Best Thanksgiving Leftovers Recipe

The traditional Thanksgiving meal never interested me as a child. I would always prefer pizza or cereal even to roasted turkey and potatoes and stuffing and veggies. The days of leftover sandwiches never interested me either. I didn't understand what all the fuss was about. Wawa made leftover hoagies and it was cool because it was ridiculous but it still never really appealed to me.

As an adult I have come to really, really love potatoes. I enjoy virtually every possible preparation. Like Wawa, I feel the need to do something special and ridiculous when leftover time comes around. So, instead of shopping on Black Friday like a fool, I had brunch with some friends. With it being once in a century Thanksgivukkah leftovers, we deep fried mashed potatoes.

My mother and her mother before that and her mother before would all make mashed potato pancakes with leftover mashed potatoes. There are recipes all over the internet for these. They are not as thin and crispy as latkes. They are a great way to reheat mashed potatoes if you don't have a microwave, which I do not. You basically add a little flour to mashed potatoes and pan fry them. When I made some the other day with really creamy potatoes, I was having some trouble with them sticking to the pan and had to add a lot of extra flour. They don't cook that long, so I was concerned about eating lots of fairly raw flour, which is hard to digest. I added a little panko bread crumbs to the outside to help them crisp up a little easier. (Panko is the very coarse, Japanese style breadcrumb.) Which gave me the idea to make them again in the deep fryer sometime.


We made Vada Pav recently, which is KJs new favorite, so I used a similar batter in testing out these fried potatoes. The all chickpea batter doesn't get that crispy but with an extra coating of panko its really crispy and great. I made some both ways. For the Vada, the potatoes are a lot stiffer so I dont think it matters that the coating isn't so shatteringly crisp, but the fluffy mashed potatoes need more contrast.

So if you have leftover mashed potatoes and a deep fryer you should probably try making this. They were really tasty. I made 2 versions so far, the one in the pictures had fried sage and spinach added into the mashed potatoes. I just winged it but here's basically a recipe:

Deep Fried Mashed Potato Balls

2 C leftover mashed potatoes

1 C chickpea flour
1/2 C all purpose flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 C or more water


1 C panko bread crumbs

Make the batter. Add water slowly until you have a fairly runny pancake like batter. Put the panko on a plate. Scoop potatoes with a small ice cream scoop. Toss them until covered in the chickpea batter. Carefully lift and drain, then roll in the panko breadcrumbs. Deep fry until browned and crisp, just a couple minutes. Eat with gravy or ketchup or salsa or sour cream or whatever you might want.