Is The Thanksgiving Leftover Sandwich The Most Important Sandwich Of The Year?

If you’re like most Americans, aren’t gluten-free and aren’t super healthy, you probably love sandwiches. The lunchtime staple is versatile, delicious, and endlessly customizable. You can really put anything between two slices of bread to make a sandwich. Ed. Note: before we go much further we need to agree that a hotdog is categorically NOT a sandwich. If you think it is, this isn’t the website for you.

Sandwiches usually contain the aforementioned sliced bread, meat, cheeses, vegetables, toppings, and condiments. Popular ingredients include sliced deli meat, lettuce and tomato, mustard or mayonnaise, peanut butter, jelly or jam, but one sandwich stands alone and above the rest; the thanksgiving leftover sandwich.

In the United States, Thanksgiving is celebrated the fourth Thursday of November. Traditions typically include gathering together with family and friends around a large meal consisting of turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, vegetables, and a host of other sides that may include macaroni and cheese, sweet potato casserole, various green bean or broccoli casseroles, dinner rolls and assorted pies for dessert. The mass quantities of carb heavy foods usually create vast quantities of leftovers which are stored in Tupperware and call to you like a siren from the refrigerator just minutes after you put them away.

A popular way to enjoy these leftovers is he humble sandwich format. Which begs the question, is the thanksgiving leftover sandwich the most important sandwich of the year? Hyperbole Free argues, yes, absolutely. Let’s dig in.

While sandwiches are on the menus and diets of millions of Americans every day-we often don’t give them the thought or the respect they deserve. We spread our peanut butter and jelly on slices of store bought wheat bread, smash them together, toss them in a lunch pail, and enjoy them at noon as rote. Maybe it’s ham and cheese. Perhaps sourdough. Occasionally we’ll get some crusty French bread, some farm fresh tomatoes and some thick cut bacon to assemble and enjoy delicious BLTs for a special dinner. But in general the sandwich is regulated to midday fuel to power us through the rest of our work or school day.

But, Thanksgiving, that’s something special. We look forward to it. We build anticipation with every ingredient we buy, knowing deep down that the true endgame for that 20 pound turkey, those to be mashed potatoes, an those boxes of stuffing isn’t the dinner table on Thanksgiving Day-its the sandwich we build on Black Friday.

To be honest, I’m pretty new to the Thanksgiving Leftover Sandwich game. in my youth I’d dutifully and mindlessly pile all those leftovers on a plate the next day replicating my plate from the day before-nuking it into oblivion in the microwave. It was never the same the next day-good but not great. A few years ago I started stuffing those leftover ingredients INTO leftover dinner rolls. It was an epiphany, the start of something special and new. Soon I began piling those ingredients on crusty bread purchased specifically for the purpose of making the Thanksgiving Leftover Sandwich joining a culinary fraternity of sandwich lovers and foodies across the country creating similar masterpieces each year.

The true beauty of this sandwich is that it can be made in a staggeringly vast array of ways and that it is universally beloved. Some of content to simply throw some cold turkey between two slices of Wonder and call it a day. Others, like Hyperbole Free, begin planning weeks in advance. Mentally and physically preparing for the most important sandwich of the year. One thing that adds a bit of mystique to the whole affair- you don’t know what is going to be leftover. Turkey is usually a given, but depending on the size and the hunger of your crowd you could be left with different ingredients to build your sandwich from. This year, we had leftovers of pretty much everything so this year’s sandwich was legendary.

I purchased a loaf of fresh baked ciabatta this year on Wednesday. I also grabbed some lettuce from 80 Acres Farms too. I was ready.

This year I put the turkey on the ciabatta and put in in the oven. I then put a scoop or 2 of mashed potatoes and stuffing, a large scoop of my mom’s legendary mac and cheese, and a bit of sweet potato casserole on a separate plate and nuked that into oblivion for nostalgia sake. After a few minutes being showered in radiation, I took the two components out and began assembling the sandwich. The “base” was a combo of the potatoes and stuffing. Then I returned the turkey to its rightful spot in the middle of the sandwich. Moms mac and cheese, the tiny bit of sweet potato casserole were next. Lettuce and sharp cheddar provided the final blanket of flavor for this year’s sandwich. A bit of Miracle Whip on the top piece of bread and the whole thing went back in the over for just minute or so to let the ingredients get to know each other a little better.

Needless to say the whole thing was delicious. Much better than the plate of for from the previous day because I made it myself.

There you have, the most important sandwich of the year! How do YOU enjoy your Thanksgiving leftovers.