Chris Makes Breakfast Sandwiches | From the Test Kitchen | Bon Appétit

so listen, go out, live your life, it's like he's trying to sabotage me. I didn't think we'd have time to make the healthiest

breakfast

sandwiches

today, but it turns out we do a lot better for you, me, and everyone else at this. In New York cuisine there is the phenomenon of the bodega sandwich type, like the classic cheese, egg and bacon sandwich, which has probably saved you from countless hangovers, countless green mornings. I myself, you know, have a deep-rooted love and appreciation for that sandwich, but you ask yourself what it would take to make that fish a little healthier, it would probably be something like this, so the first thing we're going to do is prepare bacon with onions and interpret it as you see fit.

It's not like trying to make some kind of meat substitute, but there's a certain way that the bacon gives it depth and gives it the flavor of an egg and cheese sandwich with bacon and onion, you add a little sauce to it. soy and a little garlic powder. a little olive oil, salt, it takes on a similar, not identical quality, a very similar kind of rich, flavorful umami filling, so normally when I cut an onion I go along the longitudinal axis, if that works today I'll go in the other direction. I'm going to cross the equator, then I'm going to peel it and the reason I'm going to cut it this way is because what I don't want are big, stringy pieces of onion that are going to be like coming out of this sandwich too easily, this will give like This will result in really big, nice onion petals that will flatten out and stay in place, and that's essential to building a good

breakfast

sandwich.

It shouldn't slide in and out and all over the place, that's fine, so I took the top off. I guess I could have done that first. Maybe it would have made a little more sense. It is not a big thing. I'm just going to separate the petals of this onion. I want them to have some kind of big, pretty petals, separate them all into big, pretty rings. Onion pieces could never be bacon, right, but they can take on a similar kind of rich, deep, umami quality, in this case, you know, onion type. goes in that direction itself, especially the red onion, which is very pleasantly sweet, roasts very tender and has a creamy quality.

In this case, I'm helping it with a little bit of soy sauce, which is also super, you know, something rich and tasty, so I'm trying to keep these rings and leave the pieces as intact as possible that way, after After roasting them, we can flatten them on the sandwich and it will be a little like a strip of bacon, so on this I will put just a tablespoon of olive oil to help the onion soften and season a little soy sauce, this It is a teaspoon of normal soy. sauce that's going to enhance the umami quality of the onion and then the garlic powder, which is not necessarily a substitute for raw garlic, but it adds garlic flavor in a very deep and precise way, so it's a great addition to garlic. dry. rub, it's a great addition to blender sauces because it won't have that strong raw garlic quality in your face, it'll have a little more low-level umami richness than I do.

I'm also going to season a little bit of salt and then it'll be pretty good. I'm going to mix them all together and these are going to go in the oven at 350 oh. I did it again. I don't know how cool. whether or not thank you, this is what they will become, so the red onion in particular because of that sugar content becomes sweet, candied and unctuous in a way that most other onions just don't have a tendency to become kind . dry and sad, while the red onion has this delicious fattiness, there's a lovely kind of deep and rich, but it's almost smoky, you know, it almost tastes like it's been cured or adulterated in some way like bacon is, like that. that we have like our lovely kind of onion rings here that are going to be, you know, clutches in our sandwich to add a little bit of that kind of depth to it.

In fact, I'm going to throw them aside on our quick rack here, so when I was talking to Andy about this sandwich, I thought, what do you think should be the healthiest breakfast sandwich? And he said it has to have something green in it and I racked my brain like it's green, green, I mean, yeah, you can make it like some arugula. pesto Are you making arugula pesto for your breakfast sandwich? You're hungover or you woke up too late or you're staying home and just want to make something tasty for yourself. You know, I can think of so many days in my life where I probably would have been so much better, maybe 200% better, if I had something like this to help me get up and move anyway.

The point is why not use it as an amazing green chutney that has a little bit of that in it. It has a more plant-like herbaceous quality rather than just the standard red one and you could absolutely use hot sauce for this. It doesn't really matter much because we're going to augment this with something they talk about. herbs, but a hot sauce actually has a lot of complexity that you're looking for in a kind of ready-to-use condiment or dressing, so I didn't want this to become a big, you know, you know, question. You're roasting your onions, you're making some soft scrambled eggs.

I didn't want the sauce to be a labor-intensive item, so I'll use a couple tablespoons of this delicious Cholula green hot sauce. I'm going to round it up and thin it slightly with a little bit of olive oil and put some freshly chopped herbs on it and that's going to give us a really nice, super easy seasoning, okay, I'm going to chop up some herbs, you could use dill. cilantro, basil, whatever you have on hand, I'm just going to do a little mix here, any mild herbs will be totally welcome. I got our weed, so to make Andy happy and because it was the right thing to do, I got a green sauce, it's bright, it's spicy.

