Like many holiday feasts, traditional Easter dinners are usually built around a big hunk of protein.

Ham is probably the most popular Easter meat, but leg of lamb is the roast of choice for many. And roasted fillets of salmon (or even a whole side) is also a popular pick, especially for households watching their meat intake.

But whatever protein you choose as the star of your Easter meal, chances are you’ll have plenty of it leftover.

While experienced home cooks often have loads of go-to dishes in their repertoires that use up leftover Thanksgiving turkey or Christmas roast beef, Easter ham, lamb and salmon can be a little more challenging, if only because we cook these proteins less often.

So we talked with some area chefs and market managers to help round out our own recommendations for dishes that use the leftovers in approachable yet fresh and transformative ways.

Our panel of culinary consultants included Christian Bassett, head chef at Union Restaurant in Portland’s The Press Hotel; Jamie Fernandes, manager of On the Vine Marketplace in Scarborough; Erin Lynch, director of operations at Rosemont Market & Bakery; and Evan Richardson, chef-owner of Cafe Louis in South Portland.

The leftover dish ideas presented here represent a spectrum of food cultures and flavor profiles, but they tend to share a couple basic principles: They bring new life to the Easter ingredients so the food doesn’t feel “leftover,” and they don’t require a lot of shopping or fuss.

As Lynch puts it, “I think that’s what everyone wants after making a big feast – ways to make the leftovers easy.”

HAM

Ham’s salty, smoky, distinctive flavor makes it perfect for next-day dishes, where it can be used as more of an accent ingredient. Creamy starches make a natural partner for ham, and because they absorb and disperse some of ham’s sodium content, they help it seem less intensely salty.

Dice leftover ham and work it into a pasta carbonara instead of using bacon, pancetta or guanciale. You can also used the diced ham to make a heartier, protein-filled mac and cheese, or stir it into risotto with peas and fresh herbs.

Because ham is also a traditional breakfast meat, it plays wonderfully with eggs in brunchy or breakfast-for-dinner dishes. Fernandes of On the Vine Marketplace suggests using your leftover ham for a ham and cheese quiche.

“Sometimes the leftover ham pieces are too small to use in a sandwich,” Fernandes said. “Dice up those small pieces, mix them with some onions and eggs and cheese, put it in a 9-inch pie shell, and away you go.”

Chef Bassett of Union restaurant was thinking along the same lines, and proposed a frittata, or crustless quiche. He recommends cooking the dish in a cast-iron pan, in which he first heats the diced ham in olive oil or butter. He suggests adding peas and fresh mint to the pan for some bright, early spring flavors.

Then Bassett stirs in beaten eggs, enough to fill the pan about one-third of the way, but no more. He likes to shake the pan while the eggs cook over medium heat to incorporate air and make the eggs fluffier. Cheese lovers can add Swiss or Gruyere to the mix as well, he said.

When the egg mixture is about 70 percent fully cooked – it will come off the sides of the pan easily when pulled with a spatula at this point – Bassett puts the pan inside a 350-degree oven for about five minutes, or until the frittata mixture is fully set.

“I have been really into turning leftovers into some kind of savory breakfast,” said Lynch, who thought of using leftover chopped ham and some leftover veggies from the feast as a filling for crepes or buckwheat ployes. Lynch recommended a local product sold at Rosemont markets: packaged ployes mix from Bouchard Family Farm in Fort Kent, which only requires that you add water to make the batter.

Beyond breakfast, leftover ham is often put to its best use in dishes where it can be a part of a larger ensemble of flavors and ingredients, because the strong-flavored meat naturally infuses whatever it’s cooked with. A ham fried rice is one quick and easy example, and the Asian flavor profile takes the ham in a new direction (just use less soy sauce than you usually might, so the dish doesn’t become overly salty).

Riffing off of one of his own favorite ham dishes, ham and split pea soup, Richardson and his team at the Costa Rican/Caribbean-focused Cafe Louis suggested a sopa verde with split peas and ham.

“We came up with it by thinking, ‘How would a Costa Rican or someone who works at Cafe Louis make split pea and ham soup?'” Richardson said, noting that as a bonus, the dish uses waste and scraps from the Easter feast prep work, “and makes it so you don’t need to go out and buy anything other than maybe split peas.”

