¶ Intro / Opening
Hey, I'm Bruce Weinstein, and this is the podcast Cooking with Bruce and Mark.
And I'm Mark Scarborough, and together with Bruce, my husband, we have written thirty six three dozen cookbooks, not counting the ones for celebrities, who I probably can't mention, ahem, Dr. Phil, and others on the air. That's a whole story of why I actually can say the words Dr. Phil. Somebody forgot to have us sign a non disclosure agreement.
Those words leave a bad taste in my mouth.
Oh, they do anymore. Uh, he's really kind of smarmy, but, uh, anyway, so, um, we've written 36 of our own books. We fixed a lot of cookbooks in our life and ghost written several others for celebrities. We have ourselves published, oh, in the tens of thousands of original copy written recipes over 25 years. And this is our podcast about that passion for food and cooking. And we're glad you're here with us. We've got a one minute. cooking tip about hamburgers, about making hamburgers.
We're gonna tell you what to do with all of those turkey leftovers after the holidays. And we'll tell you what's making us happy in food this week. So let's get started.
¶ Our-minute cooking tip: Salt burger patties after you shape them.
Our one minute cooking tip when you're making burgers. Hold off on the salt until after you shape your patties. Don't season the meat first. Season the outside. And here's why. When you put salt into ground meat and mix it up, you're changing the texture of the meat. It becomes more like sausage meat. You know, that springy You're not changing the
texture as you do it. You're changing it as it cooks. Just to be absolutely proper as a writer, right? It's what's going to happen to it
When it cooks, the salt inside the meat is going to make it tighter and springier. bringy here and it's almost going to be like sausage meat as opposed to a lovely tender burger. So salt all you want, but salt the outside. Don't salt the meat before you shape your patty.
Yeah, that is absolutely true. And I tell you, Bruce is the burger master. And I also have to tell you, if you don't know that basically, uh, I like my hamburgers so that a good vet could still save the cow. So, um, for me, I don't ever want springy sausage texture inside my hamburgers. I like
it. You like my burgers. Believe it or not, well done. I like steaks, really rare, but I like ground beef, either raw and cold, like steak tartare, or once you heat it up, go all the way.
Yeah, well, I love steak tartare, and we should say, now we're prolonging this one minute cookie dip, I should say that, uh, just to clarify myself, um, we buy our meat from a local farm here in rural New England. It's an organic farm. We know where the meat comes from. I believe it. These are the cows that produce the meat.
But if I go elsewhere, let's say I'm in a diner on a road trip, I don't know, we're in New Jersey, and we're on a road trip, we stop at a diner for lunch, and I get a burger, okay, there I order it well done. Because I don't know where that meat comes from and I want it cooked completely through. Do you know in, in New Jersey, Canada, our Canadian listeners know this. You can't even get a burger anyway, but well done.
Well done is the only way ground beef can be served in Canada. It's a national law and it saves a lot of lives.
Yes. Okay. Before we get to the next segment on what to do with all those turkey leftovers after the holidays, let me say that we would appreciate it. If you could subscribe to this podcast, if you could rate it, and even if you could write a review, many platforms allow you, like Apple Podcasts, to write, a review. That would be a terrific thing to help us. We choose not to be supported by any underwriter because we want to say exactly what we want to say.
Um, because this is just basically our passion and we want to keep it there at our passion rather than our business, but it would be great if you could help us out by rating the podcast and even writing
¶ What to do with leftover turkey: recipe ideas for after the holiday feast.
a review. Okay, up next, what to do with all of those turkey leftovers. After the holidays.
This week, millions of turkeys are going into millions of ovens across the U. S. I
wonder what the actual stat is on that, but okay, we'll look at it with millions and millions. I wonder what
the actual smell of all that is. Gross.
God. Why do you always have to freak out the podcast? Okay, go on. So
And think about all that millions of pounds of turkey grease going down drains and into sewer systems. No, that's
not good. I can't think of
anything. Oh, that's gonna be fatbergs everywhere. Oh, goodness.
Um, okay. So, anyway. Please stop. So, what do you want to talk about, Bruce? I want
to talk about the millions of pounds of turkey leftovers and what to do with them. You know, our careers as food magazine writers actually started with an article on what to do with turkey leftovers. Yeah.
