A Month of Breakfast Sandwiches
We ran into this issue back in October with the Barbecue sandwich. “Breakfast” is not a sandwich. It’s a category. It’s a sandwich you have for breakfast, simple as that. The Wikipedia article is referring mainly to American-style breakfast sandwiches, which do for the most part (with notable exceptions) adhere to a certain pattern (bacon/ham/sausage, fried/scrambled egg, American/cheddar cheese, toast/bagel/biscuit/English muffin). But even that doesn’t begin to describe the variety of breakfast sandwiches I eat, and cannot possibly encompass the full spectrum of our breakfast sandwiches. Americans like comfort, yes, but we also like novelty, and tend toward inventive excess.
So I decided to keep a log of all my breakfast sandwiches for the month of January. Even the basic ingredients I listed above should result in 48 distinct combinations, so there’s no reason I should need to repeat a single sandwich. Some of them may not strike you as very breakfasty, and some of them stretch (or break) the definition of sandwich. It might not be terribly interesting to read about every breakfast sandwich I’ve eaten this month, but I assume since you are browsing a sandwich website, you know what you’re getting into.
I did not manage to get pictures of every one, but I assure you, this log is accurate.
Thursday, January 1, 2015 at 11:00 AM
Spam, Velveeta, and scrambled eggs on Turano Italian roll
A strange choice for my first sandwich of 2015, I know, but I had some spam leftover from the (surprisingly delicious) Hawaiian rolls I’d made for the NYE luau.
Homemade Hawaiian rolls stuffed with Spam and Velveeta. These are not, in fact, sandwiches, nor did I eat them for breakfast.
Speaking of the NYE party, that is also my excuse for such a late breakfast. It was no wild bacchanal, just a few friends who are a bit too old to have stayed up so late, drank so much, or laughed quite so loud playing Cards Against Humanity. Fun times.
I intended to finish the sandwich in my panini press but it was so overstuffed that the press just squished everything back out and I had to scramble to salvage the sandwich at all. Decent hangover food but I have no idea what I’m doing with the rest of this brick of Velveeta.
NOTE: Mindy added the remaining Velveeta to a very interesting dish of couscous with spinach & chicken to finish it. It was actually quite good!
Friday, January 2, 2015 at 7:00 AM
A Bosna for Breakfast
Back to the grind this morning and eating a much earlier breakfast. It’s not terribly breakfasty, I know, but after last month’s post on the Bosna I have a bunch of this sausage left and I need to use it!
This is actually the Bosna from December 31st but close enough
I thought about adding an egg but the thought of ketchup on a fried egg, even my homemade ketchup, makes me retch. Though this does not fit the “Breakfast Sandwich” pattern established by Wikipedia, it is technically a breakfast sandwich as it is (1) a sandwich that (2) I ate for breakfast.
Saturday, January 3, 2015 at 9:00 AM
Ham, egg, and cheese on toast
Yes I put the other piece of toast on top before eating it
We still had some leftover Christmas ham, so I fried up a couple of thick slices, melted some sharp white cheddar on it, and topped the pile with an egg over medium, putting it between two slices of toasted oat bran bread. Pretty basic but I give myself bonus points for the really excellent ham. I’ve been in the habit recently of frying the eggs over medium for my breakfast sandwiches, so that the yolk is still soft but it doesn’t spurt out all over my hands and clothes when I bite in. Maybe instead I need to do a better job of keeping my sandwiches over a plate. A runny yolk is the best part of most breakfast sandwiches.
Sunday, January 4, 2015 at 10:30 AM
A homemade version of Taco Bell’s BLT Crunch Wrap
When Mindy and I tried the Crunchwrap in December, Mindy said that we could do better at home, and she was right. We used bacon, nothing fancy, but actual slices of cooked bacon rather than the seemingly prechewed bacon bit mush that Taco Bell uses, shredded iceberg and romaine lettuce, diced Campari tomatoes, avocado mash, ranch dressing, and Fritos all wrapped up in flour tortillas that we then browned on a griddle.
