Category Archives: Sandwiches

Italian Beef Sandwiches

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Philadelphia has the cheesesteak sandwich. New Orleans has the muffaletta. But Chicago is home to the Italian Beef.

We have an embarrassment of riches here in Chicago when it comes to Italian Beef sandwiches because there are literally hundreds of beef stands throughout the city serving this delicious and inexpensive sandwich, and I have yet to find a bad one.

The Italian Beef sandwich was invented in Chicago and was the result of the combination of two events that occurred simultaneously in the city around the turn of the 20th Century — the rise of the meat packing industry and the wave of Italian immigration.

At one time, Chicago was the nation’s largest meat processor, with millions of cattle passing through its famed Union Stockyards on the city’s South Side. Although the industry moved out West more than 50 years ago, the smell of cattle still lingers in that area even today.

Not far away, in the Italian neighborhood around Taylor Street, newly arrived immigrants struggled to create a new life for themselves. Although most were poor, they still celebrated weddings and other important events the same way they did back in Italy — with enormous feasts.

Unable to afford the choicest cuts of meat, the immigrants would pool their money and buy more affordable, yet tougher cuts, from the meat packing houses. Then they would roast them off smothered in traditional Italian seasonings.

In order to feed hundreds of guests, they sliced the beef extremely thin then kept it from drying out by holding it all day in an au jus sauce. The beef was then served on a hinged roll made of soft Italian bread and the Italian beef sandwich was born.

Today, you can get your Italian Beef any way you want it – with red sauce and sweet peppers, or dipped in au jus, or even topped with melted cheese.

As we host our own feasts — this time to celebrate the big game – Italian Beef is still an affordable crowd pleaser. This recipe can be held in the crock pot so your guests can serve themselves throughout the day.

Italian Beef Sandwiches

4 to 5 lb eye or round roast or any less expensive boneless beef cut

1 TBS EVOO

1 TBS sea salt

1/2 TBS fresh cracked black pepper

1/2 TBS granulated garlic

1 tsp onion powder

1 TBS Italian seasoning

32 oz beef stock

1 onion, julienned

1 TBS EVOO, separate

2 cloves garlic, crushed

1 TBS Italian seasoning, separate

Provolone cheese slices (if desired)

Hinged sandwich rolls

1. Preheat oven to 375 F. Use a sharp knife to cut away excess fat and silverskin from the outside of the beef roast, rub with EVOO then season on all sides with salt, pepper, granulated garlic, onion powder and Italian seasoning. Spray the bottom of a roasting pan with pan spray then lay the roast in the pan and cook for about 1 hour or until internal temperature reaches 140F or higher (medium). Remove from oven and let rest until cool enough to carve. This can be done the day before.

2. Put cast iron pan on the fire. When hot, add oil. When smoking, add onions. Saute for five minutes, stirring frequently, then add 1/2 cup water and cover. This will make the onions carmelize faster. Cook until onions are brown, stirring occasionally.

3. Meanwhile, use a sharp carving knife to slice beef roast as thin as you can. Place all meat slices in the crock pot, add the beef stock, garlic, onions and Italian seasoning. Cook on low for at least 6 hours. Serve on sandwich rolls with au jus from the crock pot on the side. If desired, place cheese over beef and melt under the broiler for a minute or two.

Italian beef also can be served with a marinara sauce and giardiniera — pickled sweet peppers and other vegetables available jarred in Italian markets — on the side.

Is there a particular food your hometown is famour for? Tell us all about in the comments section below. And thanks for looking at my blog!

Jamaican Jerk Pork Sandwiches

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Jamaican jerk pork or chicken is sort of the island equivalent of barbeque. Traditionally, it is cooked over a wood fire on makeshift ovens made of steel drums cut lengthwise.

Nowadays, “jerk” refers to the combination of seasonings used to flavor the meat prior to cooking, mostly allspice, thyme, cinnamon and black pepper. Scotch bonnet peppers, among the hottest of all peppers, also are traditionally used, but many pre-mixed dry rubs available for purchase either skip or tone down this ingredient. The seasoning mix I used was not spicy hot at all.

While the origin of the term “jerk” is vague, it most likely came from the Spanish conquisatdors, who ate “charqui”, or dried smoked meats, during their long journey across the Atlantic. The term “jerky” also comes from this word.

Although jerk meats normally are cooked over an open wood flame like barbeque, most Americans wouldn’t associate jerk flavor with the barbeque you find on the continent. For one, Jamaican jerk seasoning isn’t sweet, it’s savory. Plus it lacks the vinegary tartness of traditional BBQ.

