Sandwiches
198 recipes found
Jambon Beurre
Unlike ham and cheese, a sandwich that’s ubiquitous across the globe, jambon beurre (ham butter) is strictly French. Though it’s a seemingly sparse construction — simply baguette, cooked ham and butter — the ingredients for this interpretation from L’Ami Pierre in New York require careful selection. High-quality baguettes are now sold in many bakeries. High-butterfat butter enhances the sandwich, providing more fat than 80 percent supermarket standard, and the ham, preferably silky jambon de Paris, a cooked ham sliced, in the finer shops, from a bone-in joint, can make it or break it. French-style or similar cooked ham is available in many areas; to avoid are boneless, often waterlogged deli hams. Like most sandwiches, this one is designed as a treat for one, but, cut into smaller sections and served on a platter, it can enhance a buffet, even at holiday time.
Cauliflower Salad Sandwiches
Pulling from the greatest hits of chicken salads, with crunchy walnuts, crisp apples, sweet raisins and a spiced mayo-yogurt dressing, this best-of-all-worlds sandwich subs out the chicken for cauliflower. The aggressively roasted cauliflower serves as a sponge, soaking up all the flavors of the dressing while adding layers of bitterness and earthiness. This salad only gets better as it sits, allowing the flavors to meld and the cauliflower to soak up even more dressing. Even once it’s built, this sandwich improves after it has sat for a few hours. Do you plan ahead? This makes an ideal picnic dish. Not sure when you’ll get a chance to eat or where the day will take you? This cauliflower salad sandwich is here for you.
The Best Roast Beef for Sandwiches
The best cut of roast beef for sandwiches isn’t necessarily the same as what you’d want hot from the oven. A hot roast demands plenty of marbling so that the rich fat can melt and baste the meat with its goodness. Roast beef sandwiches work better made from a leaner cut, preferably one with a mineral, earthy taste and a nice chew. A top loin roast is ideal. It’s got plenty of brawny flavor, and all of the fat is on the surface, which you can easily trim off after the meat is cooked. Here, the beef is roasted low and slow to ensure rare, juicy meat. This said, if you want a more economical cut, use bottom, top or eye round here instead. Just adjust the roasting time if the cut is larger or smaller. As long as you pull the meat out of the oven when it reaches between 125 and 130 degrees, you’ll get nicely rare meat. More sandwich recipes.
Italian Hero Sandwich
Italian hero, sub, hoagie, grinder — this classic sandwich has many names, and every deli makes it differently. Its deliciousness lies in the proportion of rich-and-fatty ingredients to spicy-and-crunchy ones. For optimal structure and texture, start with crusty rolls with pillowy insides (or toast soft rolls). Use two to four types of cured meat for a range of umami, and plenty of lettuce and pickles to counterbalance them. Then assemble wisely: Shingle the meat and cheese across the rolls, then top with pickles, onions and dressed lettuce. Once put together, the wet ingredients are wrapped in meat so they’re held in place and the bread doesn’t get soggy. Wrap with parchment or wax paper for tidier eating and transporting.
Fried Chicken Biscuits With Hot Honey Butter
This recipe for chicken biscuits could be a weeknight dinner with a side of greens, but it's made to travel, and perfectly suited for a picnic. The biscuit dough, adapted from Sam Sifton's all-purpose biscuit recipe, is lightly kneaded here, so it's not too tender to work in a sandwich. The chicken tenders, inspired by Masaharu Morimoto's katsu in the cookbook "Mastering the Art of Japanese Home Cooking," are pounded and coated in panko for plenty of crunch. Prepare both components the day you want to eat them, giving yourself at least one extra hour for everything to cool before you assemble, so the sandwich stays crisp. You can also cook well in advance, and assemble the sandwiches the next day. Either way, cooling the chicken completely, on a wire rack, is crucial. If you prefer breast meat over thigh, feel free to swap it in.
Beans, Bacon and Avocado Concha Sandwich
Conchas are the most well-known Mexican pan dulce. They are eaten for breakfast with hot chocolate, coffee or milk; as an anytime pick-me-up; as part of dinner or even as dessert. They can also be the base of a satisfying sandwich, creating a welcome clash between savory and sweet. Mexicans seem to be divided on the sandwich topic: Some can’t do without them; some can’t stand them. It is a dish you will not find in a cafeteria or restaurant, but in Mexican homes and lunch boxes. The most well-known versions involve refried beans; this one is filled with chipotle refried beans, bacon and avocado. A sunny-side-up egg can be a good addition.