I can’t think of a reason people actually eat at Taco Bell other than laziness
It was pretty good, but I made a salad out of some of the leftovers that was actually far more satisfying than the wrap itself. I’m not interested in having the discussion of whether a “crunchwrap” is a sandwich; normally I’d say it isn’t probably but it’s at least within spitting distance and it was my breakfast so it goes here.
Monday, January 5, 2015 at 6:45 AM
Chicken Biscuit from Hardee’s
The Hardee’s Sausage Biscuit is the best bang for your buck in the fast food breakfast world, in my opinion. Hardee’s biscuits are as good as fast food biscuits get, probably due to being liberally doused in butter at some point in the baking process, fatty, crisp, flaky and soft all at the same time. Their sausage is a fairly standard peppery breakfast sausage that somehow pulls off the trick of being crisply browned on the surface and yet melting into the biscuit interior. At a buck apiece, they’re my go-to when I’m picking up a quick breakfast for the whole family. But when I’m by myself, I’ll splurge and get the Chicken Biscuit instead. Same great biscuit but with a piece of breaded, fried chicken breast inside.
I bought this one on a different day, whereupon it spent 2 hours in my pocket before I had a chance to photograph it. Still tasty.
Tuesday, January 6, 2015 at 8:00 AM
Deviled ham and eggs on wheat toast
Deviled ham! Egg salad! Hard to focus on both in just one shot
I’m actually really proud of this one, as it turned out great and I definitely want to make it again. I had some leftover homemade deviled ham from New Years Eve. This is essentially the recipe I used. To go with it, I made some egg salad with sriracha mayonnaise, spicy brown mustard, and scallions. I toasted the bread and spread the deviled ham on one slice and the egg salad on the other. It was a fantastic sandwich, and if ham and eggs aren’t breakfasty, I don’t know what is.
Wednesday, January 7, 2015 at 7:00 AM
Bacon, egg, and cheddar on English Muffin
One of the many bacon, egg, and cheese variants I’m sure I’ll go through this month. Surprised it took me until the 7th to be honest. Not much to this one, but good. I fried the egg over easy this time, so the yolk was nice and runny. I had picked up a Marzipan Stollen and planned on having a slice with some coffee after but I completely forgot about it, just washed the yolk off my hands when I was done and dashed out the door to get to work.
Thursday, January 8, 2015 at 7:00 AM
A fried peanut butter and banana sandwich (with bacon and honey)
On what would have been the King’s 80th birthday, I paid tribute to him by eating one of his favorite sandwiches!
Happy Birthday, Elvis! You’d have been 80 today if you’d eaten fewer of these!
We’ll be covering these for The List sometime in early 2016, but I was happy to have a bit of a preview this morning. I wanted a nice, toasted, firm surface to spread the peanut butter on, so I toasted just the insides of two slices of bread, put PB on one toasted side and drizzled honey on the other, loaded it with thick slices of banana and 3 pieces of bacon, then pan-fried the whole thing in butter. It was delicious but I want to try the purer version, sans bacon next time. I did remember about the Marzipan Stollen this morning but after this sandwich I couldn’t eat another bite.
Friday, January 9, 2015 at 6:45 AM
Fried bologna and egg on buttered (well, griddled really) bread
It is ridiculously cold outside right now, and not much warmer in my kitchen at 6:30 am. Spreadable butter is a distant dream at this point, so I buttered the bread by melting the butter in a griddle and letting the bread soak it up. The bread stayed on the griddle long enough to brown one side but I left the outsides soft the way I had them as a kid. I fried 3 slices of bologna nice and brown, each cut in half and notched to keep them from curling up. I fried the egg over medium, again breaking the yolk slightly just before the flip so that it would remain soft but not runny enough to splatter my shirt before I go to work. Very satisfying, and way more like the ones I grew up eating than the fancy one I had last month. I’m out of Marzipan Stollen though, the kids ate it all.