But it is still delicious and has been growing in popularity in recent years, perhaps because of travellers who tried it while vacationing in the Carribean were anxious to spread word of this interesting and delicious dish.

In this version, the meat isn’t even grilled. Instead, it’s cooked all day in the crock pot. But the flavor of the jerk seasoning is still at the forefront and I love the way slow-cooked meats fill the whole house with a tantalizing aroma, making me look forward to dinner all day.

Another thing I liked is that pork shoulder is one of the least expensive cuts you can buy. I bought a  7 lb bone-in shoulder and cleaned it myself and it was only $1.19/lb! Half went in the freezer for another time.

I served this with oven baked sweet potato fries, which are the easiest thing in the world to make. They are one of our favorites!

Jamaican Jerk Pork Sandwiches

2-3 lb boneless pork shoulder

1 medium white onion, julienned

3 TBS Jamaican jerk seasoning

1/2 cup chili sauce

1/2 cup water

1 can Mexican corn (corn with red pepper)

2 TBS salsa

1 cup shredded green leaf lettuce

Fat free sour cream (on the side)

1/2 cup chopped cilantro (one the side)

8 whole wheat pitas

1. Spray crock pot with cooking spray. Trim pork of excess fat and cut into 2 inch cubes. Place pork and onion in crock pot, sprinkle with jerk seasoning, cover with chili sauce and water and stir.

2. Cook on low for 8-10 hours.

3. Use two forks to pull pork apart. It will shred easily. Meanwhile, drain corn and combine with salsa in a small bowl.

4. To assemble sandwich, place a good amount of the pork in a pita, add corn relish, top with lettuce and garnish with cilantro and sour cream.

Oven Baked Sweet Potato Fries

3 sweet potatoes, peeled and cut into sticks

2 TBS EVOO

1/2 tsp sea salt

1/4 tsp fresh cracked black pepper

1/2 tsp granulated garlic

1/2 tsp onion powder

Combine all ingredients in a bowl and toss until sweet potatoes are evenly coated. Pour out onto a baking sheet and bake at 375F for 45 minutes. Super delicious!

Do you make any recipes with the flavors of the Carribean? Share your ideas in the comments section below. And thanks for looking at my blog!

Mini Turkey Meatloaf

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When I found these miniature aluminum loaf pans at the dollar store, they were so cute I just had to buy them. I knew I would figure out a way to use them later.

Well, it turns out they were just perfect for mini turkey meatloafs. I simply made a batch of my turkey meatloaf recipe, then instead of using a regular sized bread pan, I stuffed it into six of these tiny disposable loaf pans.

The batch made enough for six mini meatloafs. I cooked off three and froze the other three for another time. Perfect!

I threw the pans away when I was finished with them, but you could clean them and re-use them if you wanted. They were six for $1.50, so I didn’t feel too bad about tossing them, though.

The individual meatloafs were both delightful and delicious. And they are perfect for when you have guests with diet preferences — no onions, for example — because you can make their meatloaf mix separate from the rest. Everybody’s happy!

We almost always have turkey meatloaf rather than the normal kind made with a mixture of ground beef and pork because it’s lower in fat and, in my opinion, there’s almost no difference in flavor once you add the seasonings and smother it in tomato glaze.

I served these mini meatloafs with Rosemary Roasted Red Potatoes, and steamed broccoli crowns.

Mini Turkey Meatloaf

2 lb ground turkey

1 yellow or white onion, diced

1/2 cup bread crumbs

1 egg, slightly beaten

1 TBS Italian seasoning

1 tsp granulated garlic

1 TBS sea salt

1/4 tsp cracked black pepper

For the Glaze

1/2 cup ketchup

1 TBS mustard powder

1 TBS brown sugar

1/2 tsp Worchestershire Sauce

1/4 tsp Tabasco or hot sauce

Preheat oven to 375F. Combine meatloaf ingredients in mixing bowl using your hands. Spray mini aluminum bread pans with pan spray, then stuff them with the meatloaf mix until filling is even with the top of the pan. Cook for about 40 minutes. Meanwhile, stir together glaze ingredients in small bowl and set aside. Remove meatloafs from oven and pour and scrape off the separated fat and gloop on top. Carefully remove them from the pans by inverting them onto a baking sheet, then thoroughly brush each mini meatloaf with glaze. Return to oven and cook until glaze starts to get tacky, about 10 minutes.

Added bonus: Turkey meatloaf is excellent the next day on a sandwich. It can be served cold or heat it up for a minute in the microwave before putting it between two slices of bread.

