Thanksgiving

Hey y'all, I'm Paula Deen and whether it's your Thanksgiving turkey or your

taters that put you to sleep, I'm here today to wake you up with some wonderful

recipes that you can use up all those leftovers in. And the first recipe that

we're gonna start with is a very simple but yet very delicious turkey pot pie

And then here comes my favorite, my crispy potato croquettes. They're better the

second time around. But y'all don't forget to save room for dessert because I'm making the most

succulent pumpkin bars. It's going to put that old pie recipe to shame. So y'all put away your

plastic containers and join me in the kitchen because with these leftovers, we ain't going to

have a scrap left on the table. Do you know what my second favorite thing about Thanksgiving is

Well, the first favorite thing is I'm with my family. I just love that

But the second favorite thing to me about Thanksgiving is the leftovers

There's nothing that makes me happier than a leftover turkey sandwich. Well, today I wound up with a lot of leftovers

So I want to find some ways to incorporate my leftovers into a brand new dish

that the family's not going to realize that they're really having leftovers

And, you know, I make chicken pot pies. I make seafood pot pies

well, why not a turkey pot pie? So that's what I'm going to do with this leftover turkey

Now, I'm going to begin with a store-bought puff pastry. This is one sheet of frozen puff pastry that's been thawed

and I've dusted it with a little flour so that I can work with it

and it not stick to my hands. And I'm going to start by cutting strips of our puff pastry

with a fluted wheel. Now if you don't have a wheel, you can use just a regular plain

knife and it'll just give you a straight edge. But this is what your puff pastry is going

to start out looking like and this is what it's going to look like after we cut it. I've

got some cutting ready to lattice over here. I've already started the lattice work. Now

I've gotten two pieces down. Now I'm going to raise the two pieces of pastry that are

underneath the last strip of pastry that went down. I'm going to lay them back

and then nestle that other strip right there. And then now the opposite strips are on the bottom

and I'm just going to lift those up and lay the last strip right there

And you can see we've got a pretty lattice topping. Now if you feel like this is too big

for the container that you're going to put it in, all you have to do is trim your edges to fit your pan

It's just that simple. You can make it work with just a spin of the wheel

All right, now we're going to put this in the oven, and we're going to bake it until it's a light brown and it's puffed up

Now, you don't want to overcook this or overbrown it because after we get the center of our pot pie done

we're going to put this on top of that, and it's going back in the oven

So you'll want to make sure that you don't get it too dark that first go around

Now I've got an egg and a little milk, and I'm just going to give it a brush

And this is going to make our puff pastry real shiny and brown

It's going to be just beautiful. And we cook our crust the same way at the restaurants

but we have air-driven convection ovens. That air from those convection ovens kind of blows these edges up every which way

so they'll come out all funky and pretty. Well, this one's more than likely because I'm cooking this in a regular oven

I'm just gonna kinda lay down. So let's get this in the oven

Okay, now for the filling for our pot pie. I'm gonna start with an onion

one whole diced onion. I gonna use two cups of butternut squash that been cooked and diced Ooh those onions are smelling delicious

All right, now to this pot I'm going to add two cans of cream of celery soup

Two cans of cream of cheddar soup. You could change this to cream of chicken or cream of mushroom

All right, I'm just mixing that up, and I'm going to add one cup of whole milk

and then I'm going to fold in that surprise ingredient. We can't have turkey without cranberries, can we

So I'm going to fold in one can of whole jellied cranberry sauce

and you can see the whole berries. So we're just going to have everything in this one pot

Now we're going to throw in our leftover turkey, and I'm using white and dark meat

And we're just going to let this simmer. So I'm going to take a quick break, clean up

and when we come back, we're going to finish our turkey pot pie And then I'm gonna be making my favorite food in the whole entire world

a potato croquette. So y'all don't go anywhere. Okay, now for the filling for our pot pie

And you can see it's nice and hot and bubbly. And when we put it in the oven, that's the way we want it