Saturday, January 10, 2015 at 10:30 AM
Biscuits and gravy with a fried egg and hot sauce
I was hungover as hell. This was a lifesaver.
Here at the Tribunal, we are not fully on board with the concept of the open face sandwich. But there are plenty of them on The List and I really felt like having biscuits and gravy this morning so I exploited a technicality. I used the Cook’s Illustrated drop biscuit recipe, which is my go-to when making quick biscuits at home. While they were baking, I cooked a pound of bulk pork sausage in a pan with a bit of leftover bacon grease, then made a peppery bechamel (OK, country gravy) from the drippings before adding the sausage back in. And to me, biscuits and gravy isn’t done until there’s a fried egg or two and some hot sauce on top. This is grade A hangover food.
Sunday, January 11, 2015 at 9:45 AM
Bacon, egg, and cheddar on baguette with broiled tomatoes
I freestyled a ham and bean soup for dinner last night (put me in a kitchen with some supplies and just let me make shit up and nine times out of ten you’re going to have a fantastic meal. That tenth time, well, at least it’ll be interesting) and we bought a big crusty baguette to eat alongside it. This morning I split about a 5″ section of what was left of the baguette, buttered both sides, toasted them and melted white cheddar on them under the broiler. I scrambled a couple of eggs and broiled a couple of small tomatoes I’d cut in half as well. Bacon and tomato are of course a magical pairing. The cheese was a bit too assertive and the sandwich overall was fairly sloppy but it tasted great.
Maybe baguettes are a bit too much for breakfast
Monday, January 12, 2015 at 6:30 AM
Eggs Benedict. Sort of.
(For open face sandwich disclaimer, see January 10TH entry on biscuits and gravy. Then give it a rest.) There was a faux Hollandaise sauce recipe using yogurt that I’ve been wanting to try, so I made it this morning, poached a couple of eggs, heated up some deli ham (not quite Canadian bacon but close enough) on a skillet, and made a pretty good breakfast for me and Mindy. The sauce wasn’t bad, either, the flavor similar to a real Hollandaise but with one small difference–without the giant pile of butter that goes into a real Hollandaise sauce, this version of Eggs Benedict was practically health food compared to the real thing.
Tuesday, January 13, 2015 at 8:30 AM
Bagel with cream cheese and lox
I really need to stop bothering with tomatoes in January
Onion bagel, chive cream cheese, red onion, some thin slices of tomato, cucumber, capers, and lox, from Bebe’s Kosher Deli in the French Market. The tomatoes were pathetic, and the sandwich didn’t hold together very well since there was just so much stuff in it, but oh man I love bagels & lox.
Wednesday, January 14, 2015 at 7:00 AM
Feta and bacon omelet in pita
Ways in which we are a living sitcom, part 87: Mindy takes 45 minutes to do her hair and makeup in the morning; I take 45 minutes to cook my breakfast. OK this one probably only took a half an hour. Cooking an omelet in the 6″ skillet instead of the 10″ one makes it just the right size to fit on/in a pita. Maybe just a tad on the big side. I made the omelet with crumbled peppercorn feta cheese and 3 slices of bacon, heating the pita in the 10″ griddle while the eggs cooked. Bacon and feta make a powerful combination and a nice hot crisp griddled pita is just the right vehicle for them.
A bonus with a pita sandwich is you can make it talk like a muppet
Thursday, January 15, 2015 at 8:30 AM
My “Hangover Special” from Cafecito
Last night I got out of work late, which meant I wouldn’t be catching a train home until 6:15 pm. When I ride the 6:15 train, I ride with a crew, and they’re usually passing around multiple bottles of bourbon.
I hope I run into the mysterious Metra Whiskey Mob on my commute home. Free booze won't fix this week but will improve it.
