10 ways to spice up your sandwich

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

The life hacker consulted with the chefs of the Shefmarket food delivery service and tells how to make any sandwich more interesting.

1. Replace the base

In addition to regular bread, there are many options for where to place the filling. Indian roti paratha made from corn or chickpea flour, Mexican tortilla, thin yeast-free pita bread that can be eaten even by those who monitor weight, Italian ciabatta or high-calorie, but very tasty focaccia. If none of this is at hand, dry ordinary bread (Borodino or white) in a frying pan or in a toaster and rub it with a clove of garlic. Just do not overdo it: garlic gives not only a bright taste, but also an equally bright smell.

2. Pick a sauce

Ketchup and mayonnaise are the first things that come to mind, but simply replacing the sauce can give a sandwich a whole new flavor. For example, you can add a little mustard to ordinary mayonnaise, then you get the Provencal sauce for meat sandwiches, or lemon zest - this sauce goes well with fish and shrimp. And yogurt with garlic, cilantro and green onions will go with everything, the main thing is to choose low-fat yogurt without flavors.

However, it is not necessary to make or improve the sauce yourself - there is a large selection of dressings in stores that are suitable not only for salads, but also for sandwiches. Thai sweet sauce goes well with turkey, BBQ sauce with beef, grainy mustard with carbonate, and teriyaki is just made for chicken.

3. Use vegetables

They make the sandwich juicier and the flavor brighter. Ripe avocado, with its nutty-creamy flavor, replaces greasy sauce, especially in fish or turkey sandwiches, and can become the main ingredient in a vegetarian sandwich. Thin slices of zucchini, fried in olive oil or grilled, can be added to almost any sandwich. If you like spice, try thinly sliced radishes, daikon, and red onions in your sandwich, which are sweeter than usual.

4. Experiment with greens

Iceberg lettuce is perhaps the most popular sandwich greens. It has a neutral taste, so it goes well with any food. If the iceberg looks tasteless to you, try replacing it with arugula.

“Its mustard-nutty taste is well suited to meat, cheeses and shrimps,” says Vasily Emelianenko, brand chef of the Shefmarket service. - Romano salad will add astringency to the sandwich, and bitter radicchio will add piquancy. Dill and spinach can be added to fish sandwiches, while basil and cilantro are good for cheeses.

5. Toast the bread

If you use juicy ingredients - tomatoes, fatty sauces, fried minced meat, canned fish - the bread can get soaked before you even get ready to eat your product. To prevent this from happening, dry the bread in a pan or grill. It will become crunchy and will not turn into porridge.

6. Build a two-story sandwich

The most important thing in a sandwich is the filling. Here's an easy way to make your sandwich richer: take two slices of toast bread and cut out a crumb from one, leaving a crust about one and a half centimeters wide. You should get a kind of "frame".

Place the "frame" on the whole toast and place the filling to your liking: diced ham, sautéed mushrooms, tomato slices. Sprinkle cheese over the entire structure and bake in the oven at 180 ° C until the bread is browned and the cheese is melted. It will be even tastier if you pour the filling with a raw egg and bake until tender.

7. Add spice

Pickled capers and olives for meat and fish sandwiches are interchangeable ingredients, although they can be used together as well. Sour sun-dried tomatoes and spicy pickles go well with meat, pickled gherkins go well with fish, and spicy Korean kimchi will give the sandwich an exotic Far Eastern flavor.

8. Give up bread

If you want to keep slim, you can make a sandwich without bread at all. It is successfully replaced by slices of grilled eggplant (they should not be thinner than 1 cm), cucumbers cut along the length (the center should be carefully removed with a teaspoon), baked potato slices or shop puffed rice crackers.

9. Add sweets

It seems that there is no place for sweet ingredients in salty sandwiches. Nothing like this! For example, fried chicken breast will only taste better if you add a little canned pineapple to it, dry-cured ham goes well with ripe melon, and any moldy cheeses only taste better in the company of pear and black bread.

10. Make a dessert sandwich

Actually, there may not be any salty ingredients in a sandwich at all. Dessert sandwiches also have a right to exist. Black bread with curd mass and dried fruits, toasted white toast with chocolate-nut spread and bananas or cottage cheese and grated apple, grain bread with Philadelphia cheese and fresh strawberries - a simple and quick alternative to time-consuming cakes and pastries.