Creative Uses for Christmas Leftovers

Christmas dinner is the highlight of holiday celebrations for so many families. Maybe you make your Gran’s stuffing recipe year after year, or spend a month soaking your traditional Christmas pudding in brandy baths. Whatever your clan is noshing this year, you’ll want to make it stretch even further after the holiday, so you don’t waste a single bite of this homemade holiday deliciousness—and you get to do a little culinary exploration beyond the basic sandwich.
To help you out, here are six favourite recipes for using up the leftovers from your Christmas feast.

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Turkey burgers
Turkey is lean and healthy, but it can go dry easily, so you’ll want to be clever in using up the bird. We love the idea of making burgers with leftover turkey, so you can get all the health benefits and none of the dryness. To boost the moisture and flavour, this recipe uses stuffing instead of the usual bland breadcrumbs to hold it all together. Don’t have a meat grinder at home? That’s no problem. This recipe works with finely chopped or shredded meat, so you can either go at it by hand or in your trusty food processor.
Turkey curry
If burgers feel a bit tame (the you can’t yet stomach the thought of more bread), why not use your leftover turkey for a flavourful and healthy curry base?All of the ingredients for this vibrant curry are easy to find in your local shops, nothing too exotic needed (if the mango chutney poses any problem, you can substitute with any sweet chutney you like, such as date or apple). This recipe really is as easy as curry get, especially when you use stock rather than water—the flavours of the stock really add a special richness to the dish, without requiring any time or effort from you except what it takes to open the can!

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Cheeseboard and onion tart
If you’ve gone to the trouble and expense of buying lovely fresh cheeses for your Christmas meal, don’t let it all go mouldy in the fridge! This tart is a savoury way to use up the odds and ends of multiple cheeses, and combine them into a rich and satisfying take on a quiche. The crust is simple enough to whip up, even if you’re sick of holiday baking—just pulsing the ingredients quickly in a food processor gets the crumbly, buttery dough all ready in two ticks, with no tiresome kneading or cutting in butter chunks. While you could serve up this treat plain, the addition of onion adds sweetness without adding cost, or much effort.
Fruit squares
This tasty bar bake is a fabulous trick for using up figgy pud, cranberry sauce, mincemeat, extra raisins from baking, or any other fruity bits lying around the kitchen. Sandwiching these rich sweeties in two layers of dough will give you a bar that’s sticky and scrumptious on the inside, but neat to pick up on the outside, with the creamy buttery goodness of the pastry to balance the intensity of the fruit flavours. Once baked, these also freeze beautifully and make for an extra-special surprise tucked into a child’s lunchbox or brought to a New Year’s party.
Mulled wine sorbet
If you’ve gone to the trouble of mulling wine for a holiday party, don’t let it all go to waste! Even if you’ve had it sitting on the heat or in a crock-pot for a while and lost some of the alcohol, that’s no problem—this sorbet recipe starts by boiling off the rest of the booziness, anyway, until you’ve got a rich, delicious syrup to freeze into cubes and blend with yoghurt or cream. The final product is smooth and low-effort. You will want to set aside some time in advance for the boiling and freezing, but it’s easy to keep these going along in the background of tidying the house or preparing the rest of the meal.

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Eggnog Pancakes
For a real transformation of a humble ingredient, look no further than these eggnog pancakes. A simple tweak to a basic pancake recipe, using eggnog in place of milk in the batter, makes for a subtly cheery breakfast treat. The extra fat in eggnog will make sure they are moist and fluffy, and you don’t have to feel bad about throwing out unfinished ‘nog after everyone’s had a sip and half (about the most anyone can ever stomach, we find!).
There are plenty of creative uses for all your lovingly prepared Christmas dishes. Who knows, maybe you’ll even invent a new Boxing Day food tradition!

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