like a you know, like a hashcake. So it was crusty on both sides, and then a poach day on top, and then green chili holidaise on top. Oh that sounds great. How do you make the green chili holidays? You make holidaise and then you take roasted poblanos and chop them up and fold it in. Okay, so they're like it's like a little spicy and like there's chunks of them, yeah, very tiny. Yes, Okay, that sounds good. That's that's a that's actually a pretty good leftover bunch dish right there. But like I don't want you know, you know, you know, if you if you do some kind of roasted potatoes, that would work really good for like some home fries for sure. Yeah. You could serve the cranberry sauce with like, you know, like biscuits or English muffins the next day. That's good because I was gonna say, I feel like cranberry cranberry sauce is random. What do you mean? It's random? It just feels random, and we don't eat it any time other than Thanksgiving. That's true when you put cranberries none of the things I mean, I like cranberries with talk and stuff like that. Oh yeah, yeah, I guess that's true. But but you know, when you make cranberry sauce, you always make way more than you need. I mean I do for some reason, I just have so much cranberry self left over. But and that's what I'm saying, Like you can use it on the cheese plate. You can use it like as a as a jam for your biscuits or muffins the next day for you or its hoast. It's delicious, it's really good. Yeah, that sounds really good. The other thing you can do is you can take some of these ingredients, not all of them, and make like a what I call it harvest salad. Oh okay, alright, ready, like some front like kale, like black hail would be great. Chop up the black cail very fine. You have wild rice cooked, then you have dried cranberries, some kind of nuts like almonds or hazel nuts or something along those lines, and then like blue cheese and like a pomegranate dressing that sounds really good. It's so good. And maybe last night I made a salad that actually would work really good for Thanksgiving, which was Apple's kale, some greens, pomegranates, feta cheese, and barkana almonds. Oh yeah, yeah, So like you could make a salad next day. You have to. You have to remember, like Thanksgiving, like people like, you know, it's like it's the Olympics of calories. Yeah, I mean people are just like stuff to the I don't care it's Thanksgiving. I'm not going to watch my weight on Thanksgiving. You know you're betting football day. Yeah. I do try to go to the gym on Thanksgiving morning, do you. Yeah, I try to, Like I tried to try to get ahead of the game. Because I know I'm not going the next morning. Yeah, exactly, I know. I look. I look forward to leftovers, I think more than Thanksgiving almost, Yeah is that true? Yeah? Why is that? I don't know. I've never really been a Thanksgiving like in terms of like what served at Thanksgiving, I've never really been like excited about it, I think until recently. Like I don't think I loved the flavors and appreciated the flavors until I got a little older. Yeah, but I love a good turkey sandwich, and I'm looking forward to my my benedict I sweet potato, benedict sweet potato and turkey hash. I can make that for you perfect, thank you. Other than these nachos, What's like? What what leftover dish are you most proud of? I like making turkey enchiladas. Okay, what's in that? So you take? You take some turkey. It can be the dark meat, white meat, it can be a combination of both. And then like I'll make like a spicy tomato sauce, and then I have cheese inside the tortillas themselves. So I inside the inside the tortillas, I have the shredded turkey, some cheese, some tomato ors and you know, spices and some fresh urbs in this and that. I roll them up, and then on top, I put a tomato sauce on again, I make a cash roll out of it, like an antilad of cash roll, and then more cheese on top, and I put it in the oven. And then you know, you can serve it with saucers or guacamole, etcetera. You know, I you know, I'm a big poultry fan. I mean I'm into turkey. Yeah, a lot of people like will say to you, you know, for Thanksgiving, I really care about the side dishes because they're more interesting, they're healthier. I don't like turkey. You know, my friend Dahlia doesn't like hot turkey. I don't even know what that means. I have no idea. She's like, I don't like hot turkey, which means I guess she likes maybe like cold like turkey breast sandwiches. Okay, okay, sure, what do you do with this stuffing? Leftover stuffing? Uh? You heat it up and neat it as is? There's not well, first of all, I would say, the one thing that's better then everything else the next day is the stuffing It's one of those things that just gets better as you make it because when you when you make the stuff. But first of all, I don't make stuff and I make dressing. Let's get that out of the way. Do you know what the difference is, because you're looking at me like I'm crazy. Well, let's let's think about this for a second. If it's stuffing, it means it was stuffed in the bird and roasted with and I don't do that. I make it on the side of the hand. And they that's technically called dressing. But it's the stuffing. God that Okay, I didn't know that. Yes, So when you bake the stuffing, it's good. But like the next day, the flavors have all melded together and all the aromatics have really sort of blossomed. I mean, it's really so much better. What's on the menu for Thanksgiving? This here? We haven't even talked about this. I kind of want to do Italian. Let me just explain what that means. That doesn't mean I'm gonna be serving you know, pasta and instead of instead of turkey. No matter what theme or flavor of Thanksgiving them, I'm cooking, it's gonna look like Thanksgiving, it's going to have a certain bent to the flavor. So we can go Italian, we can go Spanish, we can go Southwestern, we can go Californian. But what are you torn between all those? Yeah? I don't know what to do. I'm really like, how about like a northern California wine country Thanksgiving? Okay, what do you think about that? It sounds like a lot of wine. I love it. We're just gonna drink. There's something about like that part of the world is so incredible. Obviously there's lots of wine there, but all the food there is amazing too. But I just feel like there's goats cheese and maybe red wine gravy, and maybe there's like red wine in the cranberries, you know, in the cranberry sauce, and then you know, it feels like it could be kind of cal Italian. You know. Oh I like that, you know, like maybe like roasted lemons and rosemary for the turkey. Yeah, you know what I'm saying. So, yeah, that sounds really good. Where's this stuffing from? Stuffing with goat cheese? I'm just sitting here thinking about it. You have to understand, this is all I think about. All I think about is ingredients and dishes and what we're gonna eat cook next. Yeah that's the true, Okay, but then what would the leftovers be? M I feel like that gives you a lot, a lot to work with. Here's my feeling. I think that if we have a Northern California Kaltel California Italian themed Thanksgiving with lots of you know, wine in the food, etcetera, I think the leftovers are gonna basically be aspirins. Always Hungry is created by Bobby Flay and Sophie Flay. Our executive producer is Christopher Hasiotis. Always Hungry is produced, edited, and mixed by Jonathan Hostresda. Always Hungry is engineered by Sophie Flay. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Always Hungry with Bobby Flay and Sophie Flay

When father and daughter come together to cook dinner, great conversations happen! Join Bobby and So 
Social links
Follow podcast
Recent clips
Browse 46 clip(s)