Curried turkey salad with apple, raisins or dried cranberries, green onions, celery, cilantro, honey, ground ginger, curry, mayo and yogurt.
Once again, we overdid it. I think no matter how many people actually end up coming for Thanksgiving dinner, we still make enough for 14 or more.
This year’s T-Day dinner seated 6 Thursday night, and then a follow up for 7 Friday night, and we still had a massive amount of leftover turkey (and everything else on the menu)!
My father looked at me and asked, “what were we thinking?”
I don’t know dad, but I do love being able to play with the turkey leftovers.
Today I made a big batch of this curried turkey salad with our turkey leftovers for a light lunch with my parents. We had the curry turkey salad over mixed greens, though you could easily put between two layers of bread for a sandwich.
The cilantro is important here, I don’t recommend omitting it unless you don’t eat cilantro, in which case parsley will work as a substitution.
Do you have a favorite turkey salad made with leftover Thanksgiving turkey? If so please let us know about it in the comments.
Curry Turkey Salad Recipe
- Prep time: 15 minutes
- Yield: Serves 2, you can easily scale up the recipe
For this curried turkey salad I’ve used a mix of yogurt and mayonnaise. The yogurt provides the tang, the mayonnaise the creaminess. Feel free to substitute at will between the two depending on your preference.
Ingredients
- 2 cups chopped cooked turkey meat
- 1 apple, peeled, cored, chopped*
- 1 teaspoon of lemon juice*
- 1/4 cup of raisins and/or dried cranberries
- 2 tablespoons chopped green onion or chives
- 2 tablespoons chopped fresh cilantro (can substitute parsley)
- 1 rib celery chopped
- 1/2 tablespoon yellow curry powder
- 1/4 cup yogurt
- 1/4 cup mayonnaise
- 1 tablespoon honey
- 1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
- Salt and pepper
*Once you’ve chopped the apples, sprinkle with lemon juice to keep them from discoloring.
Method
1 Heat the curry powder until fragrant: In a small skillet, heat the curry powder on medium low heat until quite fragrant. Remove from heat. Do not linger too long over the heat or the curry powder will start to toast.
The point of this step is to heat it enough to release more of its flavor. You can easily skip this step if you are in a hurry.
2 Make the curry powder mayo mixture: In a large bowl, mix the curry powder, yogurt, mayonnaise, honey, and ground ginger. Add salt and pepper to taste.
3 Fold in the remaining ingredients: Gently fold in the chopped, cooked turkey, apple, raisins/dried cranberries, green onions, cilantro, and celery. Taste and add more salt and pepper if needed.
4 Serve: Serve on a bed of lettuce greens or in a sandwich.
Options: for a little more zing, add a little mango chutney to the dressing.
