Bacon, Egg, & Cheese for Skeptics

I’m not sure that I’ve ever made myself a bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich.  When I think of bacon, egg, and cheese sandwiches, I think of the mediocre version on every fast food menu ever. I think of them as a sort of breakfast you get by accident, or because they’re on special. Or maybe because you’ve never heard of an Egg McMuffin or Moons Over My Hammy.

If you order a bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich, the deck is stacked against you. You never get the biscuit sandwiches that Jack London wrote about.  There’s never adequate bacon.  It’s always weird floppy school lunch bacon or a couple of carbonized slivers that stick out both sides.  Not to mention there’s nothing to provide moisture on these sandwiches, so if the bread is dry and the bacon is burnt, you’re out of luck.  There’s too much room for error.

When bacon, egg & cheese came up on The List, I decided to see if I could make an iteration of this sandwich that was more than just a thing you’d eat to calm your hangover.  Let’s look closer at the failure points of bad B.E.&C.’s:

1. Dry bread. A sub-par biscuit. Worst case scenario, a Buger King-level croissant.
2. Not enough bacon.  Poorly cooked bacon.  Maybe even a limp bacon spiral, the kind you get on frozen sandwiches you bought in bulk at Sam’s Club.
3. The flat, heavy, tasteless institutional eggs that are known (at least in McDonalds receipt parlance) as “folded egg.”

The first component to tackle was bread.  I went to Bennison’s bakery in Evanston to find the perfect thing.  There were a couple contenders, but when I saw the croissants in the case, I knew I had a winner.  I also picked up a smiley-faced sugar cookie.  Because, c’mon.

“I can’t believe this bakery has Watchmen cookies.”

I was going to use bacon from Neuske’s Farms in Wisconsin, but inspiration struck.  It came in the form of the weekly menu post from a brilliant sandwich shop in Milwaukee called Love Handle.  They were advertising lavender black pepper bacon. It’s a weird combo, but Chris Benedyk, the guy who owns Love Handle, knows exactly what he’s doing.  When I went to pick the bacon up, the guy behind the counter (not Chris) said, “You should grill it.  It’ll be fine in a frying pan or whatever, but it’s better grilled.”  He was right. The bacon did grill up beautifully.  It tasted like it was made from a leaner cut than belly.  It had a fresh, meaty taste and wasn’t as fatty or crunchy as you would expect.  I ate a bunch of it straight off the grill pan.

Eggs and cheese were easy.  I rounded out the sandwich with some gruyere and a couple of scrambled eggs.  I considered making some kind of decadent sauce, but I decided to rely on subtlety and the strength of the ingredients I already had, and to undercook the eggs a tiny bit to keep everything from being too dry.

Assembly was a bit of a mess.   While the bacon was crisping up, I microplaned a pile of gruyere and cooked the eggs.  But, right at the crucial moment when everything was coming together, I realized I hadn’t split the croissant. And that I didn’t have a serrated knife for splitting it.  I didn’t want to mangle the thing, so I grabbed my chef’s knife and cut a slit in the outer layer.  I pulled it partially apart and sprinkled the shredded cheese into the pocket.  Once the cheese looked like it was evenly distributed, I slid the eggs in.  The pocket was a little full at this point, but I managed to tuck most of the bacon in, too.

Mom always said it’s not just looks that count.

It wasn’t pretty, but let me tell you, I’d order this sandwich from any breakfast menu.  Everything came together well.  The baked-in butter taste of the croissant joined forces with the fresh butter on the eggs.  The saltiness of the gruyere was a nice foil to the not-so-salty bacon.  The lavender was pleasant and noticeable, but not overpowering. Even the sloppiness of the sandwich added to its charm.  The last few bites had a whole bunch of extra cheese. You know how that’s the worst thing that can happen to a burrito?  This wasn’t like that at all.  This was more like cheese was my childhood best friend showing up unnanounced to hang out.  It was like hearing an old song you love come on the radio in the car.  Those last few bites might have been the best of the whole sandwich.

Brian

I’m a tax guy and technical writer living in the city known to its locals as The Big ‘Ago. I self-identify as a fighter against culinary dogma, a sandwich lover, and an overly-earnest hot dog enthusiast.