November light and leftover turkey

 

   November Light on the River:  

                                                        

     

  I love the late fall light, dark gray skies and trees still touched with gold.  I love the crisp air, crisp sounding leaves as I walk and crisp apples from the farm stand. I also love late fall because of Thanksgiving and this month’s post is about leftover turkey, featuring a recipe for Turkey Croquettes and Turkey Pot Pie.  It takes some time to do these recipes but the process is simple and the results are hearty dishes to warm the soul on a cold and snowy night.

Two years ago, I wrote about going on an alpaca trek in November and I did a repeat trip this year.  I have a framed photo of my 2021 alpaca trek and friends have asked about it and commented how much they would like to give it a try, so I was happy to go with them this year to revisit the alpaca farm.  This time, I was assigned to walk with “Dany”, a lovely alpaca lady named after the Game of Thrones heroine, Daenerys. My Dany loves to give kisses in exchange for treats.   

I love turkey and all the ways you can think of to use it as a leftover meal.  I cooked a 19 pound turkey for three of us for Thanksgiving and in the days that followed had turkey sandwiches, turkey soup, turkey pot pie and yummy turkey croquettes.

Lets start with a bit of history about turkey as a holiday feast tradition…

Why is this bird, native to North America and probably with origins in Mexico, called a “turkey” when Turkey is a country in the Middle East?

Because….

Way back in the time of the Ottoman Empire, guinea fowl were from Turkey and were imported to Europe.  When settlers first came to America, they thought the large fowl they found in forests and fields here looked like the birds from Turkey so they called them “turkeys”.  

Turkey Pot Pie:

For this recipe, I have no measurements.  I usually compose a recipe while cooking a test batch of the dish I am writing about.  But this just does not seem to work when making the turkey stew for the turkey pot pie.

Here's what you will need:

Turkey bones from the roast turkey
Leftover turkey meat cut in chucks
16 oz. turkey broth or chicken broth
celery
carrots
onions
potatoes
(add more veggies if you like: peas, corn, green beans)
turkey gravy if you have some leftover
sage, thyme, rosemary salt and pepper
one packet of turkey gravy mix
flour and water mixed to thicken gravy

1 package of biscuit mix (I used the Red Lobster Rosemary Biscuit Mix)

Make the biscuits according to box directions.  I like to roll the biscuit dough out and use a cookie cutter to make a uniform size biscuit.  Set aside for assembly.

After you have picked the turkey meat off of the bones, break down the bones so they fit in a stockpot.  Add the broth to the stockpot and simmer on the stove for 20-30 minutes.  The purpose of this step is to make a rich, turkey flavored base broth.  Remove the turkey bones and discard them. Chop the celery, carrots, onions and potatoes into chunks and add to the broth.  Add sage, thyme leaves and rosemary stems.  Reheat and simmer until veggies are tender.  Add the turkey gravy packet and stir.
Next step is to thicken the broth to make it into a stew.  Use the flour mixed in cold water to do this, slowly stiring the flour and water mixture into the simmering broth.  Stir until thick.  Add the turkey into the stew, cutting the turkey into spoon size chunks.

Pour the turkey stew into a casserole dish and heat in the oven at 375 for 30-40 minutes prior to serving.  For the last 10 minutes of cooking time, put the already-baked biscuits on top of the casserole.  I leave this step for last so that the biscuits do not get soggy or overly browned.

Turkey croquettes

First of all, what is a croquette, you might ask! 

A croquette is made by finely chopping cooked meat and flavoring veggies like onion and celery to mix in with a binding white sauce.  A white sauce is just butter and flour mixed together and adding milk and broth to make a thick, pasty binder.  The mixture of very thick white sauce with the meat and veggies is then rolled into balls the size of meatballs and fried. 

Croquettes are a very old French dish, mentioned in history  at a royal banquet in 1817 Paris.  They were very popular in America in the 1940’s and 1950’s, and were a common way to use leftover meats.  Howard Johnson restaurants had chicken croquettes on the menu back in the ‘’50s when I was growing up and they were delicious in my childhood mind.  Howard Johnson’s also sold these as a frozen food entrée in markets for a long time.

These days an air fryer makes easy work of cooking croquettes but you can fry them in oil too.  For my recipe I use an air fryer.  See below for the recipe...

White Sauce:

3 tablesp. butter
¼ flour
½ cup milk
½ cup chicken broth

1 tablesp. snipped parsley
salt
pepper

Add ins:

½ onion
2 stalks celery
1 ½ cups cooked turkey 1 cup panko bread crumbs
1 teasp. Olive oil
1 to 2 eggs

 

Make white sauce: melt butter in saucepan, add flour and stir until smooth.  Add milk and chicken broth and stir constantly until sauce is thick.  Add parsley, salt and pepper.

Place cut up onion and celery in food processer to finely chop.  Add chopped veggies to pan with white sauce.  Add cut up turkey to food processor, process to a medium chop.  Add meat to pan with white sauce.  Stir all ingredients into white sauce.  Scoop into a bowl and chill for at least one hour. 

Beat eggs for egg wash, place in separate bowl.

Mix panko crumbs and olive oil for breading and place in a second bowl.

When ready to cook, cut a piece of cooking parchment to fit inside the air fryer basket, coat with olive oil spray.

pre-heat air fryer to 390 degrees,

Scoop a generous tablespoon of croquette mix into your hand, roll to shape into a ball or oval, dip in egg wash then in panko crumbs, place in fryer basket.  Do not crowd basket, 5-6 croquettes per batch maximum.

Cook at 390 for 8 minutes, remove cooked croquettes and keep warm in oven while cooking second batch.

Serve with your leftover turkey  gravy.