Using Turkey Leftovers

So I've started cooking a turkey every few weeks. I've found having the meat all cooked and ready in the fridge makes meals easy to put together on a tired day after work...or easy to cop out in a quesadilla cause I'm feeling lazy. {which by the way is my favorite way of using leftovers, stick it all in a tortilla with cheese and fry it up! so good!} Anyway when I was deciding what to make for dinner, I knew I had some cooked turkey and some carrots that I need to use at some point this week. The ONLY thing that you can make with that is Turkey Pot Pie. :) Well maybe not the only thing but its a darn good thing. ** just a note this is bits and pieces of a bunch of different recipes that I've smoosched together to make my recipe **

So I started by making the crust because it needs to sit in the fridge for at least an hour. This recipe is from Martha Steward & Ina Garten its called "Basic Pastry Crust". easy to find pretty much any where if your looking for a basic recipe. The recipe is easy so easy even I couldn't screw it up. Recipes that easy are just begging to be tweeked and turned upside down and improved on, right? That's what I thought! Martha's website says "In a food processor, pulse 2-1/2 cups all purpose flour and 1 teaspoon course salt to combine. Add 2 sticks cold unsalted butter, cut into 1/2 inch pieces and pulse until mixture resembles coarse meal, with a few pea-sized pieces of butter remaining. Sprinkle with ice water. Pulse until dough is crumbly but holds together when squeezed (if necessary, add up to 3 tablespoons more water, 1 tablespoon at a time). Do not overmix. Form dough into a 1-inch-thick disk, wrap tightly in plastic, and refrigerate until firm, at least 1 hour (or up to 3 days)." The first problem hit when I decided my sisters stand mixer would do just fine in place of the fancy food processor that I don't own.

I started by sifting my flour and my salt to break up the bigger clumps. I've found that skipping this step just turns into large chunks of flour pockets in the finished product. which never tastes good. Next the recipe says to cut the butter into 1/2 inch cubes. the easiest way I've found to do this is to cut your cube into 3 long slices hot dog style if you will, then turn them on their sides and cut it again so now you've got 9 long matchsticks of butter. then just cut into small cubes.

You can't just dump the butter in willy-nilly you need to add it slowly and let it combine so it doesn't all just clump back together.

 Since this is a stand mixer not a food processor, the butter didn't break up as small as it would have. This should have been my first indication that it wouldn't turn out like it did last time I made it, but I'm stubborn and just kept plowing on forward.

I've found the easiest way to wrap this in plastic is to put the plastic in a bowl and then wrap it around the dough and put the whole kit-n-caboodle in the fridge.

With the "hard" part done, it was time to chop the onion... I'm an onion crier. Every time I cut an onion I bawl like a baby. I've tried it all-cut next to an open flame, don't cut down the center. It doesn't matter I cry any way. Soooo I made my husband chop for me since he was home! teehee

Before I get too far into that here's what you'll need for this turkey pot pie:
1/2 stick butter
1-1/2 cup chopped onion
1 cup chopped carrot
1 cup chopped celery
1 cup chopped butternut squash
4 cups chopped leftover turkey, mix of light and dark {you could totally use chicken if you wanted}
1/2 cup flour
3-4 cups low-sodium chicken or turkey broth or water
2 cups heavy cream
2 cups frozen corn {you could do peas instead of or also}
1 cups dried cranberries
Thyme to taste
Nutmeg to taste
Sage to taste
Salt & Pepper to taste

Now back to the good stuff. I recommend chopping all your veggies first it makes it so much easier to not burn the butter. Any squash would work really, you could even leave it out if you wanted, but I think the addition of the squash and the cranberries makes this taste like thanksgiving drenched in heavy cream.

 In a large stock pot or dutch oven {if you happen to have one of those, I don't} melt the butter. You could of course use margarine if you wanted, but for me using margarine is like using tofu bacon. Wrong Wrong Wrong. Its probably illegal. In fact I'm absolutely sure it is illegal.

 Once your butter is melted before it has a chance to brown or burn, toss your veggies into the pot. If you are only doing a half batch or if your pan is wide enough for the veggies to just cover the bottom not stack up like mine do you can get away with a quick stir and be fine. If they stack up like mine you will need to stir it semi-regularly to avoid burning the bottom and not cooking the top.

