In this edition of Epicurious 101, professional chef and culinary instructor Frank Proto demonstrates how to make the best deli-quality sandwich you’ve ever had at home.
Director: Parisa Kosari
Director of Photography: Kevin Dynia
Editor: Boris Khaykin
Featuring: Frank Proto
Creative Producer: Parisa Kosari
Line Producer: Jen McGinity
Associate Producer: Sahara Pagan
Production Manager: Janine Dispense
Production Coordinator: Elizabeth Hymes
Camera Operator: Aaron Snell
Sound Recordist: Z Jadwick
Production Assistant: Albie Smith
Culinary Producer: Mallary Santucci
Associate Culinary Producer: Leslie Raney
Post Production Supervisor: Andrea Farr
Post Production Coordinator: Scout Alter
Supervising Editor: Eduardo Araújo
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– I’m Frank Proto, professional chef and culinary instructor, and today I’m gonna show you all the techniques on how to make the perfect sandwich. We’re talking bread, we’re talking toppings, condiments, texture, flavor, acidity, all the great elements that make a perfect sandwich. This is Sandwich 101.
In order to make the most perfect sandwich, we gotta start with the most important thing, the bread. I think the bread is the most important part of the sandwich because the last thing I ever want is my sandwich to fall apart. With sturdy ingredients like turkey and cheese,
I have a sturdier bread that will hold them up. With lighter ingredients, maybe like a tuna salad or an avocado, you want a lighter bread because it can handle it. They won’t fall apart under the pressure. I’m using a seeded Italian loaf. I have sesame seeds.
Not only do they add texture, they add flavor to the sandwich, and that’s probably my favorite sandwich bread to use. So the first thing I’m gonna do is slice my bread all the way through. I’ve seen lots of sandwiches that leave a hinge there. And what I don’t like about that
Is that people will pile the fillings in the middle, and then when you fold this over the top, you get a lump of fillings here and no fillings here. So I like to open it all the way. No hinge sandwiches for me. First thing I put on the bottom is the cheese.
The cheese protects the bread from getting soggy. I want it to hold back all the juices so that it soaks into the top of the bread. I’m using provolone. It adds some sharpness, it adds some creaminess, and it also adds a lot of balance to our sandwich.
I don’t want it to be that flavor forward, I want it to be a background flavor. I just wanna fill the bottom of the bread. You’ll notice that I’m trying to get to the edges here because I want every bite to be equal. A lot of times you see a sandwich,
Everything’s piled in the middle, and then you have like a lump of turkey and cheese that’s this big in the middle, and then you take a bite on the end and there’s nothing there. Cheese is down, I’m gonna start with my turkey. I’m using a nice deli turkey, sliced, not super thin.
I like to kind of stack it up a little and fold it a few times. Layering your sandwich is really important, but it’s even more important if you’re using more than one type of meat. I’m keeping it super simple, I’m using just turkey. But if you have different meats,
You want to consider those layers, right? You want to make sure that there’s not one overpowering the other. So I have my turkey layer on my sandwich, but I have really nice pieces of romaine here. You can use iceberg. I like romaine. It gives crunch, it gives a little freshness,
And I like to shred it nice and fine. If I have a whole leaf of lettuce, I’m gonna take one bite. The lettuce is gonna come out in that one bite. If I shred the lettuce, I get that beautiful bite every single time throughout the sandwich.
The next layer on this sandwich is the onion. Now I choose red onion, you can use white onion. I think people eat with their eyes sometimes, and red onions are beautiful. Put ’em on your sandwich. Make your sandwich prettier. And I wanna try and slice this as thin as possible.
I’m not putting a ton of onion on, I want onion flavor, but I don’t want to go out into public and everyone smell my onion breath all day. And again, when we layer our sandwich, we wanna make sure that there’s a little bit of onion in every single bite.
The next thing we’re gonna do is use tomato. I have something called kumato or a brown tomato. Tomato adds moisture, it adds acidity, it adds texture. It adds so much to the sandwich. Don’t be afraid to use them, but you don’t wanna overload on the tomato because it also makes your sandwich slippery.
Put your tomatoes side by side. Don’t stack them together. If you do stack them together, what’s gonna happen? Everything’s gonna slide apart. Condiments and dressings are really important because you don’t want your sandwich to be dry. You want it to have some texture, some moisture, some flavor.
You want all the elements to be in balance. And I’m using here 100% olive oil, not extra virgin olive oil. If we use extra virgin olive oil, it’s gonna be really strong. And for the most part, we want a little olive oil flavor
With some of the fat and moisture from the olive oil. I’m using a nice red wine vinegar. Again, don’t overpower. Don’t use too much. Vinegar add acidity to our sandwich. The cheese is rich, the mayonnaise is rich. The tomatoes have acidity, but the vinegar’s gonna bump that up and give us some balance
So our sandwich does not get boring. A common pitfall when you’re making a sandwich is people don’t think you need to season it. Anytime we make food to eat, you should season your food. I’m gonna use a little salt and pepper right on top of my tomatoes. There are thousands of different condiments
You can put on your sandwich. I like to use Hellmann’s Mayonnaise. It’s just been a standard in my life since I’m a child. I like to put my mayonnaise directly on the bread, and what this does is it makes a little rain jacket for my bread. Mayonnaise is made from mostly fat,
So the mayonnaise is gonna stop my sandwich from getting soggy. You wanna spread it all the way to the edges. I don’t mind if the bread soaks up a little bit of the juices, but at the end of the day, I don’t want it to be a soggy mess
And then we can top the sandwich nice and easy. I don’t want everyone to fall apart, so just press it down lightly so it holds together. If you’re worried about everything falling out, too bad. Sometimes when you shred things, things might fall out. That’s just an extra snack after you finish your sandwich.
Believe it or not, how you cut a sandwich is important as well. With this sandwich, a little less so, but if you had a square sandwich, you really want to consider how are you gonna cut it. If you want to get that best bite possible in every bite of your sandwich.
I use a serrated knife in a sawing motion. You don’t wanna just wrench down on that sandwich and squish everything. I’ll reserve this half for a good friend. Cut the other part in half. One thing I like to do also when I plate up is that we wanna see those fillings,
So we put the fillings facing out towards the person you’re serving the sandwich to. Some of the other considerations I have when I make a sandwich is what am I gonna serve on the side of it? I like dark rusted potato chips. They’re a little bitter. They’re nice and dark and caramelized.
I love them, I think they fit really well with my sandwich. And then pickles, I like these little kosher dill tiny pickles. They don’t have all the seeds in them and stuff. This is kind of like as you bite your sandwich, you take a bite of the pickle,
You alternate all those textures and flavors, and there you have it, this is a perfect sandwich. No sandwich is complete without a drink. Get your stance ready and take a bite. That was the perfect bite and why was it a perfect bite? Because we were intentional about the layers that we made.
We were intentional about the ingredients we chose. Nice, sharp cheese, crunchy lettuce, soft and juicy tomatoes, a little bit of acidity, a little bit of fat. All that comes together to make that perfect bite. As long as you follow this format, no matter what ingredients you choose, you can make a perfect sandwich.