— Sandwich Death Panel Czar (@JimBehymer) May 14, 2014
When I’m rolling with these guys, I have to bring a 6-pack of craft beer on the train and drink it as a self-defense measure. After I got home, my neighbor Rich came over and we drank homebrew and bourbon, freezing our asses off in the garage for an hour while he chain-smoked. Long story short, I tied one on and needed this sandwich. It’s ham, steak, eggs, grilled onions and cheese on Cuban bread, and I order it with a side of chimichurri.
PROTIP: if you go to Cafecito and order a Hangover Special, they won’t know what the hell you’re talking about.
This sandwich, plus a half-gallon of coffee and maybe a nap later in the day, goes a long way toward making me feel better.
Friday, January 16, 2015 at 8:30 AM
A “Meat Lovers” croissant sandwich and a Strawberries ‘n Cream Paczki from Delightful Pastries
This is another sandwich covered previously on the Tribunal, or at least the Meat Lovers is. The Paczki looked sandwichy enough that I decided to include it as well. Unfortunately I’m going to have to stop getting this sandwich from Delightful Pastries. The guy who’s been working there on two of the occasions when I’ve gotten it consistently skimps on the ingredients, one time leaving out the bacon entirely. This time, I got 1 piece of bacon and a thin layer of ham wrapped up inside some egg and waaaaaaaay too much mayonnaise. Also, the strawberries in the paczki looked like canned pie filling. It tasted good but was still a bit disappointing, since it could have been so much better.
“Meat Lovers” sandwich–do you see any meat?–and a paczki that immediately squished all the filling out when bit into
Saturday, January 17, 2015 at 10:00 AM
Sausage, egg, and cheese on an English muffin
Your basic homemade sausage mcmuffin, only with better cheese, better sausage, heck probably a better egg too. Definitely a better egg, in fact, since 1) McDonalds cooks their eggs into hockey pucks and their yolks into rubber, and 2) I’m not sure they’re really eggs to begin with.
The next 7 sandwiches have been written up, with photos, in my previous post, The Breakfast Roll. I’m including just the brief descriptions here but if you’d like to read more about them, please click that link.
Sunday, January 18, 2015 at 9:30 AM
Irish bacon, streaky bacon, fried egg, and HP Fruity sauce on a kaiser roll
Monday, January 19, 2015 at 7:45 AM
White and black pudding with a fried egg on a kaiser roll
Tuesday, January 20, 2015 at 7:00 AM
Irish bacon and sausage patty with fried egg and Daddies brown sauce on kaiser roll
Wednesday, January 21, 2015 at 7:15 AM
Bangers and eggs with HP sauce on, yes, a kaiser roll
Thursday, January 22, 2015 at 7:00 AM
Beans, Irish bacon, hash browns, bangers, black pudding on a soft French roll with HP Fruity and hot sauce
Friday, January 23, 2015 at 7:30 AM
The “Jumbo Breakfast Roll” as made famous by Pat Shortt
Saturday, January 24, 2015 at 9:45 AM
Full Irish Breakfast in a bun
Sunday, January 25, 2015 at 10:30 AM
“Umami bomb” scramble in kaiser roll
After a week of eating progressively more ridiculous piles of meat, I needed something with vegetables in it. That was the idea anyway–the execution got a bit weird. I sauteed some onions, mushrooms, and tomatoes in some butter, and then added 2 eggs with Marmite and parmesan cheese mixed in. The eggs were brown from the Marmite, the tomatoes were brown (they were Kumatoes) and the whole scramble was soggy from the tomatoes and parmesan. It was an ugly mess, but delicious.
Not the prettiest thing I’ve ever posted on this site
Monday, January 26, 2015 at 7:15 AM
Ham, mushroom, and egg in kaiser roll
They eat ham in Ireland, right?
