Most food content creators want to tell you how to make the best side dishes and the best ways to cook a perfect turkey for Thanksgiving on Thursday, but for the past four years, my goal has been to help you figure out what to do on Friday with all of the leftovers.
What is this sandwich crunchwrap?
This is not a sandwich, but it’s a great and easy use for any leftovers that you might have from the big turkey day. This is how you can turn your Thanksgiving leftovers into one of the best inventions to come out of Taco Bell—not counting Baja Blast or Fire Sauce.
This is what I’m calling Black Friday crunchwraps.
What is a Taco Bell Crunchwrap?
The Taco Bell Crunchwrap—Supreme version—contains seasoned ground beef, nacho cheese sauce, lettuce, diced tomato, and sour cream, or basically everything that’s in a supreme beef taco. The ingredients are layered in the middle of a very large soft flour tortilla, along with a crunchy corn tostada shell. Then the large flour tortilla is folded and closed, and the entire package is griddled until the exterior is slightly browned, which also helps to seal the tortilla closed.
This whole crunchwrap-ification process creates what would appear to be a flat burrito with regular Taco Bell taco filling and a crispy, crunchy tostada in the middle. Basically, if you enjoy a Taco Bell soft taco, you’ll definitely enjoy a Crunchwrap as a larger and more tortilla-focused offering. I did not make a dedicated trip to Taco Bell this year for research; these photos are from 2022, when I last ate an official crunchwrap.
I’ve written about leftover crunchwraps before, so I obviously think this application is a great use for leftovers, but the time I did this previously was meant to find a use for any leftover Summer cookout items you might have. Just like that blog post, this one requires leftovers, two different tortilla options, and/or some cheese. That’s it. So when you’re in the store prior to Thanksgiving, just pick up extra-large tortillas and a package of crunch corn tostadas. But we can talk more about that with some suggested replacements if needed, a bit down below.
First Thanksgiving 2025
I write about this every year, but when you become a food content creator in the United States, you basically have to eat Thanksgiving twice. You eat one Thanksgiving on the normal fourth Thursday in November, and once a few weeks earlier, when you’re testing recipes or getting photos and video that you plan to post for food-related content.
This year, I decided on the crunchwrap as my leftover vehicle, and my wife and I had a turkey and starch-heavy dinner to get ready. We made turkey and dressing, mashed potatoes and gravy, and my wife’s favorite broccoli casserole.
The next day, I turned this all into crunchwraps.
What do you need?
If you want to be prepared for Black Friday crunchwraps, you’re going to need two things with two other optional ingredients. First are tortillas and corn tostadas.
Tortillas and tostadas
You need some large flour tortillas that are typically meant for burritos. You might or might not be able to find the really big ones at your store. You should definitely be able to find 8 or 10-inch tortillas, but the ones that Taco Bell is using are around 12 or 13 inches in diameter. If you can’t find the large tortillas, you can make a crunch wrap with the smaller 8 or 10-inch size, but you will probably need a piece of a second tortilla to help seal up the backside of the crunchwrap to cover all the internals.
Cheese?
Cheese is an optional component of a Black Friday crunchwrap, but it can help add some creaminess and keep the ingredients stuck together a bit better during the cooking process. I used slices of Swiss and cheddar in the crunchwraps I made, so you probably have something like that already in your fridge, and you might not need to go out and get prepared for that.
If you don’t think your leftovers would work with cheese, you can leave it out; it’s not required.
I’m going to briefly discuss some of the Thanksgiving recipes that I used in creating my Black Friday crunchwraps, but if you already have your leftovers, you can skip to the crunchwrap-making process.
Thanksgiving recipes
Remember, in theory, you should already have leftovers, but if you’re finding this blog post at another time throughout the year or if you want to create a fun Thanksgiving-themed crunchwrap, here are my recipes that I used.
Cajun roasted turkey breast
I didn’t want to cook a whole turkey for the first Thanksgiving 2025, so I just baked a couple of turkey breasts, coated in Cajun seasoning. This is the recipe that I typically will use to create sliced turkey for any number of sandwiches that I’ve written about for this blog. It makes a nice juicy slice of turkey as long as you use a thermometer to cook the meat to 155°F so that it will carry over to 165°F.
Oven roasted Cajun turkey
A little spicy and super seasoned moist turkey, ready for slicing. Sandwich turkey is at the next level right here.
Get RecipeTurkey dressing
Some say stuffing, and some say dressing, but basically, this is a starch-heavy side dish that my family always makes for Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner. This is one of those old-school recipes, much like a casserole that relies on condensed cream-of-blank soups for moisture and additional flavoring.
This is my mom’s family’s dressing recipe that I’ve adjusted slightly for 2025 package sizes and the amount of liquid in the form of broth that you’ll need.
Turkey dressing
Dressing or Stuffing? The way I think it works is that dressing is typically more compact in a pan than stuffing is. I grew up with dressing that was moist, but still baked in a pan like a casserole.
