12 Recipes That Won’t Let You Fit Into Your Jeans After the Holidays

This smoked meat and mushroom poutine is Montreal meeting Québec on a shamelessly delicious plate. Crispy fries, squeaky cheese curds, silky brown gravy, and thick-sliced smoked meat. It’s the kind of dish you eat in secret or share with friends who won’t judge you. Your nutritionist doesn’t need to know.

These Philly cheese steak nachos are the unlikely meeting of Philadelphia and Mexico. Thinly sliced beef, peppers, onions, and an obscene amount of melted cheese on crispy nachos. It’s the perfect dish for watching hockey as a group and pretending it’s acceptable because you’re sharing. Spoiler: you’ll eat half the platter yourself.

This lasagna with luxury bolognese sauce and cheese curds is Québec crashing an Italian classic. Layers of pasta, rich meat sauce, and cheese curds that string when hot. It’s comforting, generous, and makes exactly the number of portions you claim—far fewer than you’ll actually eat.

This smash burger with mushrooms, Swiss cheese, and bacon is unapologetic decadence. The patty smashed on the grill creates those perfect crispy edges, mushrooms add umami, cheese melts, and bacon crisps. It’s the burger you eat when you’ve decided New Year’s resolutions can wait a bit longer. Like, until February.

These luxury hot dogs topped with mac and cheese are your childhood meeting your adult bad decisions. The classic hot dog piled with creamy, cheesy macaroni is absurd and absolutely delicious. It’s the kind of creation you invent at 2 AM but now own in broad daylight. No regrets, just guilty pleasure.

This bacon cheeseburger with maple pancakes is brunch that decided to stop following the rules. The juicy burger between two fluffy pancakes, crispy bacon, melted cheese, and maple syrup drizzling down. It’s sweet and salty pushed to the extreme and exactly what you need the morning after a big night. Or on a Tuesday. We don’t judge.

This gratinéed rigatoni with duck confit and grilled pancetta is luxury in a pasta dish. Shredded duck, crispy pancetta, rich sauce, and gratinéed cheese create a scandalously good combination. It’s the kind of dish you make when you want to impress or when you just want to indulge without witnesses. Both are valid.

This grilled cheese with flank steak and raclette cheese is the sandwich with ambitions. Golden, crispy bread, sliced flank steak, oozing raclette cheese. It’s comforting on an almost therapeutic level. Perfect for a lunch that will make you forget all your problems, at least while you’re eating it.

These oven-baked Buffalo chicken wings are the Super Bowl classic that doesn’t need a deep fryer to be addictive. Crispy on the outside, juicy on the inside, coated in hot sauce and served with blue cheese. It’s the kind of dish you say you’ll share but end up keeping for yourself. Make double—you’ve been warned.

This blue cheese gnocchi is creaminess pushed to the maximum. Those little pillowy bites swimming in a decadent, intense blue cheese sauce. It’s rich, powerful, and a reasonable portion doesn’t really exist. It’s the dish you eat when you’ve decided comfort food is a priority, not an option.

This ultra creamy taco fusilli with smoked cheese is Tex-Mex meeting Italy in an unexpected but genius fusion. Pasta coated in creamy, spicy sauce with smoked cheese, seasoned beef, and all the taco toppings. It’s chaotic, delicious, and proves the best ideas often come from nowhere.

These stuffed shells with sausage, bacon, and cheese are three sources of fat in one glorious dish. Large pasta shells filled with an indecent stuffing, gratinéed to golden perfection. It’s the kind of dish that makes your doctor schedule an appointment, but it’s worth every bite. The holidays are made for this.