Richardson said you can start the sopa verde by making a vegetable or ham stock using peelings and trimmings from carrots, onions, celery, Brussels sprouts, asparagus, root vegetables or whatever other produce you prepped for the main meal, along with some fresh herbs like thyme and parsley, a ham bone and any gelled ham juice, if desired. He roasts the scraps in a roasting pan at 375-400 degrees until they take on golden color, and browned bits or “fond” develop on the bottom of the pan.

He deglazes the pan with dry white wine, scraping up any browned bits, transfers the mixture to a stock pot (along with fresh herbs and ham bone/juices, if using), and covers it with cold water. Richardson brings the stock to a simmer and cooks it for 45 minutes to two hours, then strains and seasons it to taste.

You can use either water or your stock to soak the dried split peas overnight, Richardson said, suggesting a ratio of 1.5:1 for the amount of stock to split peas while soaking.

With both the stock and soaked peas ready to go, Richardson starts his soup by cooking diced ham in a Dutch oven over low heat to render out as much fat as possible. He adds chopped onion, carrot and celery to the pan (or any other mirepoix-type veggies you like, such as bell peppers or garlic), raises the heat and lets the veggies cook a few minutes until the onions are translucent.

At this stage, Richardson said the optional, Cafe Louis-style move would be to add in a mix of poblano chile, fresh cilantro and spices like cumin, coriander and epazote, all pureed into a paste that will flavor the soup. Home cooks can simply add some dried spices – use whatever you like – to the ham and veggies in the pan now and cook until fragrant.

Deglaze again with white wine and reduce the liquid in the pan by half. Add veggie or ham stock to the pan, cream if you’d like, and bring the mixture to a boil. Add the soaked split peas and the fresh herbs, reduce the heat and simmer the soup about 40 minutes or until the split peas are tender and the soup’s flavors are melded.

Richardson finishes his sopa verde with a splash of sherry vinegar. “That’s a little tweak that brings a depth of flavor and kind of gives you that restaurant experience you’re looking for,” he said.

Like many other Easter centerpieces, roasted leg of lamb is a big cut of meat. If you’ve leftovers, we’ve plenty of ideas. margouillat photo/Shutterstock

LAMB

Roast leg of lamb is an Easter classic for good reason: It’s big enough to feed a crowd, and unevenly shaped (whether bone-in or boneless), so that even if it’s cooked to medium-rare, the end pieces and thinner areas will get cooked more well done, so eaters of every stripe will be happy.

Leg of lamb also has plenty of connective tissue, which means that it will fare much better when long cooked than loin cuts. So while a leftover slice of juicy, rare roast beef would become dry and unappealing if recooked fully, your rosy lamb leg meat will become meltingly tender and succulent when slow cooked in a casserole or braise.

Dishes like shepherd’s pie or a lamb ragu for pasta would do your leftover Easter lamb justice. Chef Bassett proposed a lamb cassoulet, the thick, hearty French country stew, which he said has the added benefit of “keeping the integrity of the lamb – it’s not going to be super-gamey.”

Bassett said to start the one-pot cassoulet by rendering chopped bacon in a Dutch oven, to which he suggests adding some combination of chopped onion, carrot and leek. Then add cubed leftover lamb leg to the pan so it can brown in the rendered bacon fat.

To this base, Bassett adds chicken stock, a little tomato paste to thicken the liquid, and one of cassoulet’s defining ingredients: beans. He said his team likes to use local speckled cattle beans in cassoulets, though other types of dried and soaked kidney beans (or any pulse-type bean you prefer) will work.

If you’re using canned beans, Bassett said to drain the canned liquid and add the beans to the dish just before baking (canned beans, already fully cooked, can become mushy in a cassoulet).

With the beans stirred in, Bassett tops the mixture with bread crumbs tossed in melted butter or olive oil and sets it into a 325-degree oven for about 90 minutes. To finish the dish and brown the top, crank the heat to 450 degrees and bake for 5-10 minutes, or until the surface is golden and crusty.

