Sandwiches are popular all over the world. Sandwiches can be open and closed, hot and cold, simple and refined, traditional and modern, but at the same time, a sandwich will always remain the simplest dish that you can always take with you on a road trip or to work. Small croutons sandwiches, canapes, and crostini are both a wonderful snack and pleasant addition to soups and salads. And large sandwiches can also become full-fledged meals. Many people eat sandwiches for lunch and even for dinner, so it is very important that the sandwiches are hearty and nutritious. Sandwiches can be eaten every day!
Making a sandwich is easy: you just need to put together several favorite ingredients with different textures. Some sandwiches are good for travel better than others. Cheese and mustard on hard bread will withstand a long journey, but finely chopped vegetables wrapped in pita will not. Green salads droop quickly, tomatoes flow, so if you want to enjoy the taste of these products on the road, wrap them in plastic wrap and put them in a bag separately. If you spread bread with a thin layer of sauce or olive paste and put lettuce and other vegetables on top, you can enjoy a juicy sandwich even after a few hours.
Get Best Sandwich Bread
The most obvious mistake is the use of low-quality bread. Any cook will tell you that nothing can save a sandwich made from stale bread. It is better to use it on breadcrumbs, and just wrap all the ingredients of the future sandwich in a leaf of green salad and eat them without bread. You can also grate stale and dried bread on a grater and fry the crumbs in butter, salting and seasoning with your favorite spices. You will get a great topping to give a crispy texture to a sandwich or an open-faced sandwich.
Delicious fresh bread makes even an ordinary sandwich delicious, and poor-quality bread spoils even the most exquisite filling. The bread must be fresh, tasty and strong enough to “withstand” the filling. Traditional sandwich bread is only good when fresh. Recently, it has become popular to make sandwiches from focaccia, rustic, rye bread, pita, tortilla, baguette, and fresh bread with herbs, olives, cheese, seeds, and dried fruits. The bread variety largely determines the taste of the sandwich and often requires a certain filling. Bread with cheese is ideal for making a tomato sandwich, bread with raisins or figs goes perfectly with cream cheese and fresh figs, and bread with rosemary will complement the filling of spinach and goat’s milk cheese.
Condiments and Toppings
If you just put a piece of ham on the bread and cover it with another piece of bread, you will get just two pieces of bread with ham. To make a sandwich, you need a secret ingredient – a special sauce for sandwiches! It will do the “magic” and turn a usual sandwich into a culinary temptation. But no mayonnaise or ketchup! For a truly impeccable taste, you need to make a homemade sauce. Do you think it’s troublesome? Nothing like that.
You will need:
- Mayonnaise, sour cream or yogurt – 7 oz
- Garlic – 2-3 cloves
- Soft cheese (camembert, brie, mozzarella or similar) – 2 oz
- Lemon juice or balsamic vinegar – 1 tbsp
- Dried herbs – 1 tsp
- Salt, spices – to taste
This is the main set of ingredients, to which you can add a little tomato paste or ketchup, chili to spice up, milled nuts, prunes, soy sauce, mustard. In general, there is an endless field for experiments.
To prepare the sauce, follow these easy steps:
- Pour the base into the blender bowl: mayonnaise, sour cream or white Greek yogurt.
- Add all the liquid ingredients: mustard, lemon juice or vinegar, soy sauce or ketchup.
- Then put the finely cut garlic and spices. It is better to salt at the end, after trying the sauce.
- All components are whipped with a blender properly – the sauce should be light and homogeneous.
Tip: prepare the sauce and use it immediately, do not store it. This dressing is tasty only when it is fresh.
As filling you can use cheese, deli meat or just meat cut into slices or pieces: fried, boiled, baked. Almost any salad with chicken, turkey, tuna or egg is a ready-made filling for a sandwich. Fresh salad greens, pickled onions, thinly sliced fresh or canned vegetables give the sandwich freshness.
Also, many people without hesitation, spread mayonnaise, mustard, chutney, creamy horseradish or dressing directly on bread, and then put everything else. This is wrong because the bread gets soggy quickly. First, put a lettuce leaf or a slice of cheese on bread, and then the sauce. This is especially important when sandwiches are not served immediately.
Moreover, in order not to add excess moisture, be sure to wipe the washed greens dry (spinach, arugula, leaf salads, basil, cilantro, parsley, etc.).
Treat Your Vegetables Right
When buying vegetables, it is necessary to pay attention to their appearance, smell, color, consistency of the product and storage conditions. Vegetables should have the right color, have no signs of spoilage and rotting, without damage to the peel.
Remember that before eating vegetables they should be thoroughly rinsed under running water and washed with your hands or with a brush. It is not recommended to use dishwashing detergents or soap for washing vegetable products.
Tomatoes, cucumbers, sweet peppers, avocados and other vegetables can be cut in advance, add salt and pepper. When you start cooking your best sandwich, you will already have a vegetable base – you will only have to put it on bread, getting rid of excess moisture. Don’t forget about chili peppers: it’s a great vegetable supplement.
You can make a vegetable base for a sandwich by mixing vegetables with a small amount of aioli, hummus, peanut butter and even maple syrup, which is especially good with baked vegetables.
Meat: with or without
Of course, meat sandwiches have high nutritional properties but do not forget that a snack does not require meat for saturation. Unlike heavy snacks (nuts, meat, sweets), sandwiches without meat are light and contain a minimum of calories.
Layer Wisely
To make a sandwich correctly, first put cheese or lettuce on the bread and grease with sauce. Wet components are located at the top so as not to soak the base.
Tomatoes should be put on cheese, then they will not release juice. There is no need to add a bunch of slippery components. For example, lettuce on the sauce, tomato on cucumber. Cheese and meat should not be placed right next to each other, then they will retain their taste qualities.