Many people enjoy a Thanksgiving dinner and/or Christmas dinner of turkey and all the trimmings…but then are left with the question of what to do with all those turkey leftovers!  Plain old leftovers or a turkey sandwich are delicious, but if you have a lot of leftovers, those can quickly grow old.

Here are dozens of recipe ideas — some using merely the leftover turkey, others incorporating common Thanksgiving sides like stuffing/dressing, potatoes, gravy, and cranberry sauce.  There’s a little something for everyone, no matter your dietary needs (unless you’re vegetarian, in which case you probably don’t have turkey leftovers, so why are you reading this post?), available leftover options, and preferred culinary tradition.  Reading through this list is almost enough to make me want to skip straight to the leftovers!

Soups & Stews

Simple Turkey Broth

Turkey broth is not a meal in itself, of course, but it’s an excellent way to ensure you make the most of the leftovers — right down to the bones.

You can find a lot of great recipes for bone broth online, but the most basic broth is pretty simple: Pile all the bones (including joints, etc.) into a pot, cover completely with water, add a splash of vinegar (the acid helps draw the minerals out of the bones — I use apple cider vinegar), and then simmer for 12-24 hours.  Cool and strain.

Most recipes will recommend you skim the scum off the surface early on.  This helps to create a clearer broth.  I usually do mine in the slow cooker, so that isn’t very practical, and since I usually use my broth in things, it doesn’t really matter.  And of course you can round out the flavor by adding veggies and/or seasonings.

But when I’m cleaning up from Thanksgiving dinner I usually don’t want to mess with all that, so I just stuff the turkey carcass into my slow cooker with a splash of cider vinegar, top it up with water, and let it run until the next evening.

Other Soups & Stews

• GF Leftover Turkey Soup w/ Sweet Potatoes & Peas
  From Everyday Maven, this soup is gluten-free, and uses either canned turkey stock or stock you make yourself from your leftover turkey carcass.
• Turkey Barley Soup Recipe
  Also from Everyday Maven, this soup starts with your leftover turkey carcass and everything cooks together.  Barley is not gluten-free, so if you need a gluten-free option, try swapping in rice for the barley.
• Turkey Noodle Soup
  Sweet Pea’s Kitchen brings us this recipe for turkey noodle soup in the InstantPot.  Relying on macaroni noodles, this is surprisingly “chunky” for a traditional noodle soup.  Use gluten-free noodles for a gluten-free option.
• Apple Turkey Soup
  This turkey soup from Mommy Travels has a unique twist — apples!  Noodles and jarred turkey gravy are the ingredients that would need to be swapped if you need to cut the gluten.
• Turkey Tortilla Soup
  Add a little spice and go for Turkey Tortilla Soup.  This version comes from Beyond the Chicken Coop.
• Turkey Tortilla Soup
  Or try this alternative recipe for Turkey Tortilla Soup, from Boulder Locavore.  This version actually doesn’t use tortillas; it uses tortilla chips, making it gluten-free.
• Creamy Turkey Soup
  The Bewitchin’ Kitchen brings us a creamy turkey soup.  Includes gluten-free options, but also contains dairy.
• Creamy Leftover Turkey Wild Rice Soup
  House of Nash Eats offers a different flavor profile for a turkey soup, with mushrooms and wild rice.  (Note that this recipe contains both gluten and dairy.)

• Turkey & Dumplings Soup with Stuffing Dumplings
  This soup from Went There 8 This is pretty clever.  It uses leftover stuffing for the dumplings.