Six-Foot Meatless Italian Hero
This sandwich serves many dainty folks or fewer rugged types. Preorder the bread from an Italian bakery or deli counter, and build first, season last. Success here is in achieving a perfect filling-to-bread ratio, a generousness with the seasonings, and the ability to close the sandwich around the filling without finding it woefully over- or under-stuffed when it’s time to slice. It’s a huge help to have on hand 8-inch wooden skewers, disposable gloves, a good serrated knife and an egg-slicer gadget. The assembly instructions here are meant to be helpful but not prescriptive, as I trust that everybody knows how to build a sandwich to their own liking.
Rock-Shrimp Roll
Rock shrimp are meaty and firm, like lobster tail, and have a mild, bland flavor that can really use the help of seasoning at several stages. So we salt them before cooking and during cooking. Once the shrimp are mixed with onion and celery and mayonnaise, taste the shrimp salad as a whole to decide if it could stand even another pinch of salt or grind of pepper. But use unsalted butter on the bun when griddling, to get the perfect play between the sweet and the saline.
Mushroom-Beef Burgers
These burgers use half the meat of all-beef burgers but have double the juiciness, thanks to finely chopped cremini mushrooms. The raw mushrooms lend earthy, meaty flavor and texture, both of which become more accentuated as they cook, caramelize and crisp along the edges while charring on the grill. Form the patties when ready to cook, since the mushrooms start to release water once mixed with the beef, and don't be afraid to mix the chopped mushrooms with the beef until well incorporated. (Thanks to the moisture the mushrooms provide, it is impossible to overwork the patties.) Their flavors shine on the grill, but the burgers can also be cooked in a lightly greased nonstick skillet over medium-high heat until golden brown, 3 to 4 minutes per side.
Filipino-Style Breakfast Sandwiches
Breakfast is hugely important in Filipino culture, a legacy of the country’s rich agricultural past, when farmworkers ate large morning meals to get through the day. Accordingly, the morning after Thanksgiving, the brothers Chad and Chase Valencia — who own the Filipino restaurant Lasa in Los Angeles's Chinatown — make breakfast sandwiches for their family out of leftover asado (a salty-sour pork dish), ham or turkey. The sandwiches are endlessly customizable: Chase mixes the asado and its accompanying sauce into the eggs, like a scramble, to become the base of the sandwich, while Chad crowns his with a fried egg. But the constants are the queso de bola, a nutty Filipino cheese (similar to Edam cheese) served during the holidays that melts elegantly atop the meat, and pan de sal, a slightly squishy, yeasted roll whose sweetness stands up to all the savory components of the sandwich. Both the cheese and the pan de sal are readily available at many Asian grocery stores, and well worth getting to make superior sandwiches.
French Onion Grilled Cheese
Grilled cheese is a near-perfect food on its own, but adding bacon, kimchi or, in this case, heaps of caramelized onions really makes it special. Caramelizing onions takes a good half-hour, so save this recipe for when you have a little extra time and company (this recipe serves two). If time permits, you could even prep them ahead in a slow cooker. Rather than layer the grated Gruyère and the warm caramelized onions in the sandwich, you should stir them together before assembling, which guarantees that the cheese will melt evenly throughout and that each bite will contain the perfect ratio of fragrant cheese to jammy onions. A splash of sherry, red-wine or white-wine vinegar added to the onions balances out the buttery flavors, but a side salad dressed with a tangy mustard vinaigrette would do the trick, too. (Watch the video of Ali Slagle making French onion grilled cheese here.)
Fruit Sandwich
The origins of the fruit sandwich are believed to go back to Japan’s luxury fruit stores and the fruit parlors attached to them. This version comes from Yudai Kanayama, a native of Hokkaido who runs the restaurants the Izakaya NYC and Dr Clark in New York. Fresh fruit — fat strawberries, golden mango, kiwi with black ellipses of seeds, or whatever you like — is engulfed in whipped cream mixed with mascarpone, which makes it implausibly airy yet dense. (In Japanese, the texture is called fuwa-fuwa: fluffy like a cloud.) Pressed on either side are crustless slices of shokupan, milk bread that agreeably springs back. The sandwich looks like dessert but isn’t, or not exactly; it makes for a lovely little meal that feels slightly illicit, as if for a moment there are no rules.
