Turkey Salad

Have leftover Thanksgiving turkey or oven roast turkey? Why not use it to make this delicious turkey salad and enjoy your turkey in a whole new way?

For more great recipes using turkey,try Leftover Turkey Pot Pie or turkey ala king. Or learn how to make How to Make Turkey Stock instead?

Turkey Salad

Turkey is one of those meats that, while we all love it, when you have leftovers, you HAVE LEFTOVERS!

Most people are familiar with turkey as a necessity around the holiday season, but no matter what size turkey you get, there is always way too much of it.

In a way, this means that the real trick with making and enjoying turkey is figuring out what to do with any leftovers.

This recipe for turkey salad is not only the perfect way to use up leftover bits of turkey meat, but it also takes amazing in its own right. Thanks to the sweet cranberries and grapes, combined with the moreish base mayonnaise sauce, you would want to make this regardless of whether you had leftover turkey or not.             

Turkey Salad Ingredients

Make sure you look at the recipe card at the very bottom for the exact amounts so that you know exactly what to buy for this recipe.

• Cooked turkey, diced

• Finely chopped celery

• Chopped green onion

• Mayonnaise

• Lemon juice

• Dijon mustard

• Sugar

• Salt & pepper

• Sweetened cranberries

• Red grapes

• Toasted pecans

How To Make Turkey Salad

• Place all of the turkey, celery, and green onions in a medium bowl

• Add any of the additional ingredients you might want and mix into the turkey

• Combine the mayo, lemon juice, mustard, sugar and salt, and pepper

• Feel free to adjust the seasonings to your liking and mix into the bowl of turkey and mix until it is all coated completely

• Use this as a sandwich filling, or eat it with lettuce cups instead!  

What Kind Of Turkey Meat Should You Use For This Recipe?

Anyone familiar with making turkey for the holiday season should well know the huge differences between the different parts of the turkey.

Just like with other poultry, there is a pretty stark difference between the white meat of the turkey’s breast and the darker meat in the thighs and legs.

For this recipe, however, you can easily use both. Just make sure not to use any turkey breast that was dried out and tastes, for want of a better description, leathery or chalky. Overcooked turkey breast will be especially noticeable in this recipe, so you want to ensure that the turkey you are using is cooking really well and has juicy meat.

If you are putting thigh meat into the salad, it might be a good idea to make sure to chop up the meat a little bit at first.

Turkey thigh has a bit of a tendency to be stringy once completely cooled down, and it isn’t a particularly pleasant sensation to bite into strings of turkey meat. Instead, chop it into smaller cubes to help it more evenly mix with the rest of the ingredients.

How To Use These Turkey Salad

This turkey salad recipe is probably best described as a sandwich filling and is probably best used in that application.

Whether spread lovingly in-between two slices of artisanal sourdough or shoved between two slices of white bread, this turkey salad should make a great lunch.

For the dieters and carb-free people among us, why not use it in some lettuce wraps instead? Though trying to roll up and wrap the lettuce can be pretty tricky, it is also a great way to add a bit more crunch to the salad while completely eliminating carbs.

Simply roll up some large lettuce leaves, the kinds that could fill hands with one leaf, with the turkey salad inside and enjoy just like a sandwich!

Looking for more delicious Turkey recipes? Try these out:

• How to Make Turkey Carcass Soup

• Buttery Herb & Garlic Roast Turkey Breast

• Deconstructed Turkey

Enjoy! This is so easy to customize to your liking!

Love,

Karlynn

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