Martha Stewart Knows What You Need On Your Hot Or Cold Thanksgiving Leftover Sandwiches

Veteran cookbook author, TV host, and Snoop Dog sidekick Martha Stewart has every little detail of Thanksgiving nailed down – no surprise there. For starters, MarthaStewart.com recommends make-ahead appetizers, like buttery spiced nuts, cheesy twists made with puff pastry, and deviled eggs. Speaking with Food & Wine, Stewart revealed that for sides this year, she will bring to the table her mother's mashed potatoes, brioche stuffing with chestnuts, cranberry sauce, creamed spinach, and sweet potato casserole – hold the marshmallows.

Bird is the word when it comes to the Thanksgiving feast, and Stewart has shared multiple ways to prepare turkey over the years. Her Perfectly Moist and Tender Turkey recipe has just four ingredients beyond an 18-pound turkey and is cooked atop something surprising: a loaf of buttered ciabatta bread (per the Martha Stewart website). Another recipe on Stewart's site calls for the turkey to bathe in a salty brine for 24 hours before roasting. She told Food & Wine her feast this year will star turkey prepared three distinct ways: fried, spatchcocked, and covered with cheesecloth and roasted.

The Thanksgiving meal is a lot of work, to be sure, but like lots of folks, Stewart has her eyes on a prize the next day (or maybe even a few hours after the dishes are cleared): a turkey sandwich made from the leftovers.

When it comes to Thanksgiving, Martha Stewart isn't quite like the rest of us – she makes her own mincemeat for pies, after all, and raises her own turkeys (per Food & Wine). But she does share something in common with the more than two-thirds of Americans who relish Turkey Day leftovers as much or even more than the main meal (per WFLA Tampa).

Stewart likes her leftover turkey in the form of a cold or hot sandwich. Her favorite cold sandwich incorporates two other Thanksgiving meal components (stuffing and cranberry sauce), along with iceberg lettuce for some crispness and mayonnaise or Russian dressing. She doesn't specify what kind of bread she uses. Ingredients-wise, it has a lot in common with what Ina Garten and Al Roker might put on a Thanksgiving leftover sandwich. (According to the "Cooking Up a Storm" podcast, Roker prefers mayo, turkey, stuffing, and cranberry sauce, but not lettuce – a combination that Garten said "sounds great").

Stewart's hot sandwich of choice requires leftover turkey and gravy, along with Japanese milk bread, or thickly sliced bread. For her, a loaf of pain de seigle (French rye sourdough bread) from York City bakery Balthazar will do. "It's a multigrain, and I cut nice big slices from it,” Stewart said. "It's really great."