The Belgian Mitraillette

Ah, Belgian food. Most people will think of chocolates or waffles. Some will think of steamed mussels and beer. Some may even think of filet Americaine or the sandwich we made with it last month, the Martino.

Mostly I think of frites in a cone, with an array of sauces for dipping. But what if you put the fries inside the sandwich?

Yes, we’ve come to another dreaded carbs-on-carbs post. We’ve dealt with the chip butty (currently our most-viewed article of all time), the crisp sandwich, the Gatsby, even less obvious versions like the guajolota, the chow mein sandwich, the hot turkey sandwich. They’re generally not favorites, but they’re not all bad. Generally speaking, they’re either comfort food or drunk nosh or both.

Belgium’s Mitraillette falls into the “All of the above” category. Consisting of some type of fried meat stuffed into a section of baguette, possibly with some salad, topped by a handful of frites and one or more frite sauces, it ticks all the boxes. Meat and sauce=comfort. Fried salty things=drunk food. Mitraillette is a French word meaning “machine gun”–I guess the fries are the bullets? In France, though, they disapprovingly call this le Sandwich Americain. Come on, France. We can’t be blamed for everybody’s bad eating habits.

So while this sandwich does appear at first to be well-trod ground, there are things to be excited about. First, in reading about the various types of meat used for these sandwiches, I encountered something I’d never heard of: frikandel, a type of deep-fried Dutch sausage. As it happens, these are sold in the US under the name “Dutch Dawgs.”

“Dutch Dawg” brand frikandel

Second, as I mentioned, I’m a sucker for Belgian frites and all the various sauces to dip them in. From some videos I’ve seen about the mitraillette, the approach is to eat most of the fries right off the bat, dipping them in the sauces that have been liberally applied to the top of the pile, before closing up the sandwich and going to work. As much as I like a paper cone, I appreciate a sausage-inna-bun as a delivery vessel for salty fried potato sticks much more. And I had Ideas about what sauces to use.

fritessaus, garlic sauce, curry ketchup, sauce andalous

• Fritessaus. This is basically sweetened low fat mayonnaise. Think Miracle Whip in a squeeze bottle.
• Garlic sauce. Garlic aioli is also basically mayonnaise, but a garlicky version. Who doesn’t like garlic?
• Andalouse. Sauce Andalouse is kind of like the Belgian version of Big Mac sauce–mayonnaise mixed with tomato paste, peppers, and other seasonings. I had to make my own.
• Curry Ketchup. I am not a big fan of ketchup, but I’m a sucker for curry flavors, and this sauce is a favorite to pair with frikandel (which in Belgium are sometimes called Currywurst) so it’s a natural.

Things like lettuce, tomato, carrots, cabbage, and cheese are sometimes included. Probably not all of the above though.

carrots, lettuce, tomato

I bought some demibaguettes from a bakery. They looked beautiful but in retrospect I think I should have tried to get some Vietnamese demibaguettes instead. Baguettes often end up too chewy for a good sandwich, but the banh mi style demibaguettes are soft on the inside and crisp but not too crusty, perfect for closing around sandwich fillings.

demibaguettes

I started out by splitting a demibaguette and putting down some of the fritessaus. Nominally it’s for the frites but the layer of salad I’m putting in there will want some dressing as well.

fritessaus

Then I added the lettuce, carrot, and tomato. Unfortunately I put together this sandwich just before my garden hit peak tomato season so these were grocery store tomatoes. As of this writing, I’m experiencing much better tomatoes.

Sometimes there is salad

And now, the frikandel. The sausage gets a long slit cut in it and then is deep-fried in oil. It’s not the prettiest looking thing when it’s done.

The sandwich does look happy though

As delighted as this sandwich appears to be, it is not yet complete. A machine gun needs its bullets.

Lock and load

If the fries are the bullets, I’m not sure what that makes the sauces. Gun oil? I’m not sure it profits me to belabor the metaphor here. I’ve already got frittesaus underneath everything, so I added aioli, andalouse, and curry ketchup.

OK maybe I skimped on the curry ketchup

The aioli was excellent, by far my favorite of the sauces. It makes a damn fine BLT as well. Roasted garlic has a milder flavor than raw garlic but the aioli itself features it strongly, as well as a more acidic flavor than a standard mayonnaise. This may become a staple in my kitchen. I liked the andalouse as well. Though my comparison to Big Mac sauce may have been a bit off (the main difference being sweet peppers vs. pickle relish), it still hews fairly close to that style. The curry ketchup and fritessaus took a back seat relatively speaking, but upon trying them separately I found that the curry ketchup had a lively curry flavor that accentuated ketchup’s sweetness and works very well, while the fritessaus is, as I suspected, akin to Miracle Whip and not something I’d use again.

Mitraillette with Frikandel

The frikandel is mild flavored and smooth textured, more like a sausage-shaped meatloaf than an actual sausage. It was a bit buried with everything else going on in this sandwich. I had one the next day without all the salad and on softer bread and it was better, but I’d still rather have a hot dog or a regular sausage than one of these. Even a ćevapčići, another tube of ground meat, still has a meaty texture that this lacks. I’ve still got another package in the freezer, though, so I suppose I’ll have to find something to do with them.

Overall though, this was a far better showing from Belgium than we had last month. Any time I get to have frites and aioli, I’ve got to count that a win.

Jim Behymer

I like sandwiches.

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