I used the last of my kaiser rolls this morning on this combination. Eating all the English and Irish breakfast sandwiches for the last week, I’ve come to appreciate combinations other than the typical meat/egg/cheese. In fact, I very much liked the absence of cheese in this sandwich. Also, and I feel a little weird admitting this, I added HP Fruity to the sandwich. Just a bit of sweet to play against the saltiness of the ham, and to help hold the mushrooms in place. It worked great, and I will definitely revisit this sandwich in the future.
Tuesday, January 27, 2015 at 7:15 AM
Spam, onion, cream cheese on a bagel
I’ve been thinking for a while about the possibility of replacing the lox in bagel and lox with some spam. My thought was that lox is salty and spam would fit much the same flavor profile but in a cheaper way that I could eat regularly at home. I sliced some spam and fried it, warming the bagel slightly in the oven before I cut it open. The crisp edges of the fried spam would present a slightly different texture than the lox, but eating uncooked spam doesn’t bear thinking about. I salted a couple of thin slices of red onion to mellow them a bit, then spread a generous portion of chive cream cheese on each half of the bagel, with the onion and fried spam in the middle.
If you think about it, spam is kind of like redneck lox, right?
Here’s where I ran into the main problem with my idea, which I’m sure you spotted already. The still-hot spam made the cream cheese much softer/runnier than it is in a lox sandwich, causing everything to slide around a bit. Still, it tasted good, though I may have gone a bit too heavy on the onion, judging by Mindy’s reaction when I tried to kiss her goodbye this morning.
Wednesday, January 28, 2015 at 7:00 AM
Pork fritter, bacon, egg, hot sauce on a bagel
On one of my recent trips to Quincy, I bought what I thought was going to be a case of frozen, breaded pork tenderloins at the Kohl’s Wholesale Cash -n- Carry store. I’d bought a case of them there previously and was pretty sure I had the right thing. However, it turned out that this case of “pork fritters” consisted of breaded formed patties of pork, not actual cuts of meat. We tried eating them once or twice but Mindy doesn’t care for them at all and they’ve been sitting in our freezer since.
You’re not a real tenderloin. You barely cover that bagel!
I’ve been looking for ways to use them and thought they might make a decent breakfast, so I gave one a shot this morning, dropping it in a deep fryer for a couple of minutes before serving it on a bagel with some peri peri hot sauce, bacon and a fried egg. Mindy’s right, these patties are bland and it offered little more than texture and bulk to the sandwich, but what the hot sauce couldn’t cure, bacon could, and the sandwich itself turned out OK.
Thursday, January 29, 2015 at 7:30 AM
I call it the “Elvis in Hawaii”
OK you guys, if you’ve read this far, you were with me when I replaced lox with spam, a noble experiment that with some tweaking will lead to better sandwiches down the line. Yesterday, I had the idea of having spam do substitute work in another sandwich.
Earlier this month I tried what’s come to be called the Elvis sandwich, a fried peanut butter and banana sandwich with bacon (and honey in my version). I mentioned at the time that I’d like to try it without the bacon. My idea yesterday–ok bear with me for a second–was to try it with spam instead of bacon.
I wasn’t sure if that was a good idea or not, so I ran it past Tribunal writer Brian to gauge his reaction. “Bahahahaha I am not the guy who is gonna talk you down from that,” was his reply, so I knew I was on to something.
I intended to try it this morning. As I began the actual prep work for the sandwich though, I started feeling queasy. I was longing for a Real American breakfast sandwich, with some kind of Meat, a runny egg yolk and good old fashioned American cheese oozing out the sides… Hangover food, in other words. Last night was our first match of the new season in my dart league, which means I was out late at a bar, and yes, my stomach was a little tender this morning. I was not feeling this sandwich, but I made myself go through with it anyway. I cut 2 pieces of spam fairly thick and fried them up crisp and otherwise prepared the sandwich identically to the entry in this log from January 8th.
Hey, Elvis loved Hawaii, Hawaiians love Spam… Probably bananas and peanut butter too, who doesn’t?