Programming Note: It’s the start of a new year, so here at Budget Cooking Blog we are launching a new feature. “Wines on Wednesday” will be spotlight inexpensive yet extraordinary wines for under $10/bottle to complement some of the dishes we’ve been cooking. “Wines on Wednesday” also will give tips on how to select the best wines, and how to successful pair wines with food to enhance your dining experience. Look for “Wines on Wednesday” starting this Wednesday on Budget Cooking Blog!

Homemade Paninis

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I love paninis, but I don’t have a panini maker and, unless I get one for Christmas, I can’t afford to buy one right now. But I am able to enjoy my favorite Italian sandwich at home by going all McGyver on you and creating homemade paninis out of a couple of everyday kitchen items.

The concept behind a panini is that it is a flavorful meat and cheese sandwich that is pressed in a machine that has two hot pieces of iron attached by a hinge. Heat from both the top and bottom causes the cheese to melt and the outside of the sandwich to have a pleasant crunchy texture. Usually the iron plates have ridges in them or some other decorative pattern.

For my homemade panini, I simply used my cast iron pans. I heated two of the pans up on separate burners, then sprayed pan spray into the bottom of the larger one. I placed my sandwich — roast beef, fat-free American and red onion, in this case — into the pan, then sprayed the top of the sandwich with pan spray and placed the other cast iron pan on top of that.

I cooked it for just a few minutes, flipped it over to cook it evenly, and finished it for a few more minutes. Although it lacked the ridges, it was every bit as crunchy and tasty as a panini I would have paid a lot of money for at a restaurant.

To make my panini, I used an Italian paisan bread I had made from a very simple recipe a few days before. It’s soft texture was perfect for my homemade panini because the inside remained soft and doughy while the outside was crunchy and flavorful.

Paisan is an Italian word for “peasant”. In this context, it means an unpretentious and simple bread.

Italian Paisan Bread

2 cups all purpose flour

1 cup whole wheat flour

2 tsp honey

1/4 tsp salt

1 TBS dry yeast (or one envelope)

1/4 cup EVOO

1 cup lukewarm water (baby bath temperature)

1 TBS EVOO

1 TBS corn meal

1 egg, beaten

2 TBS grated parmesan cheese

1 TBS fennel seed

1 tsp coarse sea salt

1. Put yeast in bottom of Kitchen Aid bowl or mixing bowl. Whisk in warm water, honey and 1/4 cup EVOO. Place in Kitchen Aid stand and let sit until bubbles start to form, about five minutes.

2. Combine flours and salt in mixing bowl. Put dough hook attachment on Kitchen Aid and slowly add dry ingredients to wet ingredients on medium speed until dough ball is formed, about 3 minutes. Remove from bowl and knead on floured work surface for a minute or two until dough is soft and not sticky, adding more flour a little at a time if necessary.

3. Place 1 TBS EVOO in bottom of large bowl and use napking to cover all sides of bowl with oil. Place dough ball in bowl and turn so that all sides are oiled. Cover with clean dish towel and let rest in a warm, draft-free space until doubled, about one hour.

4. Punch down dough, knead for another minute and let rest under dishtowel for a few minutes. Use a knife to cut dough into two equal peices. Using your hands only, poke holes into the dough with your fingers and work the sides outward until you get a crude flatbread shape about 12″ in diameter. Repeat with remaining dough peice. Cover with dishtowel and let rise until doubled in size, about 35 minutes.

5. Preheat oven to 400F. Spray two sheet pans with pan spray. Sprinkle corn meal on bottom of sheet pans, then transfer flatbreads to sheet pans. Brush both loaves with egg wash then sprinkle evenly with fennel seed and sea salt. Bake 35 minutes, remove from oven, sprinkle evenly with parmesan and return to oven for 10 minutes to toast the parmesan. Remove from oven and let cool on wire racks.

This recipe makes two smaller flatbread loaves, perfect accompaniment for pastas, salads, or soups or for making paninis.

Have you ever rigged your kitchen equipment to get the recipe you desired? We would love to hear your story in the comments section below. And thanks for looking at my blog!

Improving the Cheeseburger

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As I mentioned a couple of days ago, as a professional chef it can be dispiriting when the cheeseburger is the number one seller on your menu despite all the effort you put in creating interesting and exotic dishes.

One way to overcome this is to make your cheeseburger more exciting. If people are going to order it anyway, why not make it something special? So today’s blog is all about finding ways to improve the humble cheeseburger.

Bacon Mushroom Swiss Burger

Bacon Mushroom Swiss Burger

Probably the easiest way to improve the cheeseburger is to use a better quality meat. I’m not talking about $15/lb Kobe beef or even ground up Certfied Angus Beef. This is supposed to be a budget cooking blog, remember?

