Friday Food Fun: Turkey Casserole

We hope that our readers who celebrated Thanksgiving had a good one, and that all of you are enjoying what’s left of November!

Sorry we haven’t been around much, but life gets in the way of blogging sometimes! This seems especially true during the holidays.

Rather than leaving you hanging, I’d love to share a recipe that I just discovered. If you’re like me and had a lot of Thanksgiving leftovers, you may have lost interest in eating the same thing day after day. I wanted to use up the last of our turkey and be done with it, so I was happy to find the recipe I’m sharing here.

There are a lot of ideas out there for leftover turkey, but this one’s a great way to use up all of your leftovers, and you can tweak it to suit your preferences. The credit goes to Hellmann’s. Here ya go!

Hellmann’s Turkey Casserole

INGREDIENTS

• 4 cups leftover prepared stuffing, divided
• 4 cups coarsely chopped leftover cooked turkey (about 1 lb.)
• 3/4 cup Hellmann’s® or Best Foods® Real Mayonnaise, divided
• 1/4 cup whole berry cranberry sauce
• 2 cups leftover mashed potatoes
• 1-1/2 cups shredded mozzarella cheese (about 6 oz.)

DIRECTIONS

1. Preheat oven to 375 . Spray 8-inch baking dish with no-stick cooking spray. Spoon in 2 cups stuffing, then top with turkey.
2. Combine 1/4 cup Hellmann’s® or Best Foods® Real Mayonnaise with cranberry sauce; evenly spread over turkey.
3. Combine remaining 1/2 cup Mayonnaise, potatoes and cheese in large bowl. Evenly spread on turkey, then top with remaining 2 cups stuffing.
4. Bake 40 minutes or until heated through. Let stand 10 minutes before serving. If desired, garnish with dried cranberries.
5. Also terrific with Hellmann’s Light Mayonnaise.

NOTES

By the time I made this, I didn’t have any stuffing left over from Thanksgiving–probably because it’s my favorite dish and usually gets eaten first–so I cooked a package of Stove Top turkey stuffing. Also, I used jellied cranberry sauce instead of whole berry since I had exactly the right amount left. You can omit it altogether if you don’t like it, but I thought it added a nice hint of sweetness.

The casserole comes out basically as if you made a pile of everything on your plate and added cheese to hold it all together, but actually it was really tasty. Be careful, because the mayo and cheese make the calorie count per serving pretty high.

One more thing: I always have to use a bigger dish than what’s called for. I used a larger casserole dish because there was no way all those ingredients were going to fit in an 8-inch pan!

Enjoy, and let us know what you think. Better yet, share your favorite recipes for your Thanksgiving leftovers.