It was a long time ago. I think 20 plus years ago. And we pitched Cooking Light, and we were newbies in the food business. We were such newbies that they accepted us. We accepted our pitch at Cooking Light for leftover turkey, uh, dishes after the holidays. But they forced us to write the whole thing before they would actually accept it. And that's, that's not anything that happens once you're established.
But when you're established, you can pitch something and then go away and write it once they buy it. But in this case, we had to actually write the article. And I have to tell you, we both, I remember this really well. We were staying at a friend's house. in the Hamptons. They'd offered us their house while they were away. We're out in the Hamptons and, um, we got this, uh, this to write an article.
Of course, you know, magazines were working six months ahead, so it's probably like April or May for the Thanksgiving issue. And we got this assignment, and we, Both actually stopped and said, should we do it? Because they were asking us to write the whole thing before they would even agree to the article and accept it or pay us. So it was a whole thing, but we did it and it actually started an entire magazine career with Cooking Light, Eating Well, Wine Spectator, and all these magazines. And
writing for food magazines was an issue. I want to talk about that before we even get to these recipes because as Mark said, you're writing these months in advance, sometimes six months in advance. Sometimes
a year. Well, a
year is actually easier because you can get all the ingredients because it's seasonal. But if you're writing an article on Thanksgiving leftovers and turkey, and you're writing it in June or May, you aren't necessarily going to find a lot of turkeys available. Or if you do, they're going to be really expensive. It's like writing an article in January that's going to appear in August for fresh corn and fresh tomato things. Where are you going to get these things? It's a real problem. I
distinctly remember writing an article in in November or December for eating well, and it was an article in which rhubarb was a central ingredient in many of the things. And do you know how hard it is to find rhubarb in November and December in rural New England? It's almost impossible. Bruce ended up having to Order it from some really expensive cooking food supply place because we couldn't get rhubarb in December. It was just impossible. There was a
restaurant supply place that shipped it in and it was like 26 a pound. That's the old days. Okay.
So here's what I suggest you do. One of the things I'm going to suggest you do with your turkey leftovers, and that is Call in, call in some cold soba noodles from a local Chinese American restaurant, call in cold soba noodles and just mix chopped up turkey into them. You have an instant cold soba noodle with turkey dinner. Now, you can make your own cold soba noodles. And
you're talking about, like, with the peanut dressing, right? The sesame sauce and all of that. The sesame
or peanut dressing, yep, exactly. You can make your own, and you can find lots of dressing recipes on the web for peanut and sesame dressings for cold soba noodles. But you can actually just order it in and add chopped up, deboned, of course, turkey, and I would say skin off turkey to those soba noodles. Listen, okay, you're going to go crazy. Add some celery or some scallions chopped up and then you've got really a whole complete. Wow.
Call it in. Wow. I was going to say, let's give the whole recipe for it, but that's really amazing. Okay. I am a fan of curried turkey salad and I prefer to use the leftover breast meat as opposed to the dark meat for chicken and turkey salads. And so Basically, it's so simple.
It's mayonnaise, or fat free yogurt, sometimes a combination, a little dollop of mango chutney for sweetness, some raisins, scallions, I like to put chopped walnuts in it, that's always a good thing, and a sprinkling of curry powder. And you mix all that into chopped up, cooked, leftover turkey breast meat. It's super simple, and it's delicious. So good.
If you want to actually use the dark meat, I would suggest you try and we have tried a kind of deviled turkey spread. You know, that deviled ham grossness from Underwood. Oh, God, I grew up. Basically, it's
the it's the cat food for
people. Gosh, I grew up on that. My parents love that stuff. They love that. And they know What we called Vienna sausages. Oh,
that's dog food for people.
Vienna sausages, Vienna. And I can still hear my mother saying, as Bruce well knows, don't scrape off the jelly, that's where all the flavor is. Okay, so anyway. Here's how Christian I was raised, Vienna sausages on white bread with mayonnaise. So, there you go. I think that's as fundamentally Christian as you can. But, you can make a devil turkey spread. I'm going to go to this. So, in this case, I would say skin the dark meat. Don't use the skin.
