Chef notes
The bologna sandwich at Turkey and the Wolf took a lot of people to become awesome. We rely on tubed pork from my friends Leighann and Dan's butcher shop Piece of Meat, David Weiss's white bread (which he created for us), and homemade chips that, thanks to quick-pickling, clock in somewhere between salt-and-vinegar and plain. But at the end of the day, it's just a bologna sandwich, and at home you're not going to break your back to make it. Instead, you should hit the store and follow your heart. Buy the good bologna (mortadella works, too), select a nice squishy white bread, and grab a bag of chips.
The bologna sandwich is a special sandwich since it took tons of people to make it awesome. It also allows for the creativity to hit the store and follow your heart. Definitely make the sweet-hot mustard to go along with it!
Technique tip: After toasting the bread, lay the pieces of bread on a resting rack to they don't steam and get soggy.
Swap option: You could use ham if you don't want to use bologna.
Ingredients
- 1 cup distilled white vinegar
- 1 cup white sugar
- 1 (4-ounce) tin mustard powder, preferably Colman's
- 1 tablespoon kosher salt (Diamond Crystal or about half as much Morton)
- 3 eggs
- 6 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened to room-temp
- 8 thick slices soft white bread
- 12 thick (about 1/8 inch) slices bologna
- 8 slices American cheese
- mayo, for swiping, preferably Duke's
- Tay's Mustard (recipe above)
- 2 cups shredded lettuce
- 4 big ol' handfuls salt and vinegar potato chips
Preparation
For Tay's mustard:
1.Combine the vinegar, sugar, mustard powder, salt and eggs in a medium heatproof bowl and whisk until smooth.
2.Pour an inch or so of water into a small saucepan, bring it to a boil over medium-high heat, then lower the heat to medium-low. Set the bowl in the saucepan (without touching the water). Start stirring right away and keep at it, using a rubber spatula to frequently stir and scrape the sides so the eggs don't have the chance to scramble, until the mixture thickens to a consistency that's a bit looser than your average Dijon mustard, about 15 minutes. Give it a good whisk to get rid of any clumps.
3.Take the bowl off the pan, let the mustard cool, then cover and refrigerate until it's fully chilled, 1 hour or so. It'll thicken a bit more.
4.Use it now or keep it in an airtight container in the fridge for up to 3 weeks.
For the sandwich:
1.Get your oven to 400 F. Get a well-seasoned cast-iron skillet or griddle good and hot over medium heat. Swipe the butter on each side of the bread and toast in batches in the skillet until both sides are golden brown, 1 to 2 minutes per side. When they're done, move them to a rack or stand them up so they lean against each other, to keep from getting soggy.
2.In that same skillet, cook the bologna slices over medium-high heat, in batches if necessary, until nice and brown on both sides, about 2 minutes per side. As they're done, move them to a baking sheet in slightly overlapping groups of three. When they're all browned, top each group with two slices of the cheese and stick the pan in the oven until the cheese gets melty, about 3 minutes.
3.Meanwhile, swipe a socially unacceptable amount of mayo on four of the bread slices and swipe a similarly generous amount of mustard on the other four. Add the shredded lettuce to the mayo-slathered slices, then the cheesy bologna, then a handful of chips so big that half of them fall off.
4.Cover with the remaining bread slices and press down on each one with your palm, crushing the chips, so the sandwich can just barely fit in a human mouth. Eat.