Get RecipeTurkey gravy and cranberry sauce
You can make the gravy and cranberry sauce using the following recipes, or you can buy store-bought gravy and cranberry sauce. Homemade turkey gravy is considerably better than what you can buy at the store, but I still will almost always buy a jar to use as a backup because the gravy never lasts as long as the other leftovers at my house.
Turkey gravy
15 minutesHomemade cranberry sauce is also better tasting than the store-bought version, but in my opinion, it’s not as large a margin of quality as homemade vs store-bought gravy. So, I will often cut a corner and buy canned cranberry sauce.
Cranberry sauce
20 minutesCrunch wrapping process
Here’s a simple photo slideshow and an animated GIF that I’ve created that should show you how I built my crunchwraps and then how you fold the tortilla to close things up. After that, as long as you keep the crunchwrap folded with the seams down, it will stay closed until you sear or grill the exterior to seal things up.
Start with a large, pliable 12-inch flour tortilla. 
Add your leftover turkey or ham slices. 
And some stuffing or in my case, turkey dressing. 
Then hit it all with a couple of spoons of turkey gravy. 
Cheese is optional but I chose to work with sliced Swiss. 
Cranberry sauce is like the pickles in this situation, bringing some tartness that’s needed to balance all the starch. 
The corn tostada is where the “crunch” comes in. 
This year we had broccoli casserole, but green bean casserole would work as well. 
I always buy a fresh container of French’s fried onions for the holiday season. 
Fold it all up, seam side down before cooking in a skillet or griddle.
Grilling process
I used a griddle to sear my crunchwraps, but you can easily do it in a medium to large-sized skillet. A couple of things to consider during the grilling/griddling process is that you first need to make sure the folded parts of the crunchwrap are cooked first because the hot surface will ensure that the folds stay where they are, which keeps things from falling apart.
The second thing to think about is that after the bottom is seared and sealed, the top just needs to be cooked to the color that you enjoy. Everything inside the crunchwrap is fully cooked, so we just need things on the inside to be warmed through and the exterior crisped up and golden brown.
Black Friday crunchwrap photos and recipe
Here are several photos I have taken of Black Friday crunchwraps that I made and ate last week. Keep scrolling and drooling until you get to the full recipe down below.
Your crunchwrap will probably look very different from mine because no one has the same leftovers, but as long as you can envision yours inside of a sandwich, they’ll work in a crunchwrap.
Black Friday crunchwraps
Turn your Thanksgiving leftovers into something exciting with a bunch of crunch. Everyone will have different leftovers available, so yours will vary from mine, but this recipe outlines the process.
Ingredients:
- 1 12-inch burrito style tortilla
- leftover turkey meat (3 slices or about a 1/4 cup of turkey or ham)
- 1⁄4 cup stuffing or turkey dressing (mashed potatoes would be a good substitute)
- 2 to 3 tablespoons turkey gravy
- 2 to 3 tablespoons cranberry sauce (optional)
- Swiss cheese or cheddar cheese slice (optional)
- 1 6-inch corn tostada
- 1⁄4 cup green bean casserole or broccoli casserole (optional)
- 1⁄4 cup store bought crispy fried onions
Directions:
Slice the leftover turkey into quarter-inch-thick slices. Anything less than a half inch will work fine.
In a large skillet over medium-high heat, sear the slices of turkey and add some stuffing or turkey dressing to the pan. These should already be cooked; this process is just to warm the meat that will be in the middle of your crunchwrap. Once it is warmed to your liking, remove everything from the pan to a plate and wipe out the pan to be used later. Remove the pan from the heat and add your 12-inch burrito tortilla to the cooling pan for 1 minute per side to warm it up and make it more pliable.
On a cutting board or clean, flat surface, lay down a 12-inch burrito tortilla and add the slices of your cooked and re-warmed turkey in the middle. You can use your corn tostada for reference, but you basically only want to add ingredients in a circle in the middle six inches of the 12-inch tortilla.
Add some of the stuffing/dressing or mashed potatoes to the top of the turkey.
At this point, everyone will have different types of leftovers, but the goal is to layer them in a stack that makes sense to you. If possible, sandwich the crispy tostada between layers. Drizzle on gravy and cranberry sauce if you have them, and sprinkle some crispy fried onions to add more crunch and flavor.
Here's a quick animated image of how I built my crunchwraps. Basically, the gist is just that you need to layer everything and make sure you get the crispy tostada in there to give the wrap the "crunch."
Wrap your crunchwrap: Fold the sides of the flour tortilla up over the top, meeting in the middle. The image below shows a crunchwrap with cheddar cheese being folded, but it's the same concept.
Once folded, you can flip the crunchwrap over to retain the folds and shape.
In your large skillet over medium-high heat, add a teaspoon of oil.
Sear the bottom, folded side of the crunchwrap in the oil to seal in the goodness.
After 2 minutes, flip and sear the other side for 2 minutes. If either side isn't quite browned enough for your liking, you can flip and cook for an additional 1 to 2 minutes on each side.
After at least 4 minutes of cooking, and when both sides of the crunchwrap have a nice, browned exterior, serve and enjoy.
Check back next week
Next week we’re going to be making tacos and a sandwich. Maybe a taco sandwich?
