The Triumph of the Submit-Thanksgiving Sandwich

Leftovers, eaten the day after, or perhaps late the evening of, are one of the best a part of Thanksgiving. The efficiency of the large meal is completed, the temper has relaxed, the extra distasteful friends are lengthy gone. You’re neither a number nor a visitor: you’re a particular person alone together with her fridge, her urge for food, and her creativity. The Thanksgiving-leftovers sandwich is a continuation of the vacation ritual, the festive meal’s third and last act: after preparation and presentation comes a dénouement of sandwichification. Two slices of bread (or a break up roll, or a biscuit; let’s not fuss), is nature’s supreme automobile for leftovers. Chilly cuts, in spite of everything, had been, of their unique kind, the slices of meat folks ate as soon as what remained of a roast had gone chilly.

The precise components of the Thanksgiving dinner—that big roast, the bready stuffing, the potatoes, the gravy, a dollop of tart cranberry sauce to chop by way of the tidal wave of richness—isn’t distinctive to Thanksgiving. It’s the fundamental basis of a hearty, celebratory Northern European meal. Consider a plate of Swedish meatballs (meat, potato, gravy, puckery-sweet lingonberry jam) or an English Sunday roast (with lamb and mint jelly). Appropriately for an awfully American vacation, there’s something awfully American about assigning a set of broadly seasonal and celebratory recipes to at least one particular day, collapsing the signifier and the signified: to have a good time Thanksgiving is to eat roast turkey and mashed potatoes; to eat roast turkey and mashed potatoes on some other day of the 12 months is to evoke Thanksgiving.

The T.L.S. throws this complete semiotic oddity between two slices of bread. Variants of the sandwich can be found at diners and sandwich outlets all year long, seasonality be damned: piles of turkey, cranberry sauce, sage-scented stuffing, and thick gravy offered beneath winking-at-the-calendar names like, say, the Gobbler, the Pilgrim Particular, the Tryptophan Twister. (A model at Brown Bag Sandwich Co., in SoHo, considerably brilliantly incorporates stuffing-flavored potato chips.) “Leftovers,” a designation usually depending on the existence of an unique meal, right here turns into merely a referential aesthetic.

There’s one thing a bit vexing to me about claiming the spoils with out having fought within the warfare; a turkey sandwich with all of the trimmings is a marvellous factor, however it’s not leftovers except it’s leftovers. Regardless of how scrumptious or technically profitable it could be, a purpose-built T.L.S. with out a correct Thanksgiving meal previous it merely lacks the spark of life that comes from assembling a sandwich à la minute out of sincere discovered supplies. The development of the real T.L.S. is a measure of the meal that got here earlier than, a survey of what stays—what was barely touched, what bought handily devoured. If the Thanksgiving meal was grand, the sandwich can be grand, too. If the meal was merely adequate, nicely, the sandwich offers an opportunity for redemption.

I are usually a T.L.S. traditionalist. I consider the one new factor that must be launched, in addition to condiments, is the bread. I’m a fan of one thing like a chewy sourdough or a hearty challah, a slice that takes nicely to toasting and can stay agency sufficient to carry the entire thing collectively, whereas staying smooth sufficient to not inhibit the taking of bites. The bread ought to at all times be buttered generously or, relying on the dryness of the turkey, judiciously smeared with mayonnaise. However the prescriptions finish there. The remainder of the development is, as for all sandwiches, a matter of intuition and want. It’s my perception that the stuffing ought to be heat, as ought to the gravy; every thing else ought to be fridge-cold. I just like the turkey to be a shredded portion of the breast, with a stratum of stuffing above it, and perhaps a couple of inexperienced beans thatching the highest, if any are round. Add a douse of gravy, and a smear of cranberry sauce on the within of the highest piece of toast. (I don’t like white potatoes on a sandwich, personally—candy are O.Ok.—however, except you’re making a sandwich for me, what does it matter?)

Issues get actually thrilling if I open the fridge to discover a pile of leftover darkish meat. The rule of hen holds doubly true for turkey: gentle meat is greatest eaten chilly, and darkish meat is greatest eaten heat. I’ll shred a few of the leg and the thigh, then throw it in a saucepan with a beneficiant dollop of leftover gravy, thinned out with a splash of wine (no matter’s half-drunk, any shade) or a little bit of water. Convey it simply to a simmer, cowl it, and let it prepare dinner till every thing type of collapses right into a thick, meaty mush, a golden and slow-moving porridge of turkey and gravy that’s one thing like a backdoor confit. Whereas that’s coalescing, toast a couple of thick slices of bread, and butter the hell out of them. Ladle a portion of the stewed turkey over each bit of toast, dot some chilly cranberry sauce excessive, and blanket the entire thing in freshly floor black pepper or a couple of lashings of sizzling sauce. Add salt, if essential, although in case your gravy was made nicely within the first place you shouldn’t have to. Eat the sandwich open-faced, by hand, or undergo the mannered indignities of a fork and knife. As with all Thanksgiving leftover sandwiches, you’ll quickly notice that you might want to make two extra: one for a liked one, one other for your self. ♦