• Fragrant Moroccan Turkey Stew
  Apricots are probably not the first ingredient you thought of for using up turkey leftovers, but this Moroccan turkey stew brought to us by Recipes from a Pantry looks delicious!  It is gluten-free (but you have to scroll a bit to get to the actual recipe).
• Leftover Turkey Stew in the Slow Cooker
  Low Carb Yum has created a slow cooker leftover turkey stew that uses turnips.  (Gluten-free)
• Turkey Chili
  From Kitchen Frau, we have a basic white chili, which you can make with turkey or chicken, and with a variety of white bean options.  It includes a gluten-free option.  (Looking for a stupidly simple version of white chili?  Try a homemade chili mix.)
• IP White Turkey Chili
  The white turkey chili recipe from The Holy Mess is made in the InstantPot (although there are alternative instructions for those of you who don’t have one).  It’s a gluten-free recipe.
• Slow Cooker White Chili
  Looking for the opposite of “instant”?  The white chili from Sweet & Savory Meals is made in the slow coooker.  It’s gluten-free, but contains a heavy dose of dairy that makes it thick and creamy.
• Sweet Potato & Turkey Chili
  In the Kids Kitchen offers up a different type of chili.  Unlike the previous recipes, this is not a white chili.  Using sweet potatoes and pinto beans, it’s somewhere between a traditional red chili and a white chili.
• Smoked Turkey Chili
  Cook Eat Go‘s Smoked Turkey Chili is made in the slow cooker.  The “smoked” part comes from a smoked turkey, so if your turkey was roasted, the chili won’t have a smoked flavor unless you add it.  (A little smoked paprika would probably do the trick.)
• Turkey & Black Bean Chili
  The Turkey & Black Bean Chili from Marathons & Motivation is wonderfully colorful — and gluten-free.

• IP Turkey Chili with Andouille Sausage
  Went There 8 This has another InstantPot recipe to share: Turkey Chili with Andouille Sausage.

Pot Pie

• Chicken Pot Pie (AIP)
  Regain Your Sparkle has an AIP chicken pot pie to offer us!  Of course you can easily substitute leftover turkey for the chicken.  If you need to plan your grocery list, cassava flour, banana purée, and palm shortening are probably the most unusual ingredients in the recipe.
• Turkey Pot Pie (AIP)
  The turkey pot pie from Vibrant Life Army Wife is also AIP (!), but has a more classic-style pie crust.  It relies on tapioca and coconut flours for the crust and arrowroot starch to thicken the filling.
• Chicken or Turkey Pot Pie
  For a more conventional pot pie, try this one from Amanda’s Cookin’.  It contains all the gluten-ful traditional goodness.
• Quick & Easy Turkey Pot Pie
  The quick & easy pot pie from Imagelicious uses puff pastry for a quick crust.

Need more crust options?  Try my Paleo Pie Crust, or find additional AIP pie crust options in my AIP Thanksgiving roundup.

• Turkey Pot Pie
  Stef’s Eats and Sweets makes pot pie easy by using premade pie crust and jarred turkey gravy.
• Leftover Turkey Pot Pie
  This clever recipe from My Kitchen Love uses thinly-sliced potatoes instead of pie crust.  Although it does contain gluten and dairy, it would be easier than the average pot pie recipe to adapt to gluten-free, since only the filling/sauce would require adaptation.
• Turkey Divan Pot Pie
  Cooking with Curls‘ Turkey Divan Pot Pie is a cross between the two classic recipes.  Like turkey divan, it contains cheese and broccoli; like a traditional pot pie, it’s baked inside a crust.
• Turkey & Potato Puff (Cottage Pie)
  Kitchen Frau brings us a cottage pie — essentially a pot pie filling topped with mashed potatoes rather than pie crust.  This has a gluten-free option, and offers an opportunity to use up not only leftover turkey, but also some of those leftover mashed potatoes.

Pasta

• Turkey Ranch Mac & Cheese
  Turkey Ranch Mac’n’Cheese, from Ottawa Mommy Club, adds a new flavor profile to your leftover turkey, to get you out of the typical “Thanksgiving leftovers” rut.