 While your veggies are cooking, this is a good time to break down your turkey or chicken or combination of the two. You could probably even do duck if you wanted. I used some leg and some breast to make up my meat. Make sure you cut it into bigger pieces then the veggies did because the meat will kinda shread in the hot pot if you cut them too small you'll just end up with hint of meat with the occasional piece floating thru.

Mommy's little helper trying to figure out why we don't just eat it. why go to all the trouble of chopping and mixing and heating and stirring? :) with her adorable blanket handmade by Carrie's Creations {probably going to be the only plug I ever do}

 When your veggies look about like this mostly cooked down but the celery and the carrots still have a crunch to them, its time to add the turkey. You don't want to over cook your veggies at this point because they will keep cooking and could very easily get way over done.

Wait a minute before heading to the next step and let the turkey come up to the temperature of the veggies and work some of the wonderful butter and onion flavor off the bottom of the pan. You could toss some white wine in to deglaze the pan if you wanted. Remember to only use a wine you would drink. Make sure the wine is all evaporated out before adding the flour.

 Make sure to sift this flour too so it doesn't have lumps in it. Stir in the flour continuously for a few minutes to cook off that raw flour taste. You'll be able to tell when its ready because you'll start to smell turkey again. When you first put in the flour all you can smell is flour, but after a few minutes on the heat they turkey smell will begin to break thru. Don't be tempted to walk away at this point and think it'll be okay--it won't. you have to watch it like a hawk.

 Once the flour is all cooked in, add in the stock or water. The water will start to turn a kind of yellow-y color when you mix it in, that's just the flour totally normal. And then mix in the heavy creme. If you wanted to cut calories you could substitute the heavy creme for half-n-half or low fat milk, but the taste that comes from the heavy creme is irreplaceable.

 At this point you want to add your frozen veggies, I used corn, and your cranberries. Make sure to use dried cranberries. They will plump back up in the mixture and will start to take on taste of the heavy creme. They will add a sweetness to the pot pie, so if you want it more savory add less or leave them out all together. For a sweeter pie, add more.

 Now is a good time to add the herbs. I used nutmeg, sage, thyme, salt and pepper. Remember that we used unsalted butter so this is the only time we are getting salt depending on how the turkey was cooked. Make sure you taste after each addition. you might need a little more of one or find that your don't need anything else all together. If you are using dried herbs, put them into the palm of your hand and smoosch them up before adding them to your pot. This will release some of the oils and the flavor that would otherwise have been trapped inside.

 Now is a good time to start preheating our oven to 400 F. At this point your mixture should look something like this:

Put the heat on medium and let it come to a boil. Don't put the heat up to high it will come to a boil too quickly. This time that it is heating up your flavors are mixing together and creating a wonderful pie. Some of the liquid will evaporation, that's okay. 

While our mixture is cooking away, get the dough out of the fridge and roll it out. If you wanted you could line the bottom of your baking dish with it so the crust is on the bottom or cut out shapes like stars to place on top. Or yours could have ended up like mine and be really crumbly, because my butter wasn't properly incorporated. Totally my fault, don't trust a stand mixer to do something that your own two hands can do better. 

It should end something like this:  

 Transfer it to a casserole dish that is oven safe. Add the crust in whatever configuration you want and put it into the oven. The oven is basically making sure the crust is cooked and the inside stays warm. All the rest of the components are all cooked.

 It will take about 30-40 minutes depending on how thick your crust is. Cook it until the crust turns golden brown and the inside is bubbly. Like I said earlier my crust didn't come together as it should but it still tasted good! I crumpled it and put it on top of the pot pie. It almost tasted like shortbread. Very Yummy!!

 See that wasn't to hard was it? could have been worse right? It is so easy to reuse leftovers that you never need to have the same meal twice. Take what you've got left and reuse it in something else. Life lesson for today? When your gut says a stand mixer isn't good enough, listen to it and go to the store and get a premade pie crust. And don't let your husband add an extra cup of cranberries /-_-/ oh boy just when you think its all going okay, Monstro shows up to swallow Pinocchio...or your pie crust...

~K