We want it really bubbling. So we're safe to go ahead and ladle this up into our casserole dish

Now you'll want to make sure that when you fill your dish up

that you fill it up high enough for the bottom of your puff pastry to touch it

Otherwise, you know, you could sling off the crust because it's got nothing to stick to

It just kind of run around on top of the dish, and you don't want that

I don't want to overfill it because when I put it in the oven, I don't want it baking over

Okay, so let's check on our puff pastry now and see if it's done

And then we're ready to put this in the oven. Oh, and look how pretty that turned out

Gonna need to get a spatula. How's this for a spatula? That should do the trick, shouldn't it

All right, now I'm just gonna lay this crust right on top of our filling

And you see how I'm pressing that down for that crust to kind of sit down in that hot juice

All right, so in the oven, this is going to go. Now let's move on down here to what Paula's really been waiting on

and that's a way to use up my leftover mashed potatoes. Okay, so I've got my leftover mashed potatoes, two egg yolks

and about three or four chopped scallions or green onions, whatever you call them

All right, so we've got that mixed up good. Now over here in this plate, I have some fresh breadcrumbs, and that is fresh breadcrumbs

not the kind that you buy in the canister from the grocery store. I've tried it with both, and your soft, fresh breadcrumbs just work a lot, lot better than your dried ones

And all we're going to do is just take a little mound of our potato

kind of pat them into a croquette shape. and then we're going to roll them into our breadcrumbs

And I've got a tray going here that I already had made

So we're going to be ready to start cooking these croquettes like right now

All right, our grease is ready. I'm frying these probably in about a half an inch of peanut oil

I just love these. And just remember, y'all, you don't want to put too much oil in your pan

In fact, I think I almost put a little too much in here. you want this to come up

not quite halfway of your croquette. But these are looking mighty fine, y'all

Alright I just flipping these over now Gonna let them brown on the other side And you want to handle these fairly gently because that mashed potato is really kind of delicate

You know, it's, I mean, it's not like handling a piece of meat. It's very, very soft and delicate

All right, so some of these are ready. Look at that croquette

Can't help but wonder. I want that, I wonder what that would taste like

if it had shrimp in it. I may have to try that next time

That sounds really, really wickedly good. All right, well, those others are continuing to fry

so I think our pot pie is probably ready to come out of the oven

So let's see if that's... Oh, yeah, that's ready. Look how good that looks

Isn't that pretty? And I love the looks of that potato right there

Oh, and for the friend I've been waiting on. Mmm. I'll always, as long as I live, love a potato like no other food

I'm gonna polish it off, and when we come back, I'm gonna share with y'all a wonderful way

to use up those 30 cans of pumpkin that you got in your pantry

So I'll see you back when we're making frosted pumpkin bars, and you're going to love them

Mmm. Y'all, I swear to Pete

I keep making the same mistake over and over. When I go grocery shopping for my holiday meals

I so want to make sure I have enough that I use the over-buy. And I did that again this year

I've got enough cans of pumpkin in my pantry to choke a horse

So I immediately want to find a way to start using that pumpkin

And I'm doing that through a recipe called a pumpkin bar, and it's so good

And we're going to start with 1 2 3rds cup of sugar and one 15-ounce can of pumpkin

And now this is straight pumpkin. It's not a pumpkin pie filling

And then we're going to add a cup of oil. And then we're just going to cream this together

And I think you're just going to love this recipe. This is a recipe that was shared with me

from a friend named Patty Ronning. Alright, now I've got this creamed up

Now we're going to add one egg at the time. I'm going to turn this up a little bit

I don't want to sling it all over myself though. Alright, and in goes the last egg. Alright

So we're going to just let that sit right there. So let's move down here and mix up our dry ingredients for our pumpkin bars

