Crisp Sandwiches

The UK and Ireland are crazy for these crisp sandwiches. If you don’t know what a crisp sandwich is, it’s when you stick some potato chips into some bread and eat it.

cricket sounds

They really are mad for the things over there. In Belfast earlier this year, a “pop-up cafe” selling crisp sandwiches opened and sold out within 2 hours. Another has now opened in England. For those of you who can’t be bothered stuffing potato chips into your own sandwiches, these places are likely a godsend.

Is it really all that different from putting French fries into a sandwich though? I think it is, yes. French fries mostly add bulk and just a little flavor and texture to a sandwich. Crisps or chips though, they add a lot of texture and potentially a lot of flavor to a sandwich without the bulk. In theory, it could be the most interesting of the carb-on-carb sandwiches.

I decided to start by checking out some English or Irish flavor combinations but when I got to my usual suspect, Winston’s Market, the crisp aisle was fairly bare.

I picked up a couple of packets, including the Tayto brand Wuster sauce crisps you can see on the middle shelf there, their Pickled Onion flavored crisps, and Burton’s Daily Fish ‘n’ Chips Curry sauce flavored snacks. I started with those.

I wasn’t sure what to put into a sandwich with these, so I started simple. Buttered white bread and the “crisps.” I’m not sure if they really count as crisps, but it’s a start.

These are essentially oversized goldfish crackers with a flavored powder that does actually taste just like chip shop curry sauce, that sort of apple/cooked onion/curry powder flavor. They’re quite tasty, and the sandwich was edible, but didn’t thrill me.

I looked into some various combinations that are popular, to try and match the chips–I mean crisps–to the right supplementary sandwich fillings. I was excited about the pickled onion crisps, ’cause there’s nothing like that flavor around here.

For these, I decided to go with ham, cheddar, and Colman’s spicy English mustard again on white bread.

My son’s opinion notwithstanding, I thought this one wasn’t bad. The ham and cheese were doing their ham-and-cheese thing, there was a nice sharp flavor from the mustard and a slightly sweeter, but still tart, flavor from the crisps. Overall, pretty good. For stoner food.

For the Wuster sauce crisps, my research suggested that a good combination would be Marmite and potted beef. Here is where everything went off the rails.

First off, I was out of Marmite, so I substituted Vegemite. Not a huge change, and possibly not significant, but worth mentioning.

Secondly, potted beef is not an easily obtainable thing in the US. The closest we have is something called Potted Meat. I had vague memories of it having a more elaborate, hedged name, like “Potted Meat Food Product,” but it appears that at least on the Armour brand tin I was able to pick up, that was not the case.

It’s made with chicken and pork instead of beef. There’s a problem. But I figured it would be an acceptable substitute.

This can also contains 400% of one’s daily allotment of sodium. I may have added an extra zero there but close enough. That’s a lot of salt to put on top of Vegemite. I was only going to use 1/4 to 1/3 of the tin though, and again, I figured it would work out.

So I very lightly toasted some bread, not a standard procedure with a crisp sandwich but the bread needs to be a little firmer to make spreading the Vegemite possible.

Then I spread a thin layer of potted meat on top of the Vegemite and added the crisps.

I took a bite and… HOT DOG TOOTHPASTE OH GOD THIS IS HOT DOG TOOTHPASTE GET IT OUT GET IT OUT AAAAHHHHHHH

I had been intending to try and get some Walker’s brand UK crisps, maybe the Cheese and Onion that seem so popular, or the intriguing Smokey Bacon flavor, but I’m done being fooled by British sandwiches. Let’s try to America this thing up instead.

There are a lot of standard flavors I could work with but what jumped out at me right away was one of the new Lay’s “Do Us a Flavor” winners, Biscuits & Gravy.

I don’t know about you, but when I eat biscuits & gravy, I like a fried egg on top, with some Louisiana Hot Sauce.

The hot sauce may have been front and center, but these chips have a lot of flavor that definitely stood out. It’s a different texture than “real” biscuits and gravy but this made a terrific breakfast sandwich, sage and pepper, hot sauce and egg yolk. A sausage patty might have put it over the top but it was definitely good as is.

What’s even more American than biscuits & gravy? Barbecue. Working with a full packer cut brisket for my upcoming corned beef post, I had decided to separate the point from the flat, cure the flat only and smoke the point for sandwiches.

So I took some brisket and buttered bread to work with me, thinking I’d add Barbecue flavored chips and make a sandwich for lunch, but reconsidered. BBQ on BBQ seemed too obvious. Instead, while I was at the store, an old favorite stood out.

Frito’s Chili Cheese chips are probably objectively awful but forget that, these things are delicious. Chili powder and cumin, cheese and the requisite salt. They’re a road trip favorite of mine from way back. I put a thin layer of brisket on some bread and loaded on the chips.

It wasn’t a revelation, but I think it got to the heart of what a crisp sandwich can be. Some people may just stick some potato chips into bread and slowly crunch their way through it, but if you have something tasty but texturally lacking, adding some chips with a complimentary flavor can add a flavor accent and a lot of texture. The brisket, fatty and smokey. The Fritos, salty and spicy. It’s not haute cuisine but it doesn’t aspire to be. And the best part is, when they’re in a sandwich, the Fritos dust doesn’t end up coating your fingers like usual. The same goes, I imagine, for Doritos, Cheetos, basically all the *itos type chips.

There are a multitude of different chip or crisp flavors, and an even greater variety of different sandwich fillings and condiments they can be combined with. Bread choices also abound, and though I wish I’d been able to put together some proper bap rolls to try these with, I think I’ve had enough. I have a history of taking these things to extremes, but to try every combination here would be absurd. I think I covered a broad enough range, and best of all, I didn’t have to try the ridiculous peanut butter / pickle / salt & vinegar chips combo on the Wikipedia page.

The crisp sandwich appears in our list as a UK thing, but who are we kidding? Everybody sticks potato chips into a boring sandwich from time to time. We may not call it a crisp sandwich, we may not have pop-up restaurants dedicated to the proposition, but it’s the same thing. I think I’d rather make sure I was eating an interesting enough sandwich that the crisps weren’t needed, but if you need to bring a little life to a soggy boring sandwich, there are probably worse ways to do it.