GF Turkey Cordon Bleu: You'll Never Know You're Eating Turkey Leftovers! #LMDConnector

Confession: In this house, our favourite thing about making a Turkey Dinner is eating the Turkey Dinner Leftovers. It's possible that we make a big Turkey Dinner several times a year, not because we like the whole big dinner that much, but because we LOVE the leftovers.
About a month ago, we cooked a 20lb turkey for 3 adults and 2 kids under 3. After dinner, we portioned out the leftover turkey and stuffing into three large ziplock bags, and threw them in the freezer.

I found this fantastic recipe for Chicken Cordon Bleu on Six Sisters' Stuff the other day and thought, gee, it's a shame that I don't have any chicken in the house - I'd love to try this recipe! And then, I remembered the bag of frozen turkey that I had in the freezer. #Win.

I used the recipe for inspiration, and then went from there - I don't really like using canned cream soup in recipes, because I find that the whole recipe ends up tasting like the canned soup - besides which, there is SO MUCH SODIUM in a can of that stuff! And I like using lots of broccoli in my recipes. And I didn't have any stuffing in the house. And I like more cheese, rather than less. And we didn't have chicken in the house, we had turkey. So that pretty much changed the whole recipe.

Before you make the rest of this recipe, you'll want to put together your white sauce that I used instead of the canned cream soup. It's pretty simple to do - please don't be afraid to try it, if you've never done it before - the only kitchen tools that you'll need is a small sauce pot and a whisk.

Jenn's White Sauce
Ingredients:

•  2 Tbsp butter
• 1/4 cup flour (for GF, use tapioca or arrowroot starch)
• 2 cups light cream
• 2 tsp salt
• 1 Tbsp dijon mustard
• 1 tsp minced garlic, or 2 tsp garlic oil
• 1/2 tsp lemon juice
• 1/4 cup white wine

Instructions:

1. Melt butter on medium heat in saucepan. Whisk flour into melted butter. Mixture will be lumpy. That's ok.
2. Add about 1/2 cup of the cream into the butter/flour mixture. Whisk until completely smooth.
3. Add remaining cream gradually, whisking constantly. Let sauce simmer on low for about 5 minutes, stirring once every minute.
4. Add remaining ingredients, mix well, and simmer (stirring & scraping down edges & bottom of pan occasionally) until mixture has reached the desired thickness.

 Once you have your white sauce made, you can go ahead and prepare the rest of your casserole. The most time-intensive part of the meal is already done, so the rest should go quickly.

GF Turkey Cordon Bleu: The Perfect Recipe for Turkey Leftovers
Ingredients:

• 1/2 box of GF ritz-type crackers
• 1/4 cup milk
• 1 batch of Jenn's White Sauce, as detailed above, or 2 cups of your own/premade.
• 6-8 cups of leftover turkey, chopped into 1" pieces
• 4 cups of uncooked broccoli - I used Green Giant frozen Seasoned Steamers (thawed) broccoli, because that's what I had in the house.
• 2 cups of cooked ham, diced, or 1 375g-500g package of cooked sliced ham, cut in 1" squares
• 1 pkg sliced swiss cheese (the real stuff, not swiss-style cheese!) - 10 slices

Instructions:

1. Preheat oven to 375 and lightly grease a deep 8x8 or regular 9x13 casserole dish.
2. Crush crackers and mix with milk. Set aside.
3. Mix white sauce, turkey, broccoli, and ham together in a large bowl. 
4. If using an 8x8 pan, place half of the contents in the prepared dish, cover with 4-5 slices of swiss cheese, and spread the remaining turkey mixture on top, and cover with remaining cheese slices.
5. If using a 9x13 dish, spread entire contents into dish and cover with cheese slices.
6. Spread cracker crumbs over the cheese.
7. Bake, uncovered, for 35-40 minutes.

 Happy Leftovers! Do you have a favourite Turkey Leftover Meal? Do you need some more inspiration? LifeMadeDelicious.ca has some tempting treats for you!
Turkey-Sweet Potato Pot Pies

Easy Leftover Turkey Fajitas

Onion Topped Turkey Divan

Disclosure: I am part of the Life Made Delicious Blogger program and I receive special perks as part of my affiliation with this group. The opinions on this blog are my own.