No, to improve the quality of your cheeseburger meat, look for ground beef that has a higher fat content. That’s right, higher! Ground beef that is 75:25, which means 75 percent protein to 25 percent fat, will be juicier and have a much better mouth feel than leaner ground beef, such as 85:15 or 90:10. Fat makes beef taste good. If you ate 100 percent lean ground beef, it would taste like sawdust.

Avocado Pepper Jack Burger

Avocado Pepper Jack Burger

The second way to improve your cheeseburger is to season it. This may seem obvious, but a lot of people skip this critical step. You need to season both sides of the burger with a good amount of salt and pepper in order to bring out the full flavor of the beef. If you want to mix a little S&P into your ground beef before forming into patties as well, then that’s a bonus!

A third way to make cheeseburgers taste better is to toast the burger bun. Rub it with a little olive oil or melted butter and put it into your frying pan or on your grill for less than a minute to give it a little crust. That way, when you bite into the burger, there will be a satisfying little crunch.

Burger Set Ups

Burger Set Ups

Burger set-ups are a restaurant secret that speeds up service. Before the customers arrive for the lunch or dinner rush, the cook lines up hundreds of little individual piles of lettuce, tomato and onion. When the orders start flying, the cook need only grab one of these and place it on the bun as the food goes out the service window. This same technique can speed up your dinner service as well.

Incidentally, unless you are working at McDonald’s, use red leaf or green leaf lettuce for your setups, not shredded iceberg lettuce. It may be the cheapest, but that stuff has little to no nutritional value. Plus it just screams fast food.

The final method to add dimension to your cheeseburger is to offer a variety of toppings. There are restaurant chains that have built their entire business model around this idea. Not only can burgers be topped with a variety of cheeses — American, Swiss, cheddar, pepper jack and blue cheese are some of the most popular choices — but other interesting toppings can be offered as well.

These include sliced olives, avocados, mushrooms, sliced jalapenos, sprouts and grilled onions. There’s even a famous Pittsburgh chain that tops its signature burgers with cole slaw, French fries and even a fried egg!

As long as we are breaking traditions, how about throwing out the French fries and serving your next cheeseburger with something different, like this potato casserole.

Cheesy Potato Casserole

Cheesy Potato Casserole
Cheesy Potato Casserole

3 russet potatoes, pre-baked and shredded

1/2 white onion, diced

2 scallions, sliced

8 oz cheddar cheese, shredded (about 1-1/2 cups)

8 oz cottage cheese

8 oz sour cream

1 tsp granulated garlic

Dash of hot sauce

Dash of Worchestershire sauce

Sea Salt

Fresh cracked black pepper

2 TBS butter

1/2 cup bread crumbs

1. Preheat oven to 375F. Combine shredded potato, cheese, cottage cheese, sour cream, granulated garlic, onion, scallion, hot sauce and Worchestershire sauce in a mixing bowl and gently mix together with a spatula. Season to taste with salt and pepper and mix again. Spray a casserole dish with pan spray and transfer mixture to casserole dish.

2. Combine bread crumbs and butter in a small mixing bowl and cut together with a pastry cutter or just between your fingers until the texture is pebbly. Sprinkle over casserole.

3. Cook covered for 40 minutes. Remove cover and cook an additional 10 minutes to toast up the bread crumb topping. Remove from oven and allow to rest for about 10 minutes before serving to let casserole set up a little. If you serve it right away, it will be goopy.

What are some interesting ways you liven up everyday dishes? Share your ideas in the comments section below. And thanks for looking at my blog!

Turkey Club Sandwich

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As a chef, I like to imagine that my customers are attracted to the most exotic and masterful recipes I concoct from my imagination.

The truth is, most people order the turkey club.

Every day in every restaurant, the chef and manager look at the menu mix, which is a list of all the items sold the previous day listed in order of their popularity. Depending on the restaurant, the number one item is almost always the most pedestrian dish. The fact is, most people just aren’t that adventurous.

In most of the restaurants where I worked, we served breakfast, lunch and dinner. Despite working hard to make sure we offered interesting and inventive items on the menu every day, the number one menu item invariably was either the turkey club or the cheeseburger. These are simply the restaurant facts of life.

So today, I’m going to show you step-by-step instructions on how to make restaurant quality turkey club sandwiches in your own home. Turkey clubs are basically triple decker bacon-lettuce-and-tomato sandwich with turkey. Simple, you say? Ah, there’s always a trick!

