About Turkey Salad

Turkey with all the fixings for Sunday lunch will have your family cheering, but serving leftover turkey every night for a week could cause a mutiny among the family. Rather than serve boring leftovers, make turkey salad. Serve it chilled over a bed of lettuce for the ladies' luncheon or pack turkey salad sandwiches for school or work lunches. You can also freeze it for later meals.

Freeze Leftover Turkey

Freeze the leftover turkey for salads. Remove the meat from the carcass and cut it into bite-sized bits. A little more than one-half of a cup of diced turkey is needed to make one serving of turkey salad. Measure the appropriate number of servings of diced turkey needed onto pieces of cling wrap and seal the wrap into pouches. Place the wrapped turkey pouches into a plastic zip-lock style bag, label the bag--including the date--and place them in the freezer. Later you can thaw the frozen turkey for use in turkey salad.

Turkey Salad

Chop three boiled eggs and place them in a large bowl. Add 2 1/2 to 3 cups of chopped turkey (chunky, not finely diced), 3/4 of a 16-ounce jar of diced pickles (sweet or dill), 6 ounces honey mustard mayonnaise and 1/3 cup mayonnaise. Mix, cover and chill for three to four hours. Serve on a bed of lettuce, in a tortilla bowl, in half a scooped out cantaloupe or half a scooped out ciabatta bread. Serves four.

Turkey Salad Sandwiches

Place 1 cup of diced turkey in a large bowl. Dice the following ingredients and add to the bowl: 1 celery stalk, 1 Granny Smith apple (or other tart apple) and 1/4 cup of walnuts. In a small bowl mix 1/4 cup of mayonnaise, 1 tablespoon of chopped fresh parsley, 1 tablespoon of lemon juice, 1/2 tablespoon of honey, 1/2 tablespoon of Dijon-style mustard, a dash of salt and a dash of ground pepper. Mix well. Serve on sandwich breads, pita bread, sub rolls or cornbread muffins.

Turkey Salad Sides

Serve the turkey salad with crusty bread, crackers or cornbread muffins. Side dishes for either the turkey salad or the turkey salad sandwiches include soup, fruit, chips, pickles, olives or homemade (or canned) cranberry sauce.

Freezing the Salad

Make a large batch of turkey salad and freeze to serve later. Mix everything but the mayonnaise. Scoop it into either single size or family size containers and place them in the freezer. On the day it is to be served, remove the turkey salad from the freezer, thaw it and mix in the mayonnaise. Frozen turkey salad can be taken to school or work. Remove the container of turkey salad mix from the freezer, open and place the mayonnaise on top. Reseal and place it, along with crackers or sandwich bread, in a lunch bag. By lunchtime, it will be thawed and ready to eat.