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I am not a leftovers person. I have one go to leftovers recipe (rissoles from Delia Smiths Cookery Course) if I have leftovers from a roast. The family adore these rissoles and probably prefer them to the roast dinner. The discussion about cottage pie got me thinking if any other members have a favourite leftovers recipe that they prefer to the original dish. 

Whenever I have a roast chicken with meat still on the bones I make Nigel Slater's Creamy roast chicken risotto. I make chicken stock from the carcass then the meat goes into the risotto.

Brioche perdue, so stale brioche which I dip into egg and sugar, and bake in the oven with baked apples and spices and caramel on top. I serve it with vanilla ice cream. Irresistible.

Croutons! If I have a loaf of bread, other than challah or raisin bread, that I know I will not finish before it gets stale or moldy, I make about half the loaf into croutons.

I let the bread go stale for a day or two, cut it in cubes, melt a stick of butter in a saucepan with seasonings, add the bread cubes, stir to coat, bake them at 400° for about ten minutes, and drain them on paper towels. I love them on soups and in salads - who needs storebought croutons?

That is, if I'm being responsible with the food I have, not waiting for the bread to go moldy or noshing on the croutons.

I live on Leftovers, but I'm Greek so maybe that's cultural? My mom would cook 2 huge trays of food on the weekend that we could all choose from for a few meals over a week of dinners or packed lunches. Leftovers are not sad! The bar is pretty high if you're aiming for something that you would be excited to eat two or three times in a week. I find saucy dishes not only reheat the best they also freeze well. Grain salads are great too.

Hearty soups, stews, chilis, pasta sauces and the like are usually better during the next 2 or 3 days. They can usually be frozen without some ingredient that doesn't freeze well and  that can be added when the soup or sauce is heated up again.

Eggs give a new life to the usual Chinese takeout. Have the rice and the stir-fry packed separately if the takeout place will do it for you; otherwise separate them at home. The stir-fry can be the filling for an omelet; the rice can be made into fried rice. I learned that trick from Woman's Day.

Diced leftover ham is a good addition to soups. So are a lot of vegetables.

I purposely make a double batch of cranberry sauce every Thanksgiving just so I can make the leftover cranberry sauce muffins from Serious Eats:

https://www.seriouseats....berry-sauce-muffins.html

It's a very broad question but here's a few ideas:

Mashed Potatoes: Form into patties and sauté in a little butter until brown and crispy on each side. Great with breakfast.

Baked potatoes: Twice Baked Potatoes

Baked or Boiled Potatoes: Slice them up and sauté them with onions (and maybe bell pepper or mushrooms) and scramble them with eggs. It's called Cowboy Eggs where I come from, but a number of dishes seem to have that name in different regions.

Boiled Potatoes: Butter Parsley Potatoes or German Potato Salad; tons of recipes for each around. 

Ham: Deviled Ham Pinwheels. Devil the ham using any recipe that strikes you. Spread it on a rolled sheet of dough (a whole can of Pillsbury Crescent rolled right as they come from the can works). Roll it up, slice it into disks and bake until browned. Serve with a light cheese sauce (bechemal spiked with a bit of cheese and maybe a touch of mustard or paprika).

Beef, any type: Beef Stroganoff.

Chicken, Pork or Turkey: Chow Mein, Chop Suey or Egg Foo Young

Leftover shellfish (shrimp, crab, lobster, crayfish, whatever, including from dinners out): Grilled Open-faced Shrimp-wiches. Dice seafood small along with bell pepper, thin sliced green onion and celery (as if making a shrimp salad), add grated cheese and bind with mayonaise. Spread on hamburger-type bun halves and broil until bubbly and beginning to brown.

Rice: Fried Rice, almost any soup including canned.

Any Cooked Protein: Add to a lunch salad.

Hamburgers from a cookout: Chop them up and almost any recipe calling for ground beef.

Hot Dogs from a cookout: a pot of franks and beans or jazzed up Macaaroni and Cheese.

A recipe we look forward to every fall is "White chili with turkey and green chilies" from "Heirloom Beans"

https://www.eatyourbooks...te-chili-with-turkey-and

I use leftover turkey meat instead of the ground turkey called for in the recipe. I freeze leftover Thanksgiving turkey in one cup portions, and I grow tomatillos just so I have what I need in the freezer for this recipe. It is even better the second day, so I often cook it the day before I plan on serving it, so it's kind of a planned leftover, using leftovers, meal. :)

In my kitchen any leftover meats are usually diced and frozen to make a later appearance in soups, chilis, and stews. (I use a vacuum sealer to prevent freezer burn).

Another of our favorites is leftover baked or roasted potatoes used in clam chowder.

I keep a large ziplock of leftover veggies in the freezer and then turn it into a vegetable soup later.

I save some cranberry sauce from Thanksgiving to make an apple tart for Christmas.  Blind bake a pasta frolla dough in a tart pan. Peel, core, and slice apples, saving the nicest half slices for the top.  Make a simple apple sauce out of the ends and bits and chunks of apples, mix that with the cranberry sauce; layer the gorgeous red jammy sauce on the tart shell; cover with concentric rings of apple slices, dotted with butter; bake; glaze while warm with strained apricot jam mixed with a bit of Calvados, and serve with vanilla ice cream.

To clarify: Fried-rice recipes using eggs, leftover rice and whatever vegetables you have are all over the place, but from Woman's Day I learned the trick of filling an omelet with leftover Chinese food.