Even though we haven’t even celebrated Thanksgiving yet, it’s never too early to start thinking about what you’ll do with the leftovers. If you don’t plan ahead, you run the risk of having someone else eat the leftovers you wanted to use in fun recipes, forgetting what leftovers are in the fridge and having them go bad before you get to use them, or being so exhausted from hosting the big day that you end up just eating random sludge because you don’t feel like cooking anything else. It’s not right that any of the Thanksgiving feast has to go to waste, and if you’re searching for a simple but tasty way to use up the leftovers, look no further than Molly Yeh’s Thanksgiving Leftover Hotdish. We love the star because of the delicious dishes in her cookbooks Home Is Where the Eggs Are and Molly on the Range, but this hotdish is the stuff of wintertime fantasies.

Where the Chickens Are by Molly Yeh
$21.73

Yeh’s homemade, incredibly basic cream soup serves as the casserole’s velvety base, and it’s one of our favorite parts of the recipe. There is a time and a place for canned condensed soups, but nothing beats the handcrafted elegance of a cream soup made with a base of onion, celery, and carrot. You can increase the depth of flavor in the cream soup by melting in some leftover gravy.

With a cream soup foundation, Yeh layers leftover turkey and wild rice, a traditional Minnesota staple that the Ojibwe and other indigenous communities in the area have been producing and harvesting for hundreds of years. Other leftovers, such as roasted or glazed carrots, green beans, or even a dollop of mashed potatoes, can be added to the hotdish without fear of ruining the dish.

“Molly on the Range” is a $21.99 cookbook and memoir about the author’s unconventional upbringing on a farm.

Instead of mixing the ingredients together, Yeh layers them to get the best flavor and texture in her hotdish. This keeps some of the dish’s components distinct while the cream soup base unifies the whole.

Yeh uses leftover stuffing crumbles as a generous topping. She insists that cornbread stuffing is just as acceptable as any other variety. While the hotdish becomes extremely creamy and bubbling in the oven, the stuffing on top will become crisp and golden brown.
Using Thanksgiving leftovers in this way can help feed the whole family, and if you still have some and just can’t face eating another thing, the good news is that this hotdish freezes beautifully.