• IP Leftover Turkey Pasta
  This leftover turkey pasta from Simply Happy Foodie is an easy dump-and-go InstantPot recipe.  It’s heavy on dairy, so if you’re dairy-free you’ll want to give this one a pass.
• Leftover Turkey Noodle Casserole
  Turkey Noodle Casserole (from Who Needs a Cape) is an easy classic with a base of egg noodles.
• Turkey Noodle Casserole
  Aileen Cooks offers up a slightly different turkey noodle casserole with standard pasta.  (I would skip the corn oil, personally, and use olive oil.  Polyunsaturated vegetable oils are actually really unhealthy, despite the conventional messaging.  They’re cheap and government-subsidized, is what they are.)
• Easy Ground Turkey Broccoli Pasta Dinner
  Dizzy, Busy & Hungry brings us a truly easy pasta dinner option.  I know it says ground turkey, but you can substitute leftover cooked turkey, and the recipe even tells you how to adjust.  The pasta itself is the only gluten-containing ingredient, so just swap that out if you’re gluten-free and you’ll be good to go!

• Turkey Tetrazzini
  This version of Turkey Tetrazzini, from Sweet and Savory Meals, has an egg noodle base and is packed with mushrooms and veggies. It uses cream of mushroom soup or a homemade alternative (recipe included).
• One-Pot Turkey Tetrazzini
  My Kitchen Love‘s One-Pot Turkey Tetrazzini cooks all together, allowing the starch from the pasta to thicken the sauce so a separate thickener isn’t needed.
• Tetrazzini Casserole
  The Tetrazzini Casserole from Dancing Through the Rain is, of course, similar to both of the previous recipes.  It uses cream cheese and chicken (or turkey) broth as the basis of the sauce.

(Turkey Tetrazzini is, by nature, pretty heavy on gluten and dairy, so be aware of that if you have allergies.)

• Turkey Casserole
  The Turkey Casserole from The Anthony Kitchen is similar in many ways to tetrazzini, but isn’t cheesy.
• Cheesy Turkey Pasta Bake with Veggies
  A Magical Mess shares a variation of a turkey pasta bake with cheddar.
• IP Turkey & Sweet Potato Lasagne
  From Recipe This, this turkey & sweet potato lasagne is made in the InstantPot.  The sweet potatoes are cooked in an air fryer, but you can cook them with any method you have available; the timing will just be different.  It uses a flourless cheese sauce, so if you use gluten-free noodles, this recipe should be gluten-free.

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Salads & Sandwiches, Wraps, etc.

• Leftover Thanksgiving Sandwich
  From Sweetpea Lifestyle, this Friends-inspired sandwich contains allll the leftover Thanksgiving goodness.  Not only turkey, but also dressing, gravy, and even cranberry sauce make an appearance.
• Turkey Melt
  A turkey melt is classic.  This one’s made with deli meat, but thin slices of leftovers from a home-cooked turkey will work, too.
• Turkey Club Ranch Wrap
  This wrap from Food Meanderings is incredibly fast and easy to put together.  The tomato tortillas provide easy color and veggies.
• Turkey Quesadillas with Feta
  Little House Living shares an easy turkey quesadilla differentiated from others through its use of feta cheese.  Use the storebought tortillas of your choice, or follow her links to make your own with or without gluten.
• Turkey & Cheese Quesadillas
  These basic quesadillas from Eating on a Dime use deli turkey, but shredded leftover turkey will work just as well.  (Pay attention to her pizza cutter trick!  That’s the way we do it at our house, too — much easier.)
• Turkey & Brie Grilled Cheese
  I have to admit I’ve never had brie.  This grilled sandwich from Dizzy, Busy, & Hungry pairs it with turkey and tosses in a bit of cranberry sauce for a gourmet take on a turkey melt.
• Leftover Turkey, Cranberry, & Brie Panini
  If you love the turkey-cranberry-brie combination and want more, here’s another variation from Food Meanderings.  It adds apples and figs to the mix, as well.
• Turkey Cranberry Grilled Sandwich
  The Spice Train changes up the flavor profile of the traditional turkey-and-cranberry sandwich with an orange tarragon mustard.