Best Thanksgiving Leftovers Sandwich
The sandwich you make with all the prized leftovers the day after Thanksgiving might be even better than the main event. Assembling this leftover Thanksgiving sandwich is easy, but the details matter. The white and dark turkey meat each get special love and attention: The breast is warmed in butter, while the dark meat is shredded, then warmed in gravy. This club ditches the usual third slice of bread for a slab of crisp, fried stuffing instead. When heating the stuffing, make sure your pan is good and hot so the stuffing fries up fast without falling apart in the skillet. A generous swipe of cranberry mayo brings the whole thing together.
Sloppy Joes
This is a no-recipe recipe, a recipe without an ingredients list or steps. It invites you to improvise in the kitchen. Put a Dutch oven over medium-high heat on your stove, then add a glug of olive oil and sauté in it a handful of chopped onions, a couple diced ribs of celery, a diced jalapeño and a small diced red pepper. When the mixture is supersoft, add a few cloves of minced garlic and cook for a couple more minutes, then dump a pound and a half of ground beef into the pot — ideally the sort that is 20 percent fat — and stir and sizzle until it is well browned, about 10 minutes. Bring the heat down a bit and add a lot of tomato paste — say 3 tablespoons, maybe 4 — and let it get a little toasty before adding a cup or more of puréed canned tomatoes. Cook that down for a few minutes, then add quite a few glugs of Worcestershire sauce and hot sauce to taste, and continue cooking until the mixture is quite thick, another 15 or 20 minutes. Season to taste and serve on toasted potato buns. I like steamed broccoli on the side, a walk for the dog and bed. Sam Sifton features a no-recipe recipe every Wednesday in his What to Cook newsletter. Sign up to receive it. You can find more no-recipe recipes here.
Caramelized Onion, Apple and Goat Cheese Melts
Caramelizing onions can be a lesson in patience, but you need to cook these onions for only half the usual time, just enough to break them down and turn them a light golden brown. Once cooked, they make up the bulk of the filling for these sandwiches. Folding the warm onions into the goat cheese softens the cheese, helping it glide easily over the bread. The cheese helps bind everything together, so nothing slips out while the sandwich is toasting in the pan. You can use apples or pears here; either adds some fresh crunch. Seasoned with woody thyme and zippy kalamata olives, this sandwich makes a hearty lunch, or a light supper paired with soup or salad.
Cheesy Cauliflower Toasts
Trust Ina Garten to take two big food trends — cauliflower and toast — and combine them into something completely fresh. This recipe, adapted from her 2018 cookbook, “Cook Like a Pro,” is a bit like an open-face grilled cheese sandwich with a nutty layer of roasted cauliflower, and spiked with nutmeg and paprika. We made it vegetarian by leaving out the prosciutto, and also lightened up on the cheese. It makes a vegetarian dinner with soup and salad, or a good snack with drinks.
Smoky White Bean and Beef Sloppy Joes
This update on the kid-friendly classic uses half the meat as a traditional sloppy Joe recipe, but retains the qualities that everyone loves: a tart-sweet savoriness and a quick cooking time. You can substitute ground pork, turkey, lamb or plant-based ground meat for the beef; the key is to use a protein that’s not too lean. A little fat helps carry the flavor of the meat through the entire dish. (If you use plant-based meat or you only have lean meat on hand, add another tablespoon of olive oil or your preferred fat.) The addition of adobo sauce from a can of chipotles imparts smoke, with just a hint of heat. (If you’d like a spicier version, by all means, chop up one or two of the chipotles and add them.) The leftover chipotles keep for at least two weeks in the fridge or indefinitely in the freezer, and they are a welcome addition to many dishes, like chicken tacos or chili.
Italian-Style Tuna Sandwich
Though an American cook (or even a French one) usually adds mayonnaise to the bowl when dressing canned tuna for a sandwich, Italian cooks invariably anoint theirs with olive oil instead. Capers, olives and anchovy often join the festivities; here they are combined with garlic and parsley to make a zesty salsa verde. Choose the best quality Italian or Spanish canned tuna—the extra cost is well worth it. The other essential ingredient is freshly baked bread, like a good crisp baguette or crusty ciabatta roll.
