Jamie Oliver's 'super easy' turkey stew recipe for Christmas leftovers

Christmas is over, and now we face the age-old question: what do we do with our leftover turkey?

After enjoying the Christmas spread, devouring sandwich after sandwich and plating up countless meals of cold meats with chips and pickles, there’s still a mountain of turkey left - and it's demanding attention.

While turning to curry as a go-to solution for leftover turkey is traditional and satisfying, doing the same thing each year can become boring. For those wanting to break free from the routine this year, Reddit users have come forward with a myriad of creative suggestions, ranging from transforming your turkey into delicious tacos and pies to adding it to refreshing salads.

But one crowd-favourite option stood head and shoulders above the rest: a heartwarming stew. Perfect for the post-Christmas lull, a heartening stew might just hit the right spot. And Jamie Oliver has just the recipe if this sounds like something you'd like to make at home.

The recipe can be found online and in Jamie's Christmas Cookbook. 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 start, 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 up, 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".

To check out the full recipe, you can visit Jamie Oliver's website. Enjoy!