Slow Cooker Turkey and Its Leftovers

Slow Cooker Turkey Breast from Taste of Home

I feel like I'm so behind in my blogging! I took a week off between Christmas and New Years. I decided to take a break from work, from cooking, from photography, from pretty much everything. Well, I tried to take a break from cooking and photography, but hey, we gotta eat. Let's just say I did as little as possible. I was really physically and mentally tired and needed to recharge. Well, now I'm recharged, I have a new name for my blog, and I'm really behind!

My last blog was about the eggnog ice cream I made before Christmas, so now I'm up to our Christmas dinner. For the first time ever, my husband and I stayed home for the holidays. I had to work and well, it was kind of nice. Living in the Midwest, traveling is very stressful during the winter. Plus, we are homebodies and don't like to travel much. We love being home, although we did miss being with the rest of the family. It's tradition in my family to have turkey for Christmas dinner. I decided to try cooking a turkey breast for just the two of us. It was plenty for us for dinner and plus, we had lots of leftovers for sandwiches and soup.

I've read that you can cook turkey breast in the slow cooker, so I decided to give it a try. It was so easy and the breast was so juicy and tender since the slow cooker locks in the moisture. I highly recommend this method of cooking turkey, which has a tendency to be dry. I used a recipe called Slow Cooker Turkey Breast from Taste of Home. The only problem was the skin did not brown. That was easy to fix by transferring the breast to a large pan and roasting in the oven at 450 degrees for about 20 minutes. Another change I made was mixing all the herbs and spices with the olive oil and then rubbing under and over the skin. I also added a little chicken broth to the bottom of the slow cooker so I would have enough juices to make gravy.

Turkey Soup from Food.com

Sandwiches are a given with turkey leftovers, but I had a lot of turkey leftover. I decided to make a big batch of turkey soup. I found a recipe on Food.com (it's actually the recipe that introduced me to the site after doing a Google search) called Turkey Soup, go figure. I was expecting a pretty decent soup, I mean come on, it's leftover turkey.....but this soup was outstanding! Maybe even the best soup I've ever made. If you don't have turkey, then try it with chicken. I had enough turkey to make a double batch and froze it. I'm so glad I did because now we can enjoy the soup all winter long.