At the end of each holiday, there’s a brief window of time where the only thing you and your family eat are leftovers. You’ve just returned from a big ol’ barbecue filled with good friends and good food. Inevitably, there’s a little too much food to go around, and suddenly, you’re stuck with an entire extra tray of kabobs, half of a large bowl of macaroni salad, and a dozen brownies too many.
While you may have resigned yourself to leftovers from here to eternity, you can still find ways to shake up lunch and dinner. Why eat the same thing every night when you can reuse those basic ingredients and get something entirely different? You’ll use up the food before it goes bad and get to mix things up at the dinner table. Win-win!
Check out some of our favorite holiday leftover recipes!
Chicken Recipes
Chicken Hash (shown above): What’s a holiday without a little leftover chicken? Add a little cheese and some veggies and voila…you’ve got a tasty casserole dish using your leftover chicken!
Quick & Easy Rotisserie Chicken Recipes: If you’ve got leftover rotisserie chicken or maybe a few extra cooked chicken breasts, then you’re going to love our collection of rotisserie chicken recipes. From sandwiches to soups to dinner, we’ve got everything you need for the perfect dinner using chicken leftovers.
Ground Beef Recipes
“Souper” Burger Soup: If you have extra burger meat lying around, you’re all set to make this soup recipe. You can warm up a thermos-full at lunch or serve it up for dinner. It’s a great way to save those uneaten burgers from the Fourth!
Cowboy Beef in a Bun: You can also use those leftover cooked burgers to make a faux sloppy Joe. The best part? You probably have all of these ingredients lying around your house so you don’t have to make an extra trip to the grocery store.
Down Home Meat Loaf: On the flip side, if you have leftover, uncooked ground beef, you may be looking for a great meat loaf recipe to free up some room in your freezer. Our Down Home Meat Loaf fits that bill to a “T.” Plus, meat loaf works great with so many side dishes, so you’ll have plenty of opportunities to use up the rest of that salad or those potato bites.
Don’t forget to make sure you’ve stored all of your leftovers properly. Check out some of our best leftover storage tips to keep that food good as long as possible.
Leave us a note in the comments! What’s your favorite way to reuse leftovers?
the foods made on this sight are fantastic and easy
Would like to receive your Dailey receipes on email
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The things we always seem to have left over is turkey, and mashed potatoes, or regular potatoes. I am a big fan of potato soup, and have learned how to make my own from scratch, but I wondered if you could turn the left overs of your thanksgiving dinner into a soup and sandwich combo? The other question is what do we do with those extra veggies (green beans especially) because I feel like these are the things we should be eating, but they don’t taste great warmed up. Any suggestions?
With Thanksgiving approaching, I’m quite intrigued by the Chicken/Turkey Hash. Minus the butter, it’s healthy (even using Smart Balance butter would help). It looks delicious, easy and useful since there is ALWAYS leftover turkey!
I love this post because usually I eat leftovers the same way I ate the food originally. That makes for about a week of the same food over and over again~dull. Now, I have great options to spice up my leftovers!
Thanks, Jaclyn! We’re glad you’ll be able to use these tips around the holidays!