Ham Buns
Jennifer Owens doesn’t know where her mother, Frances, first found the recipe for these ham buns, but they have been a part of her life since childhood in Easley, S.C. It may have come from relatives in Tennessee, as a similar recipe appears as “Hallelujah Ham Loaves” in “Dinner on the Diner,” a 1983 cookbook from the Junior League of Chattanooga. The warm appetizer has won fans wherever Ms. Owens goes. Her mother’s original formula called for raw onions, but Ms. Owens now sautés them. Use good smoked ham, either holiday leftovers or from the deli counter. As the buns bake, the butter pools at the bottom, toasting up the base of these irresistible bite-size sandwiches.
Turkey BBQ Sandwiches With Pickles and Slaw
Most turkey sandwiches are best made with slices of white meat stacked neatly between two slices of bread. Not this one. With a saucy, spicy filling piled onto a hamburger bun, it’s perfect for dark meat and any scraps you may have leftover from the carcass. The cabbage slaw adds crispness and tang to the soft turkey, and bread-and-butter pickles give the sandwich a touch of sweetness. If you don’t have leftover turkey in your refrigerator, this recipe works just as well with the meat torn off a rotisserie chicken.
Spiedies
Spiedies are a mainstay sandwich of Binghamton, N.Y., and its surrounding boroughs. They’re made of meat marinated for a long time in what amounts to Italian dressing, then threaded onto skewers, grilled, and slid into a cheap sub roll, sometimes with a drizzle of fresh marinade or hot sauce. The recipe that follows calls for beef, but pork or venison can be used almost interchangeably. Marinate for a long time: a full 24 to 36 hours is not uncommon, and results in chunks of meat that are so deeply flavored that they taste great even when slightly overcooked. (If you use chicken, however, reduce the length of time in the marinade, since the meat starts to break down after 12 hours or so.) Serve the spiedies with an additional drizzle of lemon juice and olive oil, on top of Italian bread or alongside rice.
Chinese Roast Pork on Garlic Bread
Chinese roast pork on garlic bread is one of the great New York sandwiches, a taste of the highest peaks of Catskills cuisine: thinly sliced, Cantonese-style char siu married to Italian-American garlic bread beneath a veil of sweet-sticky duck sauce. It’s been around since the 1950s, a favorite of the summertime borscht belt crowd. You can make the sandwich with store-bought char siu if you like, but I prefer the homemade variety because I can make it with fancy pork from the farmers’ market. It’s also juicier and more flavorful. Then, layer the meat onto garlic bread, and add a drizzle of duck sauce – for that, I use leftover packets from Chinese takeout orders or make my own with apricot preserves cut through with vinegar. Some people add a slash of hot mustard; others fresh pickles, or coleslaw. “It’s the ultimate assimilation crossover food,” the food writer and erstwhile restaurant critic Arthur Schwartz told me. “That sandwich is a symbol of acculturation.”
Onion Sandwich
James Beard took this recipe from his colleagues Irma and Bill Rhode over 60 years ago, but there’s something delicate, fresh and unfussy about the sandwich even now. There isn’t much to it, so each component really matters: Slice the onions thinly and evenly, season well, and be gentle so you don’t squish the bread as you press each sandwich shut. Rolling the edge of the sandwich in chopped parsley (or a mix of parsley and other fresh herbs), gives it a retro styling touch, but it’s crucial for flavor, too.
Broccoli Toasts With Melty Provolone
A beautifully assembled toast can make a lovely light dinner. In this version, blanched broccoli is cooked in olive oil that's been infused with garlic and anchovies (always optional) until it’s very tender, then it’s piled onto toasted bread. Grated extra-sharp provolone, which is a nice complement to the mildly sweet broccoli, is sprinkled on top, then the toasts are broiled until the cheese is melted and golden brown. You can use cauliflower, broccoli rabe or thickly sliced sweet peppers in place of the broccoli, but be sure to cook your vegetables until they are velvety soft — it provides a nice contrast to the crunchy bread. While these toasts work well on their own, they make an equally good accompaniment to roast chicken or grilled fish.