• Cranberry-Pecan Turkey Salad Panini
  From Home Cooking Memories, this panini is constructed with a cranberry turkey salad.
• Turkey Salad
  Sometimes we can get so caught up in gourmet options that we forget about the basics.  This basic turkey salad from The Anthony Kitchen does contain dried cranberries to add that autumnal flavor profile, but they’re non-essential, so feel free to leave them out if you don’t like them or don’t have them.
• Leftover Turkey Apple Salad
  The crunch in this leftover turkey salad, from Three Olives Branch, is provided by apples.  (It also includes some optional leftover turkey gravy.)
• Turkey Crunch Salad
  The turkey crunch salad from Bitz & Giggles is a basic turkey salad with an assortment of crunchy add-ins.
• Rotisserie Chicken Salad
  From Tasty Galaxy, this recipe for rotisserie chicken salad works just as well with leftover turkey.  This chicken/turkey salad is a little unconventional, full of unexpected produce additions.
• Crunchy Healthy Turkey Salad
  The turkey salad from Recipes from a Pantry contains a rich medley of colorful veggies, and uses a tahini dressing.
• Turkey Salad with Cranberries & Walnuts
  The title of this recipes from Bowl of Delicious is fairly self-explanatory.  (This, like several of the other turkey salad recipes, has the potential to be a great red-and-green food option for Christmastime.)
• Turkey Apricot Rice Salad
  If you’re looking for an all-in-one meal that isn’t a typical “turkey salad” and isn’t pasta, this rice salad recipe from This Mama Cooks might fit the bill.  It’s gluten-free and has hints of Asian flavor.

• Bacon Turkey Bravo Sandwich
  Cooking with Curls offers a variation on a club sandwich, featuring gouda cheese.  (Yum!)
• Turkey Tzatziki Wrap
  Tasting Pages‘s turkey tzatziki wrap is gluten-free, dairy-free, and paleo.  (The vegan tzatziki uses a coconut yogurt base, so no soy or nuts.)
• Turkey Sandwich Crescent Roll
  Need a break from the typical sandwiches and wraps?  Take a cue from Eating on a Dime and wrap your turkey in crescent rolls.
• Leftover Turkey Dinner Tacos
  These tacos from The Soccer Mom Blog are not traditional tacos, like with chili powder & cumin-type seasonings.  They’re a fresh way to combine traditional Thanksgiving leftovers.
• Monte Cristo Sliders
  Jennifer of Jennifer Cooks describes these as “an appetizer-friendly take on the battered and fried turkey, ham, and cheese sandwich.”  Try using thinly sliced turkey leftovers in place of the turkey.  Although the overall result will obviously change, you can also use your leftovers in place of the turkey and ham.
• Hawaiian Turkey & Cheese Sliders
  Substitute shredded turkey leftovers for the deli turkey in this kid-friendly recipe from Eating on a Dime.
• Turkey Stuffed Cranberry Sliders
  Two Kids and a Coupon uses traditional Thanksgiving (or Christmas) Dinner leftovers in these sliders.  (They use a “Cranberry Horseradish” spread from Silver Springs; if you don’t have that, try mixing a little horseradish into your leftover cranberry sauce.)
• Leftover Chicken/Turkey Crepes
  The crepes from Sustain My Cooking Habit call for chopped cooked chicken, but leftover turkey can easily be substituted.

Other

• Turkey Divan
  I normally make this with deli meat, but thinly-sliced leftover turkey (pictured) works well, too.  The heart of this dish is turkey and broccoli, and it does contain both gluten and dairy.

• Thanksgiving Leftover Empanadas
  Delicious Table‘s empanadas (hand pies) are made with traditional Thanksgiving leftovers.   They can be a bit flexible to work with whatever you have left.  Plan ahead and have extra pie crust to make these extra-easy.
• Turkey Turnovers with Cranberry Sauce
  These totally look like cherry pie!  From Two Kids and a Coupon, these simple hand pies enclose leftover turkey and stuffing and are served with cranberry sauce.
• Air Fryer Turkey Curry Samosas
  From Recipe This, these samosas require an air fryer.  They’re a nice change, though, from more American-style combinations, with Indian-style seasonings.
• Leftover Turkey Casserole
  The leftover turkey casserole from Wholesome Yum doesn’t require any added starches (rice, pasta, etc.).
• Turkey Zucchini Casserole
  Turkey Zucchini Casserole from Making Time for Memories is a good way to use some of the leftover turkey once you don’t have other leftovers to make use of.
• IP Creamy Turkey Colcannon
  Bring a little Irish to your table with turkey colcannon from Recipe This.  This dish is made in the InstantPot.  It uses fresh potatoes, but if you already have a pile of leftover mashed potatoes, you could probably just warm those up separately and mix them in at the end instead of cooking more potatoes in the dish.
• Turkey & Rice Stuffed Bell Peppers
  This recipe from In the Kids Kitchen is a little unusual. Rather than using seasonings typically seen with stuffed peppers, it sticks with seasonings typical for Thanksgiving dinner with stuffing.
• Rotisserie Chicken Enchilada Stuffed Peppers
  Use leftover turkey in place of the rotisserie chicken in this recipe from Key to My Lime.  The flavors here are traditional Latin American flavors.

