by Zack Mink

Thanksgiving, although controversial, is still widely celebrated in the United States. According to statista.com, 83% of Americans were projected to be celebrating the holiday in 2021 and almost 90 million tons of food waste was generated (ReFED.org). No, you don’t need to eat dry turkey for weeks after or scrape the stuffing off of a tray to limit your waste. Instead, you can repurpose your food scraps to create new and certainly improved meals that you will look forward to.

“The Moist-Maker”

The most famous Thanksgiving leftover that is widely recognized is “The Moist-Maker” from Friends. This is a sandwich filled with turkey, cranberry sauce, stuffing, and other Thanksgiving classics. To make it moist, a gravy soaked piece of bread is layered in the middle of the sandwich. This method of simply putting leftovers between two pieces of bread or wrapping them up in a large tortilla might be delicious but can also get quite boring after eating the same things for days in a row. 

Turkey Pot Pie

Rather than making a Thanksgiving sandwich or what is essentially a Thanksgiving crunch wrap supreme, experiment with your cooking skills and make something like a turkey pot pie. With this, all you need to do is combine some of your turkey leftovers, whatever vegetables you have, mix in your gravy and some extra stock of any kind. Finally, top it with some buttery puff pastry because puff pastry really does make everything taste better and bake it at whatever temperature seems appropriate. With only a couple minutes of preparation and 30-45 minutes in the oven, you now have a not so Thanksgiving pot pie.

Turkey Stock

Aside from excessive amounts of leftovers adding to the tons of food waste, scraps from food prep also have a huge impact on the waste produced each year. Rather than filling up garbage bags with vegetable scraps or a giant turkey carcass, save all of these nutrient full foods to create a homemade turkey stock. This is a classic one pot recipe where you put all of your scraps into one pot, top it off with water, and let it simmer for hours. This process extracts the flavor from the vegetables and the collagen from the turkey bones creating a lucious and flavorful stock. With stock, you have endless options of meals to choose from. You can add this stock to your turkey pot pie or even make something like a turkey pho with some aromatics like lemongrass, ginger, and pho seasoning packets. 

Utilizing food scraps not only pushes you to experiment and try new foods, but also contributes to minimizing food waste on a day that produces excessive amounts of it. If you are lazy and want to enjoy a classic Thanksgiving sandwich, go ahead! If you want to be a little extra, take the time to make a turkey stock using the entire turkey carcass and save that stock for future recipes. No need to toss out your leftovers, stretch your culinary limits and practice food sustainability even on Thanksgiving.