And chop up, debone, chop up some of the dark meat. And then put it in a food processor. Yes, a food processor. There you go. with some mustard, some vinegar, don't use, uh, just white vinegar, use like white wine vinegar or even balsamic vinegar, and a few
teaspoons, not, not a whole lot.
And then some capers and a few shots of Tabasco or a hot sauce and a bunch of fresh herbs, whatever kind of fresh herbs you like. And then here's the kicker. And I know you're going to scream, but one or two tinned onions. Absolutely can't make
it without their
necessary for this underwood flavor. And so you put that in the food processor and then whiz it up and you're going to end up with a thick, chunky spread. You can put it on cucumber slices. You can put it on sandwiches, you can put it in celery sticks, you can dip carrots into it. It's an underwood turkey spread. You can add, if you wouldn't even want to go crazy, a little mayo to this to make it smoother, but you don't need it. Um, it's just kind of a. Basic recipe for a deviled turkey spread
Wow that actually I'm torn between thinking I want to eat that and Between I want to throw it out because I can't decide so I'm gonna let you make it this year. No, I'm gonna make it Cuz
really honestly, even though we're saying this my favorite way to eat turkey is to take a knife to the refrigerator And stay in there with the refrigerator slice off pieces of turkey, so that's probably the way I'm going to eat left over turkey, but uh, that's, that's one of the ways. Okay, so what's another thing?
At this point, everybody knows that I am a fan of Chinese cuisine and that I love to cook Chinese food and I'm going to tell you about a really interesting way to make what I'm calling XO Turkey, something like you'd expect right out of that old TV show Iron Chef.
So whether it's in a skillet or a wok, put a little sesame oil and saute some minced up ginger and scallions and garlic, add some water chestnuts, and then the kicker is a heaping tablespoon of XO sauce, which is a jarred sauce you buy in an Asian market. It's a Fishy kind of fermented sauce that's spicy and got crab stuff in it. And then you add the chopped up turkey. You can use white meat or dark meat.
And if you want to put a little bit of soy sauce, you can at that point, it may need a little water to moisten it and serve that in lettuce.
And don't forget, while Bruce is talking about sautéing and stir frying exo turkey, which is a great idea, don't forget that we all love turkey sandwiches. And while a lot of people will make a turkey sandwich with lettuce and tomato on toasted bread, of course toasted, because I want the crunchy, um, toasted bread, or some people go all out and make a turkey sandwich. turkey club with bacon and sliced turkey. Don't forget that that you can also easily make a turkey Reuben.
Take the skin off the breast, slice the white meat turkey into thin slices. Then just add purchased sauerkraut and, uh, some kind of melty cheese. Jarlsberg is good. Munster is good. Good. Put it on toasted rye with mustard or Russian dressing, either way, whichever you like. And you can make a turkey Reuben in no time flat.
Just remember to squeeze the sauerkraut dry because the juices are going to make your bread mushy and you can do it the way Mark said by toasting the rye. It's really easy. I'm Mark. Or go a little more traditional, build the sandwich and then grill it in a skillet with a little oil or butter. And that way you'll have, you know, like a grilled, cheesy, rubiny thing. Yum, yum.
Okay, what else you got?
I love to make soup out of leftover turkey carcasses. And in our last episode, Mark talked about my turkey rice soup, which is one of our favorites. But there is a Brazilian soupy stew called vatapa.
I love to do that with turkey instead of the traditional shrimp, and I take the leftover turkey and it is some extra turkey stock and some coconut milk and chopped peanuts, maybe even a little beer is thrown in, onions, ginger, canned tomatoes, and you just cook that down until it's thickened and stew like. Needs heat. Again. Needs
lots of heat. It
needs some chili. So again, you're getting turkey, coconut milk, a little beer. Peanuts, onions, garlic, tomatoes, all it is really an amazing flavor combination. And
let me also say, since we're just throwing out ideas here, that sliced, especially dark meat turkey, slice it really thin and chop it up and then get yourself, you can buy it already sliced, some sliced mango at the grocery store and a jar of roasted red peppers, right? So drain those. You've got your sliced mango. You've now got your chopped up turkey, and now you can just make quesadillas. They're cheese free quesadillas.