I've got two cups of all-purpose flour, two teaspoons of baking powder, two teaspoons of

ground cinnamon, one teaspoon of baking soda, and one teaspoon of salt

And we're just going to mix those dry ingredients together. And then we're going to move back down here, and we're going to put them into our pumpkin mixture

We're going to be frosting this with a cream cheese icing that's very, very, very much like

the icing that you would put on a carrot cake. We'll give that a little seed, turn him up some

We're just gonna pour this in here and then I've sprayed this pan so they won't stick

The oven's been preheated to 350 and we're gonna bake it for about 30 minutes

My mouth is already watering, because I know what this is going to taste like

We're going to let it bake for 30 minutes, then I'm going to take it out of the oven

and we're going to let it cool, because we can't put our frosting on the bars while they're hot

So in the oven it goes. And I've got one back here that's cooled and waiting on us

see how pretty that looks. All right, so let's move on down to this end and put all of our

frosting ingredients together I got one stick of butter and one eight ounce package of cream cheese softened to room temperature I got 2 teaspoons of vanilla flavoring and then I got 2 cups of powdered sugar that I just going to run

through the sifter. Powdered sugar is pretty, pretty good. It's not nearly that lumpy. You can

see everything went through except for a few of the beads. So that was pretty good. So let's move

back down here with our mixer. We'll take the dirty beaters out and put in some

clean ones. And we're just gonna mix all those ingredients until they're smooth

All right. So Patty tells us to cut our bars into rectangular shapes

About like this. And then Patty says to remove them and frost them with your icing

Look at that. It is so moist. I mean, it's like it's wanting to come apart in my hand

Since you've cut them, you could cut them even smaller and almost make them like a pettifor

I don't think these are going to be around for very long

because while they're not hot, they're still just a little bit warm

Michael Groover is going to be on these like white on rice. he'll have them gone before I can turn around

Y'all, I got to run out of here for a couple of minutes. I'm going to finish frosting these while we're on break

And I can't stand it. I got to taste it. And when we come back, I'm going to share some tips with y'all

So I'll meet you back here in the kitchen in just a minute. So good

I just love this tip because you don't see this very often

Does anybody make pickled peaches out there anymore? I remember my grandmother making them, but you can pick them up at the grocery store

but I want to show you how very simple it is. Now I'm going to add two cups of sugar to my pot

to one cup of vinegar. And this is going to make a nice syrup. And I'm going to drop a few

cinnamon sticks in the pot. And I'm going to let that start cooking. And over here

Here I'm going to be working on the peaches. There's a couple of ways that you can peel your peaches

You can cut a little notch in the top, drop them in boiling water for about 60 seconds

and the skins will slip right off. Otherwise, you can peel them with a potato peeler very quickly and easily

And what we're going to do when we've got our peaches peeled is we're going to stud

them with cloves. And this clove is going to give them a wonderful, wonderful flavor

We're going to drop our peaches down into our syrup and we're going to cook them until

they're soft. And that'll probably take about 15 minutes. We're going to drop them down into our jars that have been sterilized with new lids that

have also been sterilized. And I'm going to seal them up and I'm going to not water bath these because I'm going

to just put them in the refrigerator. They're good for up to two weeks

But what a wonderful way to send your out of town family members home than by tucking

a jar of homemade pickled peaches into their hands as they leave

They're going to love you, and they're going to remember what a fabulous time they had with you

Y'all, I couldn't believe when I went to my refrigerator this morning and saw all those leftovers

But you know what? I managed to use up almost every one of them in today's recipes

The potato croquettes, y'all, I tell you what, I think they were better today than they were as mashed potatoes yesterday

And Patty's pumpkin bars. Oh, my goodness. You're going to love them

You're going to want to make those year-round. And, of course, the turkey pot pie, y'all, it's a great way to use up that leftover turkey

You know, I really hope that y'all's Thanksgiving has just been overfilled with family and friends

and love and lots of, lots of good food. Until it's time to do it again y'all, I want to send you best dishes and love from my kitchen

to yours