I was planning on making chicken croquettes, and this is the exact recipe if you want to use chicken meat instead. But, since I had a lot of leftover turkey and ham from my Christmas dinner, I decided to be creative and improvise as I often do, and encourage you to do the same. My recipes are flexible, and it’s hard to screw them up, unless you go overboard with the heavy use of spices.
Ingredients:
Cooked Turkey
Cooked Ham
3 ribs of Celery
1 medium Onion
½ can Condensed Cream of Chicken Soup (10.5 oz)
1 Egg
1 cup Bread Crumbs
Kuhn’s Pepper Rub (optional)
Step 1. Fine chop 3 ribs of celery and a medium onion. Add more or less to your personal taste. If you don’t like a lot of onion, less onion is okay. I recommend using a food processor to chop the ingredients, but I lent mine to a friend about one year ago and have enjoyed hand-chopping instead. Not! Moral of the story: Don’t lend your chopper!
Step 2. Hand chopping with a knife is a bit tedious and dangerous. I’ve seen the show-off, rapid chopping knife chefs, and always wondered how many nasty cuts they have endured. So, slow down and carefully fine-chop the turkey and ham chunks to match the size of the chopped celery and onion. Your fingers will thank you.
Step 3. Place the chopped ingredients in a large mixing bowl, and sprinkle with a conservative amount of Kuhn’s Pepper Rub, about 1 teaspoon. Or, you can use a little salt and pepper instead. But not too much, though, because ham is already salty. (In most recipes, ½ teaspoon of salt and ¼ teaspoon of pepper is plenty.) Mix thoroughly. You can add more to your plate later, if needed.
Add a stirred egg.
Add a half can or less of condensed cream of chicken soup. Adding a spoonful at a time while mixing to just moisten the mixture is your goal. You don’t want it “soupy.” Get the pun? Yeah, I know, pretty weak!
Step 4. The mixture should be fairly moist. Next, add bread crumbs to the mixture a little at a time and mix well. Keep adding a little more breadcrumbs until the mixture becomes firm and sticky. Then it is ready to form into the croquette patties. I use a large spoon to scoop out a consistant spoon sized measured amount of mixture that fits into the palm of my hand. Then I pat and press it with my hands into a firm shape. It’s okay to sing “Patty cake – Patty cake – Baker’s man,” if you must! Then, place each formed croquette patty onto a plate full of dry breadcrumbs to coat each side.
Step 5. Heat a 50/50 mixture of half olive oil and half butter in a skillet. You want it to be almost sizzling hot when you add the croquettes, so that they brown quickly on one side. Then flip them over to brown the other side. My advice is to use a spatula or flipper. Not your fingers!
Step 6. After they are nicely browned, place the croquettes onto a cookie sheet and bake in the oven at 350 °F for about thirty minutes. All of the ingredients are already cooked except for the eggs. So you just want the celery and onion to cook and soften a bit, and also to be sure the egg is cooked through so that you don’t risk consuming raw or undercooked eggs. As always, test with a cooking thermometer for 165 °F internal doneness.
I like to serve these with mashed potatoes and the vegetable of your choice. You probably won’t need any seasoning on your plate. But topping the croquettes with a spoonful of hot condensed cream of chicken soup from the half can that you have leftover is delicious!
Enjoy!
Beatrice’s Pictorial Cookbook Extraordinaire is available here:
Beatrice B. Cookin’
Robert Kuhn 