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Cooking Sites to Help with Thanksgiving Leftovers

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I love a good Thanksgiving dinner but I think I love Thanksgiving leftovers just as much. A rerun of dinner is great, but sometimes you want to change things up a little. These websites can help you find creative and delicious recipes to use up everything from the turkey carcass to the mashed potatoes.

Taste of Home

Taste of Home provides readers with recipes by course, cooking style, cuisine, ingredient, holiday and more categories to find a new family-favorite recipe. It’s got great tips and tricks for both beginner and seasoned cooks, a whole page dedicated to Thanksgiving, and useful articles like How Long Are Thanksgiving Leftovers Good For? particularly helpful this time of year. 

Yummly.com

You’ve probably seen some of Yummly’s recipe videos on social media sites like Facebook or Snapchat. Their videos are creative, easy to follow and precise. It has a database of over two million recipes – including over 1300 recipes for Thanksgiving leftovers – using both practical and more unusual ingredients, is easy to use and is equipped with search options that allow you to match your search to your dietary needs. When you create a free account, you can save recipes, make shopping lists, and share your recipes with others. You can even create meal plans based on your dietary restrictions and allergies. 

Betty Crocker 

I still have the 1960’s era Betty Crocker cookbook my mother handed down to me when I got married. Though some of the recipes from the ’60s and ’70s haven’t aged well – seriously, why was everything set in Jell-O? – the good people at Betty Crocker have updated (and eliminated some) recipes – think less food-based-on-a-dare and more delicious-healthy-meals-for-your-family, so their website is a great resource for Tips for Using Your Thanksgiving Leftovers or creating delicious new meals from your Thanksgiving leftovers. 

Tasty.co

You’ve probably seen Tasty’s videos on your Facebook feed or in a Buzzfeed article. Step by step videos show users how to create delicious dishes with ingredients you probably already have on hand, including those Thanksgiving leftovers. With categories like Back to School, Weekend Meall Prep, Healthy Eating, and Keto, there’s years worth of recipes and meal plans waiting for you to experiment with. 

Allrecipes

Allrecipes is the largest food-focused social network created for cooks by cooks. The site is user-curated with all recipes – hence the name – shared with the intent of making us all better cooks. Users are encouraged to post recipes they’ve tried, include photos, reviews of the recipe itself, and any tips or tweaks you tried.

Food Network

Food Network offers up countless recipes including loads of options for leftover turkey as well as a list of their Best Thanksgiving Leftover Recipes and Top Thanksgiving Leftovers recipes with quick and easy recipes for soup, turkey pot pie, sandwiches, and more tested in the Food Network kitchens.

Tracey Dowdy is a freelance writer based just outside Washington DC. After years working for non-profits and charities, she now freelances, edits and researches on subjects ranging from family and education to history and trends in technology. Follow Tracey on Twitter.

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The Best Cooking Sites For Parents And Kids 

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By Tracey Dowdy

According to National Today, October 4, 2019, is National Taco Day and National Cinnamon Roll Day. It’s also National Vodka Day, but that’s a post for another forum. 

Whether you’re celebrating your love of tacos or the ooey-gooey deliciousness of cinnamon rolls, it’s a perfect opportunity to get your kids into cooking. Cooking together is so much more than providing life skills that will help your kids avoid a steady diet of ramen throughout college. Research from Columbia University’s National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse found that kids who eat family dinners get better grades in school, develop communication skills and are less likely to try drugs. It also improves math skills, helps them understand what’s in the food they eat, appreciate the work that goes into preparing the food they eat, and teaches them how to work with others. Raising an adventurous eater takes patience and persistence, but pays off in big ways. On the other hand, raising picky eaters not only means more work for you but may lead to health challenges for them down the road. 

These websites offer delicious, nutritious recipes that you and your child can prepare together and build memories you’ll treasure forever. 

Spatulatta was developed by a mom, her two daughters and their neighbor for latch-key kids. The recipes range from the very simple to more complex, so no matter your skill level, there’s something you can tackle. Choose from a variety of categories, diverse flavors, and styles. They have a YouTube channel so you can watch demos of their recipes.

The Kids Cook Monday is actually an initiative that encourages families to be intentional about eating and spending time with your family every Monday.  The webite provides examples of family-friendly recipes and video demonstrations of its recipes along with a Weelfree starter family dinner toolkit – making it easier for families to commit to cooking and eat together every Monday. “Start your week off right: Make Monday family night!” 

It’s no surprise that The Food Network has its own Cooking with Kids site that encourages families to work together in the kitchen to create simple, kid-friendly meals. Familiar Food Network personalities like Ree Drummond, Tyler Florence, Giada De Laurentiis, and Guy Fieri demonstrate kid-friendly versions of their recipes like Ree’s Prarie Sushi, Giada’s Spaghetti Nests, and Bananimals. 

Weelicious was created as a resource for parents to see how easy it is to expose children to wholesome, delicious homemade food. Recipes are divided into useful categories like Occasion, Sensitivity, Ingredient, and Cook Time, making it even easier to search for recipes your kids will love. Host Catherine has demonstration videos, ideas for school lunches, and useful resources like tips for how to make groceries stay fresh longer. 

Tracey Dowdy is a freelance writer based just outside Washington DC. After years working for non-profits and charities, she now freelances, edits and researches on subjects ranging from family and education to history and trends in technology. Follow Tracey on Twitter.