Bacon: such a diva, always wanting attention. Me, me, me. Every sandwich has to be a bacon sandwich. Spam, though, spam just sits in the background, doing its job, which is to be salty, mildly meaty, and maybe a bit smoky/charred/seared, depending on how it’s cooked. Since spam is not as assertive as bacon, texturally or in flavor, it was less intrusive in this sandwich. I still suspect the sandwich might be better without it entirely, but I think in this instance the spam actually works better than bacon. And this sandwich certainly fulfills my American desire for inventive excess.
Friday, January 30, 2015 at 7:30 AM
The “All-In-One” Breakfast Sandwich from The Encyclopedia of Sandwiches
Recently, Mindy and I had a nice afternoon getting burgers at Five Guys and then browsing Half Price Books for an hour or so. While kicking around the bookstore, I found a stack of copies of Susan Russo’s The Encyclopedia Of Sandwiches for $5 each and figured, what the hell, I might as well pick up some reference material. And it’s a beautiful book, worth well more than what I paid for it.
Nice book. Weird shape.
The very first recipe in the Encyclopedia is this All-In-One, and it occurs to me, given my recent “research,” that this is something like an American answer to the Irish Jumbo Breakfast Roll. I’m not sure, as I haven’t seen them, but she says a “whole new class of over-the-top breakfast sandwiches–made with pancakes, French toast, or waffles–is popping up on the menus of fast-food chains, coffee shops, and food trucks.”
Next time, steak and eggs for sure.
In making this version, I mostly followed her standard recipe with a few exceptions. First, the only waffle maker I have at home is a Belgian waffle iron, and the waffles pictured in the book appeared to be the flatter, smaller/shallower-grid type of standard waffle. Clearly, a less fancy waffle was called for here, so I bought a box of Eggos. Also, she only calls for 1/2 a hash brown patty, which is silly. If you’re going to make one of these ridiculous things, why go halfway? Other than that, I used 2 eggs fried over easy, 2 slices of bacon, and I threw in a sausage patty because America, dousing the whole mess in pancake syrup.
I liked the Irish one better I think
I ate half. It was a knife and fork affair. I hope Mindy and the 7yo enjoyed the rest.
Saturday, January 31, 2015 at 9:45 AM
Chicken and Waffles
After yesterday’s not-so-good sandwich using waffles, I figured there must be a good, yet still all-American way to make a waffle sandwich. And it didn’t take me long to think of chicken and waffles. This morning, I pounded some deboned chicken thighs flat and marinated them in buttermilk with salt, rosemary, and cayenne, then dredged them in well-seasoned flour and fried them one at a time in our little electric fryer. While the oil was heating up, I made a buttermilk waffle batter and cooked some waffles, keeping them warm in the oven and then buttering and reheating them in the waffle iron as needed. The 17yo and 14yo are away on a scouting trip this weekend so I only needed to make chicken & waffles for 3.
This probably should feed three, but no. It’s all mine
It’s a uniquely American, Southern thing. I don’t know if you’ve had it, but there’s something about the way the syrup gets into the chicken breading, the way the chicken grease soaks into the waffle, something in how the hot sauce and maple syrup go perfectly together no matter how unlikely a combination it seems. Chicken and waffles is a delicious breakfast, and without working from a recipe, just freestyling it, I nailed it.
Admit it. You want to eat breakfast at my house
“But Jim,” you’re probably saying. “We let you slide on some questionable shit so far this month. Biscuits and gravy? Eggs Benedict? That pita thing barely qualified as a sandwich, and there’s no way a Crunchwrap should count, but we let it go, ’cause it looked awesome. Now this? How can you sit there and tell us that chicken and waffles counts as a sandwich?”
Jim, you’ve outdone yourself.
This one, I finished.
I like sandwiches.
I like a lot of other things too but sandwiches are pretty great
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[…] amazing posts by yours truly), when we had a flurry of activity at the very last moment, with my Month of Breakfast sandwiches and AndrewTSKS‘s pair of posts all dropping on the 31st. So we ended up with a very […]