The Elvis–King of Sandwiches?

In the (pretty definitive) conclusion of his Hitchhiker’s Guide series, Mostly Harmless, Douglas Adams’ character Arthur Dent escaped his menial-but-largely-satisfying existence as Sandwich Maker to a stone age tribe by capturing and riding a Perfectly Normal Beast to the Domain of the King. The King, of course, was a sadder, older, fatter Elvis, having voluntarily left his life on Earth behind to sing his lonely heart out in a little bar in the middle of “wherever the hell this was.” According to Arthur’s companion Ford Prefect, while the bar singer was “the best in the known universe,” the bacon rolls were also “quite good.”

I wonder what he’d have thought of the burgers. According to Mary Jenkins Langston, longtime cook at Graceland, the “only thing in life (Elvis) got any enjoyment out of was eating.” I have to imagine that if he had gone off to open his own little interstellar bar & grill he’d have some top notch grub, but especially when it came to the kind of simple southern fare Elvis loved. In the 1996 BBC documentary The Burger and the King, Elvis’ friend Lamar Fike recalled that when Elvis was in Hollywood making movies, he didn’t eat out at fancy restaurants, though he could easily have afforded to. Elvis had grown up dirt poor, eating with his hands instead of a knife and fork, and didn’t want to change. He liked hot dogs with sauerkraut; he liked cheeseburgers; and he liked sandwiches.

The documentary, available in its entirety on Youtube if you are so inclined, also contains a recipe for the fried peanut butter and banana sandwich that now bears Elvis’ name, as related by Mary Jenkins Langston.

Lightly toast 2 slices of white bread.

Spread a thick layer of Peanut Butter on both slices and place a finely chopped banana on top.

Melt 4oz of butter in a frying pan, fry the sandwich on low heat for 7 minutes, browning both sides.

That’s an entire stick of butter for one sandwich! Good God. That’s… pretty excessive.

I mean, can you even get two slices of white toast to soak up 4 ounces of melted butter?

You almost can, turns out. I couldn’t quite get the bread to absorb all the butter, but it did take on most of it, by which time the bread was completely saturated.

Look at it. The bread is literally dripping with butter. I can’t eat that.

OK, I tried it. I took a bite. Hell, I took 3 bites. It’s not pleasant though. The bread is essentially a delivery system for melted butter at this point–it’s nicely crisp on the outside but completely sodden with fat. The peanut butter and banana are nice, but…. No. The boys each tried a bite as well. Damian shook his head and said “That’s stupid.” Max said the butter-to-sandwich ratio was ridiculous. Ian… well Ian asked for more. I let him have a second bite and threw the rest away. Mindy wouldn’t even try it.

I mean, I do some pretty messed up stuff for this site, but frying a sandwich in an entire stick of butter is just grotesque. My god, man. This article on Salon tries to debunk the idea that these fried treats contributed to the King’s death by saying they aren’t really all that fattening, but I don’t think the writer understood just how much butter they were using in the Graceland kitchen.

It’s no wonder that

I’m going to make too damn many of these things to burn through a full stick of butter every time I make one. I want to try them with better bread, better peanut butter. I want to find out whether smooth or chunky peanut butter works better–the documentary shows smooth but everybody likes chunky better, right? I also want to compare the bacon version and my “Elvis in Hawaii” SPAM version I made last year head-to-head to see which is better, once and for all. I’m going to try some different breads and some different spreads and see what’s what.

So I grabbed a couple loaves of bread, a bunch of bananas, and some peanut butter, and got to work.

Round 1: Chunky vs Creamy

I have to assume that my “everybody prefers chunky peanut butter” assertion is untrue, or else why would they still sell creamy peanut butter? Using some Honey White bread from my go-to bakery

and some “Natural” style peanut butter I bought–same brand in both chunky and creamy. Same prep as before but with a more reasonable 1.5T or so of butter per sandwich. I made fried peanut butter and banana sandwiches using both chunky peanut butter

and creamy peanut butter

I cut each sandwich into pieces and shared it with my family, informally tallying everyone’s preference. There were no surprises. The chunky peanut butter was widely preferred by all.

Except by the guy preparing the sandwiches. What I learned was that banana slices don’t stick very well to chunky peanut butter, so the Chunky sandwiches were much more difficult to assemble and griddle, to flip and slice. The Creamy peanut butter offers a definite advantage in presenting a better adhesive surface for gluing the banana slices inside the sandwich

The Chunky still tasted better though.

