Selfie Does Post-Turkey Day Leftovers

Selfie: I’ve had soup five times this week and burned my tongue. Every. Single. Time.

Mr. Selfie: Yes, I’m aware of your need for food to be unreasonably hot but also your complete inability to wait when you’re hungry.

Can we just talk about this for a mo? I freaking HATE microwaved turkey. I hate it. It’s got a weird, gross texture. Also, why is turkey the one thing you never run out of? Pie is gone day two. Turkey is here until Christmas. Argh! Umm…anyways, my aim for Thanksgiving this year was to come up with a couple ways to use the great turkey Mr. Selfie made (looking at you, HEB Cajun turkey!) but not have to eat any of it the way it’s actually cooked. Also, like anyone who literally just made a huge meal, we had so much stuff in the fridge, I felt obligated to use all the stuff we already had to make said leftovers. So here’s what we ended up with:

Leftover Classic Turkey Soup

I was legit surprised how great this turned out. I just used a couple stalks of celery, half an onion, two carrots and a few red potatoes sautéed in the pot with some coconut oil. Then I added 4 cups of whatever low sodium chicken stock we had available from Thanksgiving meal prep, added pinches of pepper, thyme and a little bit of salt and added the turkey after the vegetables were all cooked. Letting it simmer for a while let all of the great flavor from the Cajun turkey incorporate into the soup.

Turkey Chili

Turkey chili is a staple at our house. This is largely because I do most of the weekday cooking simply by virtue of getting home first and wanting to gnaw off Mr. Selfie’s arm by the time he gets here like it’s the zombie apocalypse. My flavor profile is cumin, cayenne, pepper, paprika and garlic. Our kitchen always has onion, serranos and most often, tomato and bell pepper. Basically, I like spicy, healthy food. Normally, I make our turkey chili with ground turkey but of course, here the goal was to get rid of the turkey we had. With it being Cajun turkey (read: spicy and therefore, Selfie-approved), it turned out great. This was another super, simple, “pour-some-stuff-into-a-pot” dinner. A large can of diced tomatoes, a can of kidney beans, a can of black beans, one bell pepper, one serrano, one onion all chopped, the turkey and some more chicken stock (as much as you want based on your thoughts and feelings about how soup-y chili should be) (also, yes, Texans, I know about y’alls’ thing about beans) was all that was needed. Easy-peesy and super delicious!