Merry Christmas!
It’s always so exciting preparing foods for the holidays (I’m currently in that mode), but I also know that I need to plan for the inevitable left-overs, so I’m sharing a lovely hundred-year-old recipe for Turkey Tetrazzini that I found. It is a great way to use some of that left-over turkey.
Here’s the original recipe:
The recipe calls for a lot of salt – one teaspoon salt plus 1/2 teaspoon celery salt, so I reduced the amount of salt to 1/2 teaspoon when I updated the recipe. I used a 4-ounce can of mushroom (stems and pieces) instead of fresh mushrooms.
The original recipe calls for putting the Turkey Tetrazzini in individual-serving ramekins (which would look very elegant), but I just put it all in one casserole dish. I used a 750-ml casserole dish and it was very full. A 1-quart dish would work well.
Here’s the recipe updated for modern cooks:
Turkey Tetrazzini
2 tablespoons butter
3 tablespoons flour
1 cup heavy cream
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoons celery salt
1/8 teaspoon pepper
1/2 cup cooked spaghetti, cut into 1/2 inch pieces (about 1 ounce of uncooked spaghetti)
1 cup cold turkey, cut into thin strips
1 8-ounce can stems and pieces mushrooms
1/3 cup grated Parmesan cheese
3/4 cup cracker crumbs (Use saltine crackers or other similar plain cracker; put in a plastic bag and roll with a rolling pin to get the crumbs)
butter
Preheat oven to 375° F. Put butter in a skillet or saucepan. Melt using medium heat, then stir in the flour, salt, celery salt, and pepper. Gradually, add the cream while stirring constantly. Continue stirring until the white sauce begins to thicken. Stir in the cooked spaghetti pieces, then gently stir in the turkey strips and mushrooms. Put in a 750 ml or 1-quart casserole dish. Sprinkle the Parmesan cheese and cracker crumbs on top. Dot with small pieces of butter. Bake in oven until the top is lightly browned (about 20 minutes).
Love the buttered crumbs on top!
The buttered cracker crumbs are a nice change from the more typical bread crumb topping that you might find today.
Oh, I’ve never heard of this. But we’re having duck, so this one’s not for us.
hmm. . . maybe you could invent a recipe for Duck Tetrazzini. 🙂
Too late! The duck bones are bubbling away in the stockpot as I type!
Love this version! I’ve always had it with chicken but turkey sounds perfect as well! And this is so timely as there are always leftovers…
Whether chicken or turkey, Tetrazzini is a great way to turn leftovers into an entirely new dish.
I haven’t had this in years!!! It’s always delish.
It’s nice to hear that this post reminded you of an old favorite.
My husband would enjoy this with its buttered cracker crumb topping. Merry Christmas.
The buttered cracker crumb topping was very nice. Belated Merry Christmas wishes. Happy New Year!
Son just made a batch of turkey tetrazinni and it is awesome! He used tortellini instead of spaghetti and it is delicious.
mmm. . . it would be lovely with tortellini.