I am what one may call a sandwich aficionado. I loves me my sandwiches. I treat them like an art. Therefore, I figured it might be worthwhile to share sandwich tips and tricks, or just altogether badass sandwich assemblies.
I’ll start.
This is fresh roast beef (cooked it on sunday), on a fresh onion bun from a local bakery. Horseradish dijon for sauce, 2 year old cheddar (not a lot, cut thin), baby lettuce, cherry tomatoes, sea salt + fresh ground pepper, and then a dash of balsamic vinegar on the lettuce.
Man, that looks goooood. I, too, am a huge fan of sandwiches. I think I was actually going to start a thread like this myself at one point. I don’t have any great sandwich ideas to contribute at the moment, but I hope this thread takes off.
I need to find a place to buy good bread. It’s probably the most essential ingredient in a good sandwich, and the stuff they sell at most supermarkets is just garbage. I guess bakeries would be a good place to look for that.
Absolutely. Even supermarkets with bakeries in them make shit compared to a good solid bakery. There’s a chain in Toronto called What-A-Bagel, and beside awesome bagels they make really awesome onion buns – which is where these came from.
Gotta find a place where they don’t keep shit overnight. Stale buns are the worst.
I don’t have too much time for home cooking lately, which is sad. My best effort lately was a simple grilled ham (thin sliced ham steak) and cheese (havarti) on wheat bread with a touch of yellow mustard. It was delicious, but I miss playing with ingredients. Especially caramelized onions.
Ah yes, a wonderful sandwich ingredient. Also roasted red peppers. I love experimenting with homemade sauce concoctions, as well. This thread is making me hungry. I may have to take a walk to the sub shop down the street.
I recently discovered a bakery bread that makes the best french toast I’ve ever had. I am thinking that a really decadent breakfast sandwich could be made with this french toast. Any ideas?
comte cheese (can substitute double-creme brie), sliced
cornichons, sliced in half diagonally
coarse french mustard
roasted poblano peppers (optional, sometimes I don’t bother as roasting peppers can be a pain in the arse)
ciabatta bread
Instructions:
Assemble, eat.
Roast duck breast
2 large fatty duck breasts, moulard ideally
herbes de provence
meat thermometer with a long cord, like this one
Instructions:
Score duck breasts shallowly in a cross-hatch
coat lightly in herbes de provence, black pepper, salt
Preheat oven to 450F
Put oven-safe skillet on medium-low heat, and slowly heat the duck breasts, skin side down, for a good 20 minutes. An astonishing amount of duck fat should be produced here. The duck skin should be separated along the scoring, golden brown and very crispy.
Remove most of the fat with a ladle and set aside. This is liquid gold. Do not throw it out. Any leftovers can be put in icecube trays and frozen.
Flip the duck skin side up and insert the thermometer horizontally so it’s in the middle of the thickest piece
Put in the oven and heat until it hits 125F, then remove and rest for at least 5 minutes (before eating hot) or chill for easier slicing (if eating on a sandwich). Eaten hot, treat it like a steak.
Bonus Recipe: Potatoes Roasted in Duck Fat
Ingredients:
new potatoes, yukon gold or red ones, not russets
rosemary, thyme
duck fat (or olive oil, if you must)
Instructions:
put rinsed potatoes in a large microwave-safe bowl and nuke until just barely fork-tender. No need to totally dry them before doing this, as the steam helps. This will take a couple of minutes, depending on the potatoes and the type of microwave.
Remove and let cool slightly so you don’t get horribly burned.
Lightly coat a half-sheet pan in duck fat, rosemary, thyme, salt, and black pepper. (or just use the oven-safe skillet from the duck)
Toss all your potatoes onto the pan and crush them lightly with a fork. Ensure that they are well-coated with the duck fat and herb mixture
Heat at 450 for 10 minutes, then flip so both sides get browned. Heat for another 10 minutes or so.
Eat it
Also VERY good with brussels sprouts!
Tasty stuff, but don’t forget to take two lipitors for dessert.
It’s French for pickle, and generally is used to represent the little tiny sweet ones.
Anyway, as for sandwich condiments, something that cannot be ignored is spicy eggplant in oil. You can buy jars of it and damn does it add a lot to a sandwich. If you don’t mind the texture, which is spongy/chewy. I love it. In fact I debated putting some on this sandwich but I didn’t want to overpower the beef.
I’m not sure why, but I have been on a bratwurst kick lately.
It helps that I have great access to Wisconsin bratwurst.
Once cooked properly and browned on a Smoky Joe, they make good sandwiches for quite a few days.
I can go the traditional route (we have a local bakery that makes their own hot dog buns that hold up well with a brat, it’s hard to find a good bun for a brat).
Or, sometimes I just heat them and make a sandwich. Cut the brat in quarters. Very very thinly sliced onions, a good spicy mustard (lately, I’ve been going with a Beer and Brat mustard) and mayonaisse. Mmmm, about to make one of these right now, if fact!
If you have Wisconsin brats, you need Wisconsin mustard. I recommend Lakeside Gourmet Hot Honey Mustard. Their Hot German Dusseldorf Mustard was absolutely divine – creamy yet spicy, with a sharp horseradish bite – until they reformulated it and upped the cayenne. It still has bite, but is now completely unbalanced.
As for sandwiches, I haven’t personally made any notable ones lately, I did order one from the market the other day that was darn tasty. And it was entirely custom, so I’m claiming ownership.
Basically, it was fresh pumpernickel spread with a thin layer of spinach/artichoke cream cheese, piled high with smoked salmon, fresh baby field greens, tomatoes, cucumbers, sprouts, and capers. It was delicious.
Thread derail, but: What does that mean to you? Because, as someone who grew up in a German family in Wisconsin, the canonical brat to me is a Johnsonville brat (which I believe is widely available nationwide), and pretty much anything that deviates from that at all ends up tasting worse, whether it’s objectively “better” or not.
What’s sadly not available outside Wisconsin, in my experience, is good brat buns. The soft-yet-chewy nature of a brat bun is not replicable by any other form of roll.
Sage advice Omniscia. I’ll see if I can track some down.
On occasion I also make it to the Mustard Museum, also located in WI, though they recently moved it to Middleton (even nearer to Madison from where it was before). I think you are right, it’s horseradish which gives it a nice kick. I did in fact get this Silver Spring Beer 'n Brat Horseradish mustard there first, but it’s pretty commonly available elsewhere so I don’t have to make the long trip, luckily.
As you said, it is subjective, but I haven’t cared at all for the Johnsonville brats (you’re right, they’re available here in Chicago).
You probably know more about this than me, but a lot of brats must be made locally, with differerent recipes, and I see the Johnsonville varieties as more commercially oriented, there’s just something missing. I’m not enough of an epicurean to tell you what it is, just that I like what I am getting now about 200% more…
I’ve found about three places over the last thirty years that have brats I have particularly liked, two are closed. I can’t tell you where the ones I am getting now come from (I can find out), my sister in law runs a cleaning business up near the IL/WI border and offers to pick me up some quite often. You probably also know there are a lot of places just over the border from IL to WI where you can stop off and pick up all sorts of WI cheeses, brats etc. so it might be one of those places.