• Leftover Turkey & Butternut Squash Enchiladas
  Chisel and Fork uses leftover turkey and butternut squash, pumpkin, or sweet potato in this Mexican-themed dish.
• Leftover Turkey Enchilada Casserole
  This Mama Cooks a gluten-free casserole with corn, tomatoes, and cheese in addition to the leftover turkey.
• GF Turkey Enchilada Bake
  Hungry Hobby‘s turkey enchilada bake is also gluten-free.   (My kids will appreciate that it includes black olives!)
• Easy Baked Southwest Sandwich
  You may be wondering why something called a “Southwest Sandwich” is not in the sandwiches section.  It’s because this is not actually a sandwich.  (It’s a stuffed avocado.)  As it comes to us from Keen for Keto, you can probably guess that this recipe is keto.  It’s also gluten-free.

• Holiday Turkey Hash
  This hash from Boulder Locavore uses up a lot of your Thanksgiving leftovers (not just turkey) in an unconventional way.
• Air Fryer Turkey Croquettes
  These croquettes from This Old Gal are made in an air fryer.  The croquettes themselves use leftover turkey and stuffing.  Leftover gravy and/or cranberry sauce may be used as dipping sauces.
• Turkey, Stuffing, & Cranberry Sausage Rolls
  Have leftover turkey, stuffing, and cranberry sauce?  Roll it up in puff pastry to make these “sausage” rolls from Culinary Ginger.
• Air Fryer Moroccan Turkey Couscous Balls
  These turkey meatballs from Recipe This incorporate Moroccan flavors and are made in an air fryer.
• Leftover Turkey & Mashed Potato Fritters
  Tasty Galaxy shows us how to make leftovers like turkey and mashed potatoes into fritters.
• Turkey Brie Appetizer
  These appetizers from Food Meanderings use leftover turkey, brie, and black currant jam.
• Thanksgiving Leftovers Potato Skins
  Use leftover turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, and gravy (as dipping sauce) for these stuffed potato skins from Three Olives Branch.
• Turkey A La King
  This turkey a la king at A Magical Mess is served over baked potatoes.  Alternatively, you can serve it over mashed potatoes, rice, or toast.

• Thanksgiving Leftovers Risotto
  Risotto is an outside-the-box way to use up leftover turkey.  This recipe comes from Three Olives Branch.
• Rainbow Rice
  Venture 1105 also used rice, but this Rainbow Rice is more of a stir fry.
• Easy Leftover Turkey & Pear Pizza
  This pizza from Home Cooking Memories uses a combination of ingredients that makes it gourmet, but it isn’t any more complicated to make than any other pizza.  (It includes a crust recipe.  You can also use storebought dough.  If you already have a favorite crust, you can just use that.)
• Turkey Thai Curry
  Nicky from Kitchen Sanctuary guest posting at Simply Stacie brings us this saucy Thai curry.  If you’re concerned about the heat level, read carefully for suggestions to back it down without losing all the flavor.

I’m not expert canner, so make use of the following instructions at your own risk.  But if you’re all turkeyed out and want to simply preserve your turkey for future use, you can try canning it.

• Canning Turkey
  Practical Self-Reliance provides instructions for pressure-canning partially- or fully-cooked turkey.