How should the ideal sandwich be? Two chefs tell us about their experiences

World Sandwich Day is celebrated every November 3, as a reminder that, within the gastronomic repertoire, this food enjoys a very prominent place in kitchens around the world. This date was arranged as a tribute to the birth of a member of royalty.

The creation and name of the sandwich have been attributed to Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich. In 1762, this gambling man asked his cook to prepare a meal that would not require cutlery, dirty his fingers or interfere with his 24-hour gambling streak. It is said that neither the count nor the cook were the true inventors of the sandwich. Prior to this aforementioned event, Montagu had visited the eastern Mediterranean and saw sandwiches served by Greeks and Turks with their appetizers, and asked his servant to copy his methods for his convenience. By the Revolutionary War a few years later, sandwiches were a well-established English meal. In some countries it is celebrated on different dates.

For more than 2,000 years, sandwiches have been around, and it’s not hard to see why these all-in-one offerings remain an everyday favorite for a simple meal: They’re affordable, portable, and available in so many different varieties.

Some reasons why this food is one of the most favorites:

• can be enjoyed everywhere

Sandwiches are easy to eat on the go or at a desk, since they mostly don’t require a plate or utensils. Convenience tends to be more important at breakfast and lunch than at dinner. Especially older consumers are likely to order sandwiches due to convenience or value, while younger consumers tend to buy sandwiches because it is a healthy option, which speaks to the growing importance of healthy sandwiches.

• You can easily customize

Sandwiches have the ability to combine some of the most beloved foods by bringing together bread, cheese, meats, vegetables, and seasonings. This makes it easy to customize according to people’s tastes and offers options of own creation or author.

• A familiar and familiar meal with endless possibilities

Sandwiches are eaten all over the world: from the Vietnamese Banh Mi, a single-serving baguette split lengthwise and filled with fresh herbs and various toppings, to the classic BLT, with the trinity of bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwiched between two. fluffy pieces of bread or pork in Ecuador. The list is endless. It seems there is a sandwich for every taste, mood, time of day, and even time of year. The reason it works so well is that it’s in that familiar format, so no matter how much the ingredients may vary, on some level you’ll always know what you’re getting. That’s something that speaks to most humans.

With an increasingly diverse and adventurous consumer base, global sandwiches are ideal vehicles for experimenting with new flavors without pushing the boundaries of the traditional carrier protein format.

The ingredients

Would you believe if we told you that the most important part of a sandwich is the bread? This is so for a variety of reasons, perhaps the most important being its ability to absorb liquids. If you have toppings like condiments and tomatoes that tend to get soggy, the right bread will soak them up and stop being a problem. However, if you use the wrong bread, it can break completely! Being a deal breaker, bread is by far the most important element of this food.

“All bread is good to prepare a sandwich and for me, 50 percent of success lies in the bread,” says Santiago Granda, director of the School of Chefs.

“A baguette or water bread it is ideal for its crunchy crust, soft crumb, aromatic that allows me to make multiple combinations. Others are those of sourdough, crust or peasant breads They have a more intense flavor, a more structured crumb and a point of acidity. In this classification there may be those with a mixture of cereals, flours. A third type of bread would be semi-puff pastry, the rolls or croissants that have fat and butter in their structure, are very moist, ideal for baking, have a lot of flavor and are ideal to combine with cheeses or vegetables. A fourth classification would be the brioches, which are breads enriched with butter, eggs, milk; they are very fluffy. And, a fifth would be the classic sliced ​​breads which ends up being a crumb bread with a soft crust, with a very neutral flavor”, he highlights.

Instead, chef Adrián Borja says that the bread will depend on the filling. “Taking into consideration whether it will be moist or not, for moist fillings a bread with a firmer crumb should be used, not so airy, the opposite if the filling is not moist, more airy breads with a soft crumb.”

What should never be done when preparing a sandwich?

Borja is blunt and says that the sandwich should be eaten immediately when it is ready. While Granda advises that neither the filling nor the dressing should be saturated. “A sandwich has an elementary and very logical structure that is bread, filling and dressing. For example, bread, tomatoes, cheese and olive oil. There are some who want to put three types of dressings with four types of fillings. The best thing is a sandwich with identity that has a filling and a good dressing. For something the most requested are ham and cheese, submarine, pulled pork (meatloaf), caprese; In other words, they are those that have a single ingredient, a good bread and a single dressing that can be flavored butter or olive oil, a rich mayonnaise, aioli, or pesto. Nor do you have to prepare and store it, you have to eat it at the moment because they lose flavor, texture ”.

Why is a sandwich considered a complete meal?

If the bread is of quality, it provides complex carbohydrates, necessary to give energy; if you add meat, eggs, fish, protein is provided, Borja points out. “The use of varied vegetables will provide vitamins and minerals.”

For the director of the School of Chefs, this food can be prepared with a whole range of products necessary to nourish us. “Carbohydrates in the bread, vegetables in the filling and in the sauce, and proteins because it can have beef, chicken, pork, pesacos, sausages. So if it is balanced with the right portions it becomes a complete food. To give a local example: our pork sandwich. The bread has to be crispy, with onion and the sauce that is the juice of the preparation of the pork. A delight”.

What do you think are the most consumed or favorite sandwiches in Ecuador?

“The submarine, the pork and the turkey,” says chef Borja. “We must not forget the ham from the Sierra, which is different from the pork from the Coast, as it is a sausage and not baked like the one eaten in Guayaquil. Both very rich.”