It's very tasty, I highly recommend it, so next step I'm going to make some soft scrambled eggs and before I put the eggs in, you couldn't just put this on a plain bagel and call it a day, that wouldn't be super healthy. Well, I have a particular affection for Food for Life's seven sprouted whole grain English muffins, they're a little bit dry carton, but you eat one and you definitely feel healthy, like you honestly feel like maybe even virtuous. I'm going to go ahead and toast. these in the oven while we work on our eggs, you guys only make me make recipes that involve breaking eggs, never pass it up, it helps if you do it with a little more eggs at room temperature.

I find what these are like. These are pretty good, I mean, I can do it, but I'm not doing it on camera for America. You know, there are two pieces of fucking shell in there, literally, I don't know how anyone does it. It's my Achilles heel. Alright. You know it's my kryptonite and I have to live with it. Well, I took the shell out and admitted that there was shell there. I did the right thing, healthier or not. I think soft scrambled eggs need butter from time to time. Moving fast in the

kitchen

I want a little snack of scrambled eggs I'll use olive oil let's face it it's just not that good so I don't know I won't try to beat it too much but a little shake is good oh.

Wow, this is some soft butter, okay, soft scrambled eggs, soft butter, they're like in the same world, take this, um, let's look at this and call it a tablespoon, so even a tablespoon of butter divided by you know. four eggs will make two

sandwiches

the flavor that you get the benefit of like the richness that you know you're adding to the already rich eggs is kind of the key I like to put the butter nice and melted it's like a little pre toast on the muffin very grippy, thanks, as soon as the butter melts I'm going to pour them in, you certainly need salt in your eggs.

I don't know if you always need pepper in your eggs, maybe I'm in the minority. but for this, you know, we already have that hot sauce in there, so I'm moving this around, I'm peeling, taking the eggs off the cooking surface, I pause for a second, season the little salts that I just find, like you know. . When you're whisking or moving something like a little movement in the pan, in addition to moving it around, it really helps to distribute the eggs and redistribute them across the surface of the cooking surface continually so that nothing has a chance to overcook.

I'm just looking for a good loose outfit and that's it. I'm going to divide this in half and into two small portions for our muffins, okay, boom, so the next step is basically done. I just want to get this cheese. a little bit melted I'm going to cut some pieces of cheese, assemble some kind of sandwich in half, melt it for, you know, three four minutes, however long it takes to get that cheese a little oozy and then we'll finish assembling from there, it'll be will divide. my egg, you don't really have to worry about the egg overcooking at this point, the cheese is going to puff it up a bit, so the cheese on top already feels pretty toasty to me, so I'm just not .

I'm not going to like the Rito stem, I'm just going to pour it in just until the cheese melts and then I'm going to finish putting it together nicely, so like five minutes, I just want to see a little bit of alcohol, that's perfect, so I was. We argue that everything is fine, the sauce goes on top, okay, okay, sauce on top, so this is what I say, when you cut the onion this way, you get a beautiful ring that stays there, it won't travel too far , did you know? I'm saying crunchy, jammy, chewy, unctuous, okay, boom, okay, transfer it from this hot, sizzling little plate, obviously you can squeeze this with two fists, you know, obviously, even on a plate, but the one that has a certain point you will want to abandon it, but.

There is something we can learn from wineries and delis that specialize in this type of sandwich and that is wrapping it and I know it sounds crazy like why are you going to wrap a sandwich that you are going to eat yourself? kind of hunched over the counter, you know, on a Saturday morning at 10:30, but it keeps everything contained, okay? I have a sheet of parchment, you know, that's about 18 inches or something, fold it down top fold on the sides, okay, BAM, okay, and then you'll sit there and say fat man, how do you eat it?

Chris, aha, here you can safely cut it in half, just like the professionals won't try the sandwich, today is your day, like you weren't like looking in your like your method cellar this is our healthiest breakfast sandwich what we have we have like onion bacon TM with a little bit of soy sauce garlic powder salt olive oil yeah and then soft scrambled eggs a little bit of butter because you need it and then like a mild cheddar cheese, I'm giving myself Oh ma'am, I have than leave that. um, so good, so good, bright, vibrant, okay, woman, okay, get out of here.

I know there are certain types of sandwiches and things that you know you just associate with eating out, but it's actually super easy and amazing if you can make it yourself, so listen, go out and have the party of your life like it doesn't exist. . tomorrow just know that there's always a breakfast sandwich available the next morning if you need it, okay, I used to do this thing where I would like to do this kind of thing like, you know, and one time someone made fun of me and He said, yes, like Chris. With all this like boom boom boom and I was like no, it's like you know, come on.