Richardson notes that leftover lamb leg would work well in his sopa verde variation, but also suggested using it to make Coca-Cola Lamb Tamales.

The dish starts by braising leftover lamb chunks in a mix of chicken stock and Coca-Cola (the ratio depends on how sweet you’d like the finished dish). He sets the lamb meat in a pan, adds enough stock-cola mixture to come two-thirds of the way up the side of the meat, then covers the pan with foil and bakes it at 300 degrees until the lamb is tender enough to pull or shred with a fork.

Shred or chop the braised lamb and mix it with some of the braising liquid so that it holds together when cold; chill the lamb mixture.

Richardson said then to make a masa dough with masa harina, warm water and fat (optional), following the instructions on the back of a bag of masa harina. Spread the masa dough onto banana leaves or corn husks (available at Latino markets), forming a trough vertically down the middle of the masa.

Spoon the braised lamb mixture into the masa trough, then roll and tie the leaves or husks to form a tamale. “This is a perfect time to Youtube how to roll tamales,” Richardson said.

Steam the tamales until tender and the masa dough is cooked, about 45 minutes, depending on the size of the tamales. Unwrap and serve the tamales hot with fresh cilantro, sour cream or creme fraiche and Salsa Lizano, a Costa Rican condiment available at Latino markets.

If you’re looking for a quicker way enjoy your leftover lamb, Fernandes recommended making lamb gyros, using sliced roasted lamb topped with lettuce, tomato, onion and tzatziki, all wrapped in a warm pita.

Did you bake a salmon half for Easter? Any leftovers are versatile and can be deliciously repurposed into salad, rillettes, crepes and more. Angelika Heine/Shutterstock

SALMON

Fernandes also offered a quick and easy plan for leftover salmon: salmon salad. He said to start by rough chopping the salmon, and stirring it together with mayonnaise; his guideline is to use 1 ounce (two tablespoons) of mayo per 1/4 to 1/2 pound of salmon, depending on taste.

For every ounce of mayo in the salmon salad, Fernandes also adds 1/4 teaspoon dried dill. Season to taste with salt and pepper, add sliced scallion for color and a little bite, and finish with freshly squeezed lemon.

Thinking along the same lines, Bassett proposed making salmon rillettes. Often made with fat-poached pork or duck, rillettes are a dish that works best with rich meats and fish, making salmon ideal.

Bassett’s version comes together quickly. Mix the leftover salmon with sour cream or creme fraiche to about the same consistency as a seafood salad, stir in chopped fresh dill and chives, and season to taste. Serve with toast points or over a frisee salad.

Salmon cakes can be a fast, easy second incarnation for leftover fish, Bassett also said. He advised mixing together the salmon and a crema as with the rillettes, then adding an egg yolk or two and some panko bread crumbs to bind the mixture.

Form round cakes from the mixture, which Bassett said should have the consistency of uncooked meatballs. Dredge the formed cakes in more panko, then cook them in a nonstick pan with olive oil or butter until browned and cooked through.

And since salmon is no stranger to brunch dishes, Lynch again recommended making crepes or buckwheat ployes, this time filling them with gently warmed salmon and a little creme fraiche.

Ham and Cheese Quiche 

The recipe comes from On the Vine Marketplace. If you haven’t got any ham leftovers, or you’re just tired of cooking, there’s good news: you can buy the quiche at On the Vine.

Serves 4-6

1  (9-inch) refrigerated pie crust

3 tablespoons diced onion

1 teaspoon extra-virgin olive oil

6 eggs, beaten

1 cup half-and-half

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon black pepper

1/8 teaspoon ground nutmeg

4 oz. grated sharp cheddar cheese

6 to 8 oz. ham, chopped or julienned

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Unroll pie crust and press into a pie dish.

Saute the onion in olive oil over medium heat for 5 minutes or until tender and translucent. Let cool.

Combine the sauteed onion, eggs and remaining ingredients in a large bowl; mix gently until combined. Pour the egg mixture into the pie crust in prepared dish.

Bake in the preheated oven. Check the quiche after 30 minutes. When it’s ready, the custard should look dry, not wet, and still be slightly jiggly.