Mexican Pambazo

English language sources say that the Mexican Pambazo sandwich gets its name from its bread, a poor man’s bread, pan basso, made with the oldest, poorest quality flour, soaked in salsa guajillo to make it edible. It’s a story of poverty and need, and making do with what little you have.

Other sources call it a meal fit for an Empress.

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In this version of the story, Maximilian and Carlota visited Orizaba, a town in the Mexican state of Veracruz, and their chef created this bread as a tribute to the nearby Pico de Orizaba volcano, 3rd highest mountain in North America.

It’s a nice story. They both are. Who knows, they could both even be true. Maybe Pan Basso was already a thing, and the Imperial chef appropriated it for his employers. In the US these days, Pambazos are generally made with telera or bolillo rolls, soaked in bright red Guajillo chili sauce and pan-fried to a crisp, filled with choripapas usually, though other meats or vegetarian options are often available, topped with lettuce, crema, and cheese.

These are all things that the standard taqueria will have on hand. Yet my search for a local Pambazo yielded few results. Perhaps they are not popular in this area. Yet there are a few places in and around Chicago that serve them, the nearest of which, QSazon, is about an 8 mile drive straight up Pulaski from me.

Like many places serving Pambazos, QSazon uses bolillos, and their default filling is a kind of potato and chorizo hash.

Pambazo Chorizo con Papas from QSazon

I’d been imagining, hoping really, that this sandwich would be a revelation, but it was mostly just very sloppy. The chorizo potato mixture was blander than I’d hoped, and though the guajillo sauce coating the bread had some heat to it, it wasn’t enough to make the whole compelling.

I had better luck with their shredded beef version, which I ordered to go and reheated on a skillet the next day. The beef had a lot more flavor than the choripapas had, and stood up far better to the spicy bread.

Pambazo de Tinga de Res from QSazon

Still, though, I wondered what those original pan basso rolls were like. Though I did not find any bakeries selling it and I did not think I could get the type of flour made from old wheat that the Wikipedia article references, I was still interested in seeing how the “real” bread would fare after a soak in salsa guajillo. Finally, I was able to find a recipe for the Veracruz-style pambazo bread here and gave it a shot.

Pambazo rolls

To make the guajillo sauce, I followed the basic recipe here, substituting chicken stock for the water to make the sauce a bit tastier. The sauce was rather thick when completed, and clung well to the homemade pan basso.

Pambazo roll with guajillo salsa before frying

For the choripapas filling, I boiled 4 Yukon Gold potatoes, peeled them, and chopped them roughly. I used a couple pounds of chorizo from a local market with a very good butcher department–their sausages are excellent, and I much prefer the texture of an actual sausage to the gritty red grease texture of the kind of chorizo that comes in a plastic tube. I cooked the chorizo until it was done, then scooped it out of the pan and cooked some onions and garlic in its fat. Finally I combined the potatoes and sausage with the cooked onions and garlic and mashed them up a bit.

To make the sandwich, I scooped out some of the choripapas and fried it in a pan like a patty. Then I stuffed it into the salsa-dunked roll and fried it on both sides until crisp.

Finally, I finished the sandwich by adding lettuce, queso Oaxaca (some sources use queso fresco, some even call for cotija, but I happen to like Oaxacan cheese), sour cream, and salsa verde.

Pambazo with choripapas

My version was… not an improvement over the version from QSazon. I may just not like potatoes and chorizo in sandwich form (see my previous rants on carb-on-carb sandwiches), though I thought it was great in subsequent quesadillas that I made. The roll was good, the sauce was good, every individual piece was decent, but I just didn’t think it all worked well together.

Once again, a second sandwich made with shredded meat–this time it was carnitas from a local market–was a huge improvement.

Pambazo with carnitas

However, I can’t recommend going through all the effort of making these yourself as I did, unless you absolutely must try them and you don’t have a place nearby that serves them. They’re tasty enough, but very messy, and the effort that goes into making them is far greater than the pleasure that comes out of eating them.

Jim Behymer

I like sandwiches.

I like a lot of other things too but sandwiches are pretty great