First, toast the bread:

Second, spread mayonnaise on all three slices of bread:

Third, place lettuce leaves on two of the three slices of bread:

Then the tomato slices:

Then the turkey:

Then the bacon:

Next, stack the two slices with lettuce, tomato, bacon and turkey on top of each other and top with the third toast slice:

Here’s the trick part. Think of the sanwich as the face of a clock. Put one toopick at 12 o’clock, one at 3 o’clock, one at 6 o’clock, and one 9 o’clock, then square off the sandwich by using a knife to trim away anything hanging over the four outside sides:

Then cut the sandwich in between the toothpicks in an “X” pattern. Normally, I would use frilly toothpicks but at home I did not have any:

Invert the four peices onto a plate with outside of the bread resting on the plate and the sides pointing toward the center of the plate to form a little bowl in the center:

Fill the bowl with potato chips, French fries, cottage cheese or whatever you want. I used oven-baked garlic parmesan fries. Here’s the recipe:

Oven-Baked Garlic Parmesan Fries

2-3 russet potatoes, peeled and cut into fries

2 TBS vegetable oil

1 TBS granulated garlic

1/2 tsp sea salt

1/4 tsp fresh cracked black pepper

1/4 cup grated parmesan

1. Preheat oven to 375F. Place potato sticks in bowl and toss with vegetable oil, granulated garlic, salt and pepper. Lay out on sheet pan, leaving space between each potato stick so that they cook evenly, and bake 40 minutes.

2. Remove from oven, use a spatula to turn a little, sprinkle with parmesan and return to oven for another 10 minutes. These can be made ahead of time and held in a 200F for up to an hour. Serve with ketchup on the side.

Garnish the sandwich with a pickle spear and voila! A restaurant-style turkey club in your own home.

What kind of restaurant favorites would you like to duplicate in your home? Share your ideas in the comments section below. And thanks for looking at my blog!

Mini Turkey Meatloaf

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Reply

When I found these miniature aluminum loaf pans at the dollar store, they were so cute I just had to buy them. I knew I would figure out a way to use them later.

Well, it turns out they were just perfect for mini turkey meatloafs. I simply made a batch of my turkey meatloaf recipe, then instead of using a regular sized bread pan, I stuffed it into six of these tiny disposable loaf pans.

The batch made enough for six mini meatloafs. I cooked off three and froze the other three for another time. Perfect!

I threw the pans away when I was finished with them, but you could clean them and re-use them if you wanted. They were six for $1.50, so I didn’t feel too bad about tossing them, though.

The individual meatloafs were both delightful and delicious. And they are perfect for when you have guests with diet preferences — no onions, for example — because you can make their meatloaf mix separate from the rest. Everybody’s happy!

We almost always have turkey meatloaf rather than the normal kind made with a mixture of ground beef and pork because it’s lower in fat and, in my opinion, there’s almost no difference in flavor once you add the seasonings and smother it in tomato glaze.

I served these mini meatloafs with Rosemary Roasted Red Potatoes, and steamed broccoli crowns.

Mini Turkey Meatloaf

2 lb ground turkey

1 yellow or white onion, diced

1/2 cup bread crumbs

1 egg, slightly beaten

1 TBS Italian seasoning

1 tsp granulated garlic

1 TBS sea salt

1/4 tsp cracked black pepper

For the Glaze

1/2 cup ketchup

1 TBS mustard powder

1 TBS brown sugar

1/2 tsp Worchestershire Sauce

1/4 tsp Tabasco or hot sauce

Preheat oven to 375F. Combine meatloaf ingredients in mixing bowl using your hands. Spray mini aluminum bread pans with pan spray, then stuff them with the meatloaf mix until filling is even with the top of the pan. Cook for about 40 minutes. Meanwhile, stir together glaze ingredients in small bowl and set aside. Remove meatloafs from oven and pour and scrape off the separated fat and gloop on top. Carefully remove them from the pans by inverting them onto a baking sheet, then thoroughly brush each mini meatloaf with glaze. Return to oven and cook until glaze starts to get tacky, about 10 minutes.

Added bonus: Turkey meatloaf is excellent the next day on a sandwich. It can be served cold or heat it up for a minute in the microwave before putting it between two slices of bread.

Programming Note: It’s the start of a new year, so here at Budget Cooking Blog we are launching a new feature. “Wines on Wednesday” will be spotlight inexpensive yet extraordinary wines for under $10/bottle to complement some of the dishes we’ve been cooking. “Wines on Wednesday” also will give tips on how to select the best wines, and how to successful pair wines with food to enhance your dining experience. Look for “Wines on Wednesday” starting this Wednesday on Budget Cooking Blog!