15 Next-Day Turkey Sandwiches That Don’t Feel Like Leftovers

Is there a more ideal meat for a sandwich than leftover roast turkey? Throw in the extra gravy, and there’s seriously no contest. (Okay, maybe a porchetta, but that’s less likely to be lying around your house after Thanksgiving.) Though we love an easy, open-faced leftover-on-white-bread situation, we can’t help but emphasize that there are so many directions to go with your leftovers. Your jumping-off point could be an excellent baguette or that leftover Brie from your appetizer course. Or, maybe you're inspired by the thought of doubling down on the carbs and throwing some mashed potatoes or stuffing into your sandwich, too. Go ahead and browse our favorites, because we posit that we could never get sick of Thanksgiving leftovers, and with so much variety, we hope that’s true for you, too.

Once you get a panini press, the whole world starts to look like it would taste good in panini form, so you had better believe a turkey sandwich will make its way in there. (If you don’t have a panini press, a waffle iron has been a known to produce excellent — if bumpy — paninis as well.) These are stuffed with Swiss cheese and leftover cranberry sauce, but since they’re pressed, each bite is perfectly delicate.

The horseshoe sandwich originates in Springfield, Illinois, and though it is named for the look of a slice of ham, it is now more commonly found with a hamburger patty as the choice of meat. Present-day, what it really connotes is a sandwich piled high with french fries and cheese sauce, and the day after the big feast, we think it sounds just about right, if you’re going in a “hair of the dog” direction regarding eating. There are no real rules as to whether your fries are shoestring, waffle, steakhouse or curly, so off to the races with your imagination!

This one’s a cold sandwich, but with several fresh and light elements that might also be just what you need after a night of overindulgence. The carrot slaw is studded with caraway seeds, which echo the flavors of the rye bread wonderfully. Some dill pickle chips lend additional acid and crunch.

This is so simple, so quick, and yet utterly transformative. Turn your turkey into a turkey salad (a la chicken salad) using instant flavor boosters like honey mustard and dried cherries. Griddle your hot dog bun for an extra little something — or don’t; honestly, you’ll still gobble it down with enjoyment.

Is it the greatest of all time? We’ll leave it to you to decide, but when its two pieces of “bread” are made from leftover stuffing, and it’s enhanced with bacon, gravy and crispy sage, plus (come on!) a runny egg, it should surely be in the top-5 nominees. Frankly, this is the kind of overachieving we can get behind on a lazy holiday weekend.

Melissa D’Arabian goes in the coronation chicken direction, only with turkey. This is, quite simply, a turkey salad with the addition of curry powder and often hits of sweet-and-sour, here, in the form of cranberry sauce. If you want to go full coronation, you can add some mango chutney; but you don’t have to leave out the cranberry sauce in that case. Trust us: more is more.

This is a grilled cheese sandwich after graduating from finishing school. Slice that turkey really thinly, then layer it on slices of the best artisanal loaf you can find, along with apple butter, arugula and Brie. Griddle that bread for the best exterior crunch and to melt the cheese, and we defy you to find a more satisfying bite.

Yes, “hot brown” could certainly describe most turkey dishes, and even most of the sandwiches on this list. But a Hot Brown, capital letters, is named for the Brown Hotel in Louisville, Kentucky, where it was born in the 1920s. The crucial components? It’s open-faced, and topped with turkey, tomato and cheese sauce, broiled to bubbly heaven and then sprinkled with crispy bacon.

A real pro would anticipate the craving for a club, putting the cocktail skewers on the shopping list along with the rest of the fixings. These triple-decker sandwiches might call to mind swinging a racket or swimming in the warm-weather months, but they go down pretty well at this time of year, too. We bet you’ll be thankful for that extra slice of bread.

We’ll take anything that starts with “cobb” and ends with “salad” — that is, the iconic combination of chicken and everything rich and delicious: hard-boiled eggs, blue cheese, avocado and bacon. Here, Tyler Florence stuffs it inside a crusty panini, interestingly using ciabatta, resulting in actually a more Italian-style panino than the sliced-bread kind we usually see stateside. It compresses the sandwich and makes the outer crust absolutely shatter on contact, adding an element to the cobb that we didn’t realize we needed.

If you’ve got a handful of uncooked Brussels sprouts left in the crisper drawer, then, right this way. Reduce them to shreds in seconds with your food processor (that you don’t have to core them first is a “hallelujah” kind of hack), then combine them into a slaw with some grainy mustard and apple cider vinegar. Punctuated with turkey on ciabatta, it does taste like the kind of sandwich you could build a deli around.

Sometimes it’s the presence of the one component that’s already done and ready (like the turkey) that lets you go deep making the rest of the sandwich. Here, maple-candied bacon improves just about every sandwich, but then go farther with fried shallots, and yet again with chipotle mayo and smoked Cheddar. The result is a sandwich worth cracking open a beer for.

Great news! You’ve already got leftover turkey in the house, so though this recipe might look daunting, you can go ahead and start on Step 6. Come to think of it, you can improvise through most of it, using your gravy if you’ve still got it, and your cranberry if you’ve still got it. The point, really, is to pile those fixings on top of fresh Cheddar biscuits, which are easy-peasy since we lean on a mix. Throw those frozen potatoes in your air fryer at the start, and by the time you’re ready to assemble, it will all come along good and nice.

This sandwich starts with, besides the turkey, a fresh batch of cranberry sauce, this one with a barbecue bent. Pile on buttered hoagie rolls along with some fontina and frizzled shallots, and Bob’s your uncle.