You put that, those three things, the chopped up dark green turkey, the mango slices, and the drained roasted red peppers between tortillas. Put them in a skillet. Uh, you can even use a dry nonstick skillet without any oil and then, you know, just heat it until one side of the tortilla gets a little brown, not crunchy, but a little brown, and then flip it over. You need a big spatula for this.
Flip it over and you basically, after another minute or two, you have these really simple turkey quesadillas. They are
so delicious. And if you want cheese, you can add it, right? You can. Of course. You can keep it cheese free, or you could dump a whole ton of shredded cheese on there, which actually makes it a little easier to flip. But I, to be honest, I like it without cheese, but some people won't have a quesadilla without cheese. Right. I think
the mango stands in for the cheese because it gives you that creamy texture. It does. That's actually a
really good idea. You know,
um, to each his own. Okay, so what else?
Well, there's another soup we could talk about, and this is doing a sort of Mexican style Yucatan soup. And we take chicken broth, and we infuse it with garlic and onions and a big splash of lime juice, put in some diced potatoes, some drained canned corn, some hot peppers, and that cubed turkey. And you've got a delicious, delicious soup. hearty lime garlic onion infused soup with turkey and potatoes and corn.
Well, these are lots of different ways that we have for using up those turkey leftovers. There are so many possibilities here that you can look for. I mean, we did this again 20 plus years ago for Cooking Light and these recipes to me still seem to hold up a bit. They're kind of do it yourself. They're not, I mean, yes. Did CookingLite publish actual recipes with ingredient lists? Yes. But from just listening to it, you can figure that these are pretty much go at your own way recipes.
It's really a good way to use up that bird and not just necessarily throw out those leftovers, but keep them for what's ahead. No,
do not throw them out. In fact, if you're not ready to make a dish with the leftovers, wrap up that carcass, wrap up that leftovers, throw them in the freezer. And the next time you make any dish. Any kind of soup, like a split pea or a tomato soup. Throw some in. Why not?
Okay. Before we get to the last segment of the podcast, what's make kids happy eating food this week? Let me remind you that it would be great if you signed up for our newsletter, which is an unconnected to this podcast. It comes out once or twice a month. You can do that on our website cooking with. bruceandmark. com or just bruceandmark. com. Just scroll down the page, you'll see a place to sign up for the newsletter. I don't capture email. I don't have it so I can sell it.
I don't permit the provider MailChimp to do that either. And you can always unsubscribe at any moment. The newsletter is disconnected sometimes, not always, sometimes from this podcast and has recipes. Book ideas, all kinds of things included. Okay. Let's move on to the last segment of this podcast.
¶ What's making us happy in food this week: Burgers topped with sweet pickle relish and chili crisp as well as air-fried cauliflower florets and sliced fresh jalapeño chilis.
What's making us happy in food this week.
We started with a one minute cooking tip on burgers. So what's making me happy is the burger I made for dinner this week, which is Just the meat salted on the outside as we say to do but my favorite burger topping has become a Combination of sweet pickle relish and Lao Gan Ma chili crisp and man that combination is killing me I just slather it But the thing is, we like to use cloth napkins around here. I can't, not with that burger.
It's a roll of paper towels because it's an oily, greasy, delicious mess.
And I think that what made me heavy in food this week is something that happened with that burger, which is first made a side dish of lots of of air fried cauliflower florets with a sliced up jalapeño, a fresh jalapeño. And so we air fried cauliflower florets, spraying them, of course, and air frying them. And in there, amongst all those florets, was a fresh jalapeño chili that had been thinly sliced. And it was so tasty. I ate it. Ate it down more even than I wanted my burger.
I wanted that crunchy cauliflower with those hot jalapenos. Best dinner ever. It was so unbelievably delicious. Another reason you should have an air fryer and maybe, okay, egregiously self promotional, have our book, The Look and Cook Air Fryer Bible, in which every step of every recipe is photographed. Check that out. It's even a good holiday gift. That's our podcast. For this week. Thanks for being part of this journey. Thanks for being with us. Thanks for spending time with us.
We appreciate your being here each week
and each week. We tell you what's making us happy in food. So please go to our Facebook group, also called cooking with Bruce and Mark and share what's making you happy in food this week. You'll see a post where I ask that question every Monday. So please tell us what's making you happy in food this week. Cause we want to know here at cooking with Bruce and Mark.