Round 2: Bacon vs SPAM

Taking the lesson I learned in round 1 about the adhesive qualities of creamy peanut butter, I used a hybrid approach in this round. I toasted the bread, spread creamy peanut butter on one slice and chunky on the other, and put the banana slices on the creamy side. The meat went on the chunky side, one with bacon

and one with SPAM

The SPAM version was universally preferred, even by the doubters. Even by those who refuse to eat SPAM in any other situation.

It makes sense. The texture and taste of the bacon take over the sandwich and turn it into something else, whereas the SPAM just adds a salty/fatty/browned meat/umami element. I think I preferred last year’s versions when I added honey to offset the saltiness of the meats though.

Round 3: Peanut Butter vs Nutella

We’re going to dessertize this sandwich, starting with the bread.

I used all creamy peanut butter this time, to neutralize the chunky peanut butter’s textural advantage (at least until the world gives us crunchy Nutella), and added honey to it, to neutralize the Nutella’s sweetness advantage.

Still, the outcome was a foregone conclusion. Unless you post under this Tumblr hashtag, you know the glory of gooey, nutty, chocolatey Nutella.

Because of the walnuts in the bread, the sandwiches didn’t actually need the crunch of the chunky peanut butter. Raisin and Nutella isn’t the best combination but the banana bridged them nicely. This was Sandwich As Dessert done if not right, then at least pretty good.

But what other dessert options could there be for an Elvis variant?

Round 4: Nutella vs. Cookie Butter

How about Cookie Butter? Trader Joe’s Speculoos is not everyone’s cup of tea but it might work in this setting.

Let’s ditch the fancy breads though and keep it simple. Also, you know what? All those sandwich photos kind of look alike. Let’s just eat the damn things and figure out which one is better.

Unanimously, my family liked the Cookie Butter version better than the Nutella version. Mindy doesn’t like Cookie Butter at all and even she thought it worked brilliantly here. The Nutella definitely has a much more aggressive flavor but the mild gingerbread flavor of the Speculoos is a perfect match for the banana. If you’ve never really known what the hell cookie butter was good for–it’s good for this.

Round 5: Nut Butter Battle Royale

I needed Damian to help me come up with an algorithm for scoring this one. I mean, it’s not like this is all that scientific–it’s purely subjective–but this is more than a simple head-to-head comparison. This time each person needed to compare sandwiches made with 4 different nut butters. We decided to do a simple table, with each person assigning a 1 to their favorite and a 4 to their least favorite. In this way, the lowest-scoring nut butter would be the winner.

I cooked the 4 sandwiches simultaneously on my electric skillet.

Each person ranked their favorites and wrote the scores in on a whiteboard in our kitchen. The results?

	Jim	Mindy	Damian	Max	Ian	Total
Peanut	3	3	1	1	2	10
Cashew	2	1	3	3	3	12
Almond	4	2	4	2	4	16
Sunflower	1	4	2	4	1	12

Peanut was the clear winner, almond the clear loser, with cashew and sunflower tied for 2nd place. Almond was just too salty and bitter–it might have been my favorite of the nut butters on its own, but it didn’t work in the context of this sandwich. Cashew was subtle and sweet, nobody really disliked it too much, but only Mindy picked it as her favorite. Sunflower seed was divisive, with the most distinct flavor of the bunch. At first I felt like its flavor fought with the banana, but eventually I came to find the combination the most interesting of the group. Ian liked it best as well.

And of course peanut butter is the classic it is for a reason–both Damian and Max chose it as their favorite, with nobody putting at the bottom. I’d blame its victory on familiarity but it really does work well here. Well enough that Elvis would eat 6 to 8 of these sandwiches when the mood struck him.

And I think what we found out was, except for the sheer amount of butter he had them fried in, Elvis’ version was the best. Peanut butter and banana just work together, and the crisp fried bread is a good vehicle for them. You don’t need bacon, but if you do add it, put a little honey in as well. You’ll thank me later.

As a postscript, I recently asked my friend and fellow Tribunal writer Brian how many nut butters was too many to have in one pantry. “I may be the wrong person to ask,” he replied, “as a low carb person I often have three. I guess I’d feel a little dumb having a fourth.”

I don’t feel that dumb though. With all these boys in my house, we’ll tear through these in no time.