Use up Christmas dinner leftovers with Jamie Oliver’s ‘super easy’ turkey stew recipe

Are you staring at the mountain of turkey still sitting in your fridge post- feast?

We’ve all been there: savouring the festive dinner, munching on endless turkey sandwiches, and nibbling on cold cuts with chips and pickles. Yet, the turkey mountain remains. The go-to solution often seems to be tossing it into a curry, but let’s face it, that can become rather dull year after year.

Fancy a change this time around? A thread seeking creative uses for leftover turkey sparked a flurry of suggestions, from tacos and pies to refreshing salads. However, it was the classic stew that emerged as a firm favourite.

For those craving the comfort of a hearty stew during the post-holiday lull, comes to the rescue with his impeccable for a leftover turkey stew complete with homemade dumplings.

The was featured in , and takes just over an hour to make. Speaking about the dish, he said: “This is a super-easy, old-school dish that uses leftover turkey or chicken in a brilliant way. As a kid, I made it with dumplings, but when I was in the USA, they would top stews with these lovely biscuits, so this is my hybrid of the two.”

Ingredients

For the dumplings:

• 2 rashers of higher-welfare smoked streaky bacon
• 2 small leeks
• Olive oil
• 125g self-raising flour
• 25g maize flour or polenta
• 30g unsalted butter (cold)
• 125ml buttermilk
• 1 large free-range egg

For the stew:

• 3 onions
• 3 sticks of celery
• 2 sprigs of fresh rosemary
• 3 sprigs of fresh thyme
• 3 fresh bay leaves
• 2 teaspoons English mustard
• 2 tablespoons plain flour
• 1.5 litres organic veg stock
• 150g leftover stuffing
• 500g leftover cooked free-range turkey or chicken meat

Method

To begin, the culinary mastermind chops up bacon and adds it into a pan on medium heat, before finely slicing the leaks. Cook it for 15 minutes or until the leaks are “soft and sweet”, then remove from the pan and leave to cool.

Next, Jamie begins on the stew by peeling onions and trimming celery. These can then be placed in a wide casserole pan on a medium heat. He then adds in the herb sprigs and bay leaves, then cooks for 15 minutes or until “soft but not coloured”. After it’s time to add the mustard and flour for two minutes, followed by the stock Jamie stirs to make into a “nice thick sauce”.

Jamie then crumbles the leftover stuffing into the dish and switches off the heat. At this point, he removes the herbs and the bay leaves, adds in the turkey meat, and seasons to taste. He also preheats his oven to 200°C/400°F/gas 6.

Turning back to his dumplings, Jamie next adds the flour to a large bowl, dices and throws in the butter, then uses his fingers to turn the mixture into a crumb-like consistency. After he makes a well in the middle, adds in the buttermilk, and then gradually mixes it into the crumbs before stirring in the bacon and leeks from earlier.

Roll out the dough onto a flour-dusted surface until 2cm thick and use a cutter to stamp out as many dumplings as you can. Brush the dumplings with beaten egg and then place them on top of the stew. Finally, bake in the oven for 25 to 30 minutes, or “until the dumplings are risen and golden and the stew is blipping and bubbling away nicely”.

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