Sandwich Tribunal Presents Jambon-Beurre

Jambon-Beurre is a popular street food in Paris, France–more than popular, in fact. Ubiquitous. Iconic. The literal translation is “ham butter,” and in fact those are the two main ingredients–those and of course the bread, the classic French baguette.

I touched on this sandwich in my post about ham sandwiches last year but did not fully explore it, deferring until now. The Jambon-Beurre is simply ham and butter on baguette, often with cornichons. I see some recipes that add gruyere cheese, or dijon mustard, but I’m pretty sure you can chalk that up to bloggers fancying things up that don’t need fancying. Good ham, good butter, and good bread is all a sandwich really should need, right? (Some dijon mustard would sure be tasty though)

I was so psyched to try this again that I went right out at the beginning of the month and got myself a totally authentic jambon-beurre with frites for lunch one day.

Jambon-Beurre and frites

Whoops, took that picture a bit too early. This is more like it:

Jambon-Beurre and fri(t)es

I don’t know, though. Was it tasty? Sure. The thing is though, the thing of it is, that’s not a baguette.

This is a baguette.

Everyone check your 80s movie reference bingo cards for Crocodile Dundee now

I could just write up a DIY post about this, but I do keep trying to do things slightly differently from time to time around here, so I was inspired to make this (hopefully endearingly) amateurish video for you all, in which a disembodied set of hands nearly cuts its own thumb, clumsily exposes stage markings, and eventually puts together a sandwich, to the delight of a fat man wearing a beret. (spoilers).

I found the music, “Paris Ballade” by Dana Boulé, on a site called Free Music Archive, with a Creative Commons license. I promise you Ms. Boulé, this is a completely non-commercial use, and I hope you enjoy my dumb little movie. Your delightful music makes it way less dumb.

Jim Behymer

I like sandwiches.

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