Roast Beef Sandwiches

Roast beef sandwiches come in many forms: cold, hot, on sliced bread or a roll, with cheese, jus, horseradish, mustard, onions, mayo/tomato/lettuce, open-faced with gravy. There’s no specific format to follow, no secret history to unravel. When we have a sandwich like this to explore here on the Tribunal I often don’t know where to start. This month, I started at Arby’s.

I’m not here to tell you that Arby’s makes a good roast beef sandwich. I will say though that Arby’s was a special treat in my childhood, my mom’s favorite fast food restaurant. I have fond memories of and still enjoy this sausagey thin-sliced beef loaf, the Arby sauce, the horsey sauce, the potato cakes. Curly fries? They’re great, fantastic, but not for me, not at Arby’s. I’ll have the potato cakes, and I’ll use them to swipe up some of the same Arby/Horsey sauce mixture I’m dunking the sandwich in.

It’s certainly better, as far as hot roast beef sandwiches go, than the product of a local sub shop that I’ve tried more times than I probably should. (Twice. I’ve tried it twice. Once should have told me all I need to know)

You’d think, since they put Roast Beef proudly on their sign, that they’d do at least a passable job of it. Sadly, this is not the case. They offer both a hot roast beef sandwich and a cold roast beef sandwich. The difference between the two is that when one orders a hot roast beef sandwich, they assemble and wrap a cold roast beef sandwich then heat it in the microwave. This time around, I stuck with the cold roast beef sandwich.

I don’t believe I’m in the minority when I say that a good sliced roast beef for sandwiches ought to have some pink in the middle, and yet the meat used at Submarine Port is almost uniformly gray, whether it’s spent some time in the microwave or not. The bread is a soft and undistinguished sesame seed roll, and “everything” on this sandwich includes lettuce, tomato, onion, and vinaigrette. To be fair, I did enjoy the garlic cheese fries I ordered with the sandwich, so the visit wasn’t a total loss.

Contrast that with the roast beef sandwich I’d had earlier that day, from our friends at J.P. Graziano in Chicago.

Graziano’s sources their beef from local vendor Fabbri and their ciabatta bread from Publican Quality Bread. The sandwich brings these together along with mayonnaise, arugula, and J.P. Graziano’s house-made giardiniera.

J.P. Graziano doesn’t have a kitchen and so they don’t offer hot sandwiches, but I like to think of this as their cold version of an Italian beef sandwich. It uses the familiar Italian roasted beef and giardiniera, but subs the lovely rustic ciabatta for the typical Turano or Gonnella French Rolls, and uses mayonnaise and arugula in place of the hot gravy. The effect is altogether different than the Italian Beef sandwich, but the sandwiches share much of the same DNA. While ciabatta would fall apart soaked in the beef gravy withstood by the sturdier French rolls, here it shapes itself around the sandwich fillings, containing them and providing the fantastic texture and flavor of its own.

So what makes a good roast beef for sandwiches? Whereas a beef roast that will be served hot should be from a fatty and flavorful cut of meat, a beef roast that will be cooled and sliced for sandwiches needs to be leaner to avoid big congealed lumps of fat in the finished product. Top round is a good choice for this, a relatively lean yet flavorful cut from the cow’s hind legs.

Seasoning the beef is important, but does not need to be complicated. A simple rub of kosher salt, black pepper, and garlic powder is enough, though you could certainly add on to that with any number of other spices.

I like to blast the beef in a very hot oven for a time before lowering or even turning off the heat entirely and checking the roast every 20 minutes or so until it’s reached 125° F. Then I foil and rest the meat before chilling it to refrigerator temperature for slicing.

From here, the simple thin-sliced roast beef, any number of sandwich possibilities present themselves. My first thought though is a simple cold roast beef sandwich with horseradish cream and pickled onions. This sandwich would do well on rye or whole wheat bread but this day I chose sourdough.

I gave myself a good-sized but not overwhelming pile of the thin-sliced roast beef on one half.

Now let’s take another look at that roast beef. Nice and rare, lean yet flavorful.

The horseradish cream is a simple mixture of prepared horseradish and sour cream.

The pickled onion is simply a red onion sliced thinly then quickly pickled in a brine of white vinegar, sugar, salt, and some spices. It’s ready in an hour or two and keeps for months, making an excellent condiment for any number of sandwiches and even tacos.

And that’s all there is to it, really. This is about as good a roast beef sandwich as you’ll have.

The sour cream has its own flavor but largely acts to soften the impact of the spicy horseradish, which has a sinus-cleaning burn much like wasabi or hot mustard. The pickled onion adds a little crunch and a sharp vinegary burst, but this sandwich is all about the beef.

But what about a hot roast beef sandwich? There are any number of ways to reheat the beef in a way that adds flavor and texture, unlike the expedient of nuking the whole sandwich. You can make a melt, pan-frying the entire sandwich in butter, allowing the meat to heat inside the sandwich, its juices mingling with melted cheese.

Or you could simply heat the beef directly on the griddle, as is the case with Brazil’s Beirute and Bauru sandwiches.

You could reheat the sliced roast beef in jus as in the case of the Italian Beef sandwich, Beef on Weck or the French Dip. The jus can then also be used to enhance the bread as well.

You could reheat the beef on a grill, allowing the charcoal fire to add its own flavor to the meat, as is the case with Baltimore’s Pit Beef sandwich.

You could partially assemble the sandwich and heat the fillings under a broiler, adding such condiments as horseradish cream after the fact.

Alternatively, if you’re Manny’s Cafeteria and Deli in Chicago, you can have a hot hunk of roast beef ready to go and someone to hand-slice it to order. A friend tipped me off to this, what he called the “unsung hero” of Manny’s. I find myself agreeing.

Just don’t throw a wrapped sandwich complete with lettuce, tomato, and onion into a Microwave and call it a hot roast beef sandwich. And please, if that’s what they do at Arby’s, don’t tell me. I’m happier not knowing.