Leftover Turkey Banh Mi
(and easy gift shopping!)
Hi there and Happy early Thanksgiving to my American friends. Glad you all are here on this Friday, wherever you are in the world. A warm welcome to those who are new.
If you’d rather listen than read, the audio is posted above.
Easy Holiday Gift Shopping
Now that December is just around the corner, you might be in full-blown holiday shopping mode.
Here are two gift ideas that any foodie friends would love to receive from you. And you don’t even have to gift wrap them!
15 Dinner Recipes for the Rest of Your Life. My first cookbook! An easy-to-download eBook that includes recipes and menu plans. The perfect holiday gift or stocking stuffer for all the cooks in your life.
Buy it here: 15 Dinner Recipes for the Rest of Your Life
Annual Paid Subscription to the Betty Eatz Newsletter. It’s a great gift for someone who loves to eat, cook, or read about both.
Buy it here: Gift Subscription
Thanks for supporting small businesses like myself!
Now, let’s talk about a game plan for post-Thanksgiving leftovers.
Leftover Turkey
Once the guests have departed, the pies have all been eaten, and the red wine stains on the tablecloth are soaking in a bathroom basin filled with Oxi-Clean, you can breathe a sigh of relief. Except that leftover bird keeps staring you in the face every time you open the fridge.
Leftover turkey is a Thanksgiving tradition, kind of like the Macy’s Parade. I think we all enjoy noshing on the Thanksgiving goodies the day after, without guests around. But come Saturday, it’s old news.
Turkey is safe to eat if kept in the refrigerator, stored in containers or wrapped, for two or three days. After that, it’s best to freeze it. Most food safety sources recommend the following:
remove all meat from the bone and cut it into smaller pieces for freezing.
wrap the meat in freezer paper or aluminum foil, then place in a large Ziploc bag and seal it to help keep the meat from the dreaded freezer burn, or drying out.
label and date the bag. Use within six months.
According to the USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service fact sheet (and my husband’s grandmother) foods can be frozen indefinitely. And it is safe if it’s kept frozen at 0 degrees Fahrenheit/ -17 Celsius. Nana Cherry, bless her heart, had Thanksgiving leftovers in her freezer for years.
Food taste and quality though, as we all know first hand, can sometimes suffer from a long nap in the deep freeze. The USDA website has a handy Freezer Storage Chart. For cooked poultry, four months seems to be the maximum amount of time in the freezer before taste and quality start to decline.
Personally, I prefer to use up that leftover turkey right away. But I don’t want it in anything that tastes even remotely like a Thanksgiving meal.
This sandwich idea comes from my hairdresser. Mrs. Dang is from Vietnam but now lives in Southern California with her American-born, Vietnamese husband. They celebrate Thanksgiving every year with his extended family but as she says, “No one really likes turkey except the Caucasian guy my sister-in-law is married to.” Lol.
Mrs. Dang deep fries her turkey (I know, what commitment for someone who doesn’t even like it), so it comes out juicy, even the white meat. For the meal, she tucks it into sandwiches that are reminiscent of Vietnamese banh mi except it features turkey instead of the traditional pork. And the leftover meat? She sends it home with her sister-in-law.
Recipe below is for paid subscribers.