While what makes a sandwich a sandwich is, as we’ve learned, a hotly debated matter on the internet.
What makes a sandwich a better sandwich, though? That’s easier to agree on, as evidenced by a recent Reddit thread that posed the question, “What’s the best advice you’ve ever received for making a sandwich better?”
The responses to the query were many and varied, and they came from everyone from amateur cooks to former Subway sandwich artists. After picking through the lot of them, here are the 10 best tips we found, none of which involve removing the crust.
Let’s cut the mustard:
10) “Remembering that mayo or another fat like butter or a dressing is a membrane, a barrier to liquids. So if a sandwich has mustard or wet ingredients like tomato or lettuce, the fat barrier keeps the bread from getting wet.”
9) “My dad was a cook around Philly for a while. He would make Italian subs where the meat was used to tuck the lettuce, onion, tomato, cheese into the roll so when you bit it, nothing moved around. BTW, life pro tip: study the food fat guys make for themselves.”
8) “The first step towards making a great sandwich is starting with a great foundation. Bread is the foundation of a sandwich. Therefore, great bread is the first step towards a great sandwich. If you find bread that you can eat with just a nice schmear of butter on it, anything else you throw on it will be great.”
7) “Never let the meat on the sandwich lie flat. Get thin-cut slices at the deli, and crumple them up on your sandwich. It makes your sandwich look much larger, but also makes it so that when bite into your sandwich, you are more likely to be tasting the meat (the meat will have a ton more surface area, so more likely to hit your taste receptors).”
6) “When making a sandwich with avocado, don’t cut the fruit into slices and place it on the sandwich. Mash up the green stuff and treat it like a spread. Bonus points when you add a shake of salt and pepper. Also, If you’re making a BLT, always toast the bread add a fried egg and avocado. I love a B.L.E.A.T.”
5) “Put two slices of bread into one toaster slot. That only 1 side of each slice toasts leaving the outside of your sandwich crispy and the inside soft.”
4) “When making a peanut butter and jelly, especially when packing for lunch, spread a light layer of peanut butter on the side the jelly will go on, this prevents the jelly from bleeding through the bread.”
3) “Herbs and spices. Oregano, garlic, salt, thyme, or a fresh sprig of dill can make a sandwich better. If you grow any herbs, try throwing them on sandwiches and see what you get. You have an excessive amount anyway, might as well find new uses.”
2) “The bread needs to match the filling. Hard bread for hard fillings, and soft bread for soft fillings. Hard bread will squish out a soft filling as you bite it. And soft bread will just mush in your mouth as you bite through thicker and harder fillings. Examples of sandwich fillings: hard salami, grilled chicken and sliced pork.”
1) “Have someone else make it, if possible. Seriously. There was a study or something (no, I don’t have the source) that proved that sammiches taste better when someone else makes them because you’re not smelling all the ingredients and becoming desensitized to them. Or something to that effect.”
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