4 January 2016

Ideas for Christmas Day Leftovers

| Sophia Carlini
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I don’t know if it’s an Italian thing or just the way my family did it, but I grew up on leftovers. I wasn’t one of those kids who ate weetbix or fruit for breakfast, I had the leftovers from dinner the night before. That might be why I’m a huge on savoury food –give me leftover beef stew over a cupcake any day.

Christmas day is by far the greatest day of the year when it comes to food. There are leftovers for days. My mum always tries to talk me out of making a Christmas feast; she worries about the amount of time I spend cooking, as well as all of the food that gets left over. What she doesn’t understand, is that I purposely make masses amount of food so that after Christmas lunch, Mike and I can kick the family out and hang out on the couch for the next three days eating leftovers. Not having to cook is the best! And I personally think leftovers always taste better the next day.

For the first few days, there is always enough food to put a few whole meals together, but then you get to the point where there are just little bits of random things left over, such as; a handful of roast potatoes or coleslaw for one. When I was younger, I would get in big trouble for wasting food, so now I am very good at using leftovers. Don’t get me wrong, it can be a struggle; what are you going to do with a handful of roast vegetables?

I have put together a few ideas of meals you can make with your typical Christmas leftovers. These ideas assume you have staples in your kitchen, such as eggs and bread.

Leftover Roast sandwiches

My personal favourite! The best thing about sandwiches is that you can put pretty much anything you like on them. My favourite type of sandwich is one made from the leftovers of a Sunday roast. I like to fill my sandwich with smashed roast pumpkin, potatoes and onion, and then add roast meat with any leftover gravy and turkey stuffing, if there is any; it is just like heaven! You can also add any leftover coleslaw or even leftover potato chips. Yes! Potato chips on sandwiches are a thing, and it is also very wonderful.

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Eggs: your way

Eggs are a staple in my house, I would say that I use eggs in my cooking almost every day. Poached eggs are my favourite for breakfast but often when I have leftovers I will mix it up and make scrambled eggs; you can add anything to scrambled eggs. I’m not really big on meat for breakfast, bacon is probably as far as I would go. So normally, if I’m making an omelette of leftovers, I will chop the leftover roast vegetables into small pieces and fry them for a minute or so before adding my whisked eggs and fetta cheese. Did you know, the secret to making the best scrambled eggs is to add a dash of cream to the whisked eggs before frying.

scrambled egg

If you don’t want eggs for breakfast, you could easily use the ingredients to make a frittata, and eat with any leftover salad. You can you use this recipe from Taste.com as a base and add whatever left over veges you may have in your fridge.

Italian Frittata with slices of fresh greens

Bread and butter pudding

There always seems to be a tone of leftover bread at the end of functions. You can either slice it into pieces or making something delicious and clever, like bread and butter pudding.

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You can find many more great ideas for using leftovers on the inter-webs!

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madelini said :

Maya123 said :

No need to do anything with leftovers. Eat it as it is. I have left over chicken, so instead of taking time to do something with it, I just slice off some chicken as it is, put it on a plate and add a salad. Same with left over dessert. I eat it as it is, just throwing some fresh chopped up fruit on top.
The recipes at the top look delicious, but they take time to prepare. I don’t understand why it is thought necessary that left overs have to have something done with them before they can be eaten. They are prepared food after all and were good enough to eat at Christmas the way they were prepared, so why not after as well!

I guess it depends on how much you have left – if you have half a serve of roast veggies left, it makes sense to make fritters or an omelette with them than to pick at them and make a full meal. If you don’t mind cooking, it’s no great hassle to figure out other things to make. Also, if you get bored or if the meat has gone a bit dry in the fridge, it’s a much better alternative to throwing things out.

If you enjoy cooking, fine. It’s the suggestion that unless something is found to do with the food it will (must somehow) be wasted that I find strange. Maybe if people do have a lot of food left over, especially food with a limited lifespan, perhaps the fault lies in the misjudgement of how much food was actually needed to be prepared initially. People should learn to count guests and judge the amount of food needed better; then there would not be so much potential food wasted. I have read that apparently about 40% of food is wasted. Although it would be interesting to learn how this figure is actually derived, it does indicate some people are very wasteful (basically buying food to throw in the bin. Why don’t they just throw their money in instead!), and maybe even more wasteful than this figure indicates, because some of us waste very little, and would bring down that figure. Your suggestion of doing something with left over “roast veggies” is a good one, but perhaps some of this wastage might come from people preparing far too much food initially. I am not saying that you did, but many people likely do.

Maya123 said :

No need to do anything with leftovers. Eat it as it is. I have left over chicken, so instead of taking time to do something with it, I just slice off some chicken as it is, put it on a plate and add a salad. Same with left over dessert. I eat it as it is, just throwing some fresh chopped up fruit on top.
The recipes at the top look delicious, but they take time to prepare. I don’t understand why it is thought necessary that left overs have to have something done with them before they can be eaten. They are prepared food after all and were good enough to eat at Christmas the way they were prepared, so why not after as well!

I guess it depends on how much you have left – if you have half a serve of roast veggies left, it makes sense to make fritters or an omelette with them than to pick at them and make a full meal. If you don’t mind cooking, it’s no great hassle to figure out other things to make. Also, if you get bored or if the meat has gone a bit dry in the fridge, it’s a much better alternative to throwing things out.

Weaselburger12:23 pm 30 Dec 15

Might be a bit late now. but for next year do what I do. Have some of your friends round with their couple day old leftovers combine them all and make up a couple of pot lucks. you never know what you’re gonna come up with.

No need to do anything with leftovers. Eat it as it is. I have left over chicken, so instead of taking time to do something with it, I just slice off some chicken as it is, put it on a plate and add a salad. Same with left over dessert. I eat it as it is, just throwing some fresh chopped up fruit on top.
The recipes at the top look delicious, but they take time to prepare. I don’t understand why it is thought necessary that left overs have to have something done with them before they can be eaten. They are prepared food after all and were good enough to eat at Christmas the way they were prepared, so why not after as well!

Meat fritters made from chopped up left overs mixed with fresh red onion and red capsicum in batter of self raising flour, an egg or two and some milk. Fry in butter to pretend it is French inspired.

Oh yes – I did bubble and squeak, having hadn’t had it in years.

We fried up the beans and brussel sprouts in garlic and lemon butter, along with the roast veggies, and the panko and pine nut stuffing…. it was divine!!!!

Holden Caulfield2:00 pm 27 Dec 15

Bubble and squeak.

/discussion 🙂

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