Breakfast Sandwich #157 - Full Mile Beer Company & Kitchen aka Sausage Talk & The Good Ol' Days

Sandwich: Buttermilk Biscuit Sando
Location: Full Mile Beer Company & Kitchen
Date: March 8, 2020
Cost: $11, with mixed greens

A coworker tipped me off to the Full Mile Breakfast Sando (sic). I'd been there previously, but not for brunch. I'm not sure if I knew they had brunch. 

The thing that grabbed my attention when she sent me a photo of the menu was "house-made breakfast sausage". When I first started this project I was often faced with the choice of bacon or sausage, and I usually asked if the sausage was made in house. The answer was always "no", or a long pause and puzzled look on the face of the sever, which is also "no". I've got a good nose for knowing no's. I quickly learned that if a place doesn't clearly tout its homemade sausage, it's not making sausage. I was disappointed to find out how rare it was for places to make their own sausage but rather than ask follow up questions about where the sausage came from I defaulted to bacon. You don't really want to know how the sausage is made, everybody knows that. 

Looking back through my old reviews there aren't very many sausage sandwiches and most of them are McDonald's or some variation of mass-produced foodstuffs. There's a turkey sausage and a lamb sausage and a couple of regular sausage sandwiches but I'm not sure which had house-made sausage, if any. The lamb sausage was probably made in house.

I don't know why I got all hung up on house-made sausage, nobody talks about their house-made bacon and I order that without hesitation. Actually, I know why - it's because you can tweak your sausage with more fennel or whatever so you have a signature blend. It signals "I've gone to great lengths to make my pig fat taste different", which is worthy of investigation. I am aware that a handful of places make their own bacon but I've frittered away enough of your time so let's not go down that path today.

Which brings us to the present day (or at least March 8). Let it be known that March 8 was the last time I was able to go out for a breakfast sandwich before we started hunkering down in our cacoon-bunkers and making pillows out of disinfectant wipes or whatever people are doing these days.

Technically the Breakfast Burger is also a breakfast sandwich but it never really feels like it. Anyway, I didn't drive to Sun Prairie to NOT order the house-made sausage.

Sometimes there is a lot of natural light and I accidentally take an OK photo.

Everybody knows that when you cut a biscuit in half it's going to start falling apart.

The Sandwich - Buttermilk Biscuit Sando. I need to say that I don't like the word "Sando". That's all. There are no choices offered on this sandwich, the name tells you everything you need to know about the bread you're getting and the menu description fills in the rest. 

I was worried about the scrambled egg = no runny yolk. I'm pretty much always worried about that but when I saw the ample dollop of harissa mayo sneaking out from under the biscuit my fears were assuaged. 

Yes, the harissa mayo added a healthy amount of viscosity and a little heat and flavor. This sandwich had balance - the biscuit was flaky and a bit crumbly, but held together. The sausage had an individualistic flavor to it that I couldn't pinpoint and maybe I was fooling myself because I knew it was house-made but it matched well with the tomato and arugula. 

Let me be honest here for a minute. I don't think there is any need for me to jabber on about this sandwich. It was a DAMN. FINE. SANDWICH. It was a refreshing twist on a classic breakfast sandwich and I think we need that from time to time. 

The Bloody Mary and Awesome Sound sidecar (that's one of their beers) were also fantastic.

The Result - 4.75 Less Virus More Sandwiches out of 5 Less Virus More Sandwiches. I think I already said enough about the sandwich, right? I forgot to talk about the cheese though. And the side of greens. Good, that adds an air of mystery to the whole thing.

We can't go out for sandwiches right now. I guess you can pick them up from some places and take them home to your safe place, but it's not the same. Maybe you can get takeout from Full Mile, I don't know.

This is a warning that perhaps the next 10 reviews will be Lab Reports which will likely be poorly received because I hope you're all at home making your own sandwiches and why would you need to hear about mine? Who knows what will happen? If shit really goes off the rails I'll be making possum sausage and reporting on that. I've seen that fat fucker lurking around by my shed and if he/she thinks I won't eat it, they are wrong! I haven't yet figured out which people in my neighborhood would be best to cannibalize, but it's probably the children, right? I'd be doing everybody a favor. 

Oh, relax, my neighbors don't read this junk.

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Breakfast (For Dinner) Sandwiches #113A & 113B - These Sandwiches Have a Name

Sandwiches - Bacon, Egg & Cheese Biscuit with Arugula and Dijon Mustard
Date: 3/2/18

Earlier this week I joked on a group text about bringing breakfast sandwiches to an event and one of the participants asked for "bacon & cheese biscuit, egg over-medium, with arugula and dijon". Oddly enough I already had all of those items in my fridge so I made a plan to do some work in the lab. Friday I would have breakfast for dinner. How exciting!

Of all the sandwiches I've made in the lab this is the first using biscuits which I now realize has been a horrible oversight. My excuse is that I don't usually keep biscuits around the house, but, I had some leftover from a meal earlier in the week and the lab is for exploring and in this case, filling a blank area on my sandwich palette. To be clear they were the refrigerated kind, I didn't actually bake biscuits. I've always had a affinity for Poppin' Fresh (The Pillsbury Doughboy) and I even had a t-shirt with him on it when I was younger and that's no joke. Poppin' Fresh turns 53 years old in just a couple of weeks - the day after St. Patricks Day! That ticklish little bastard is probably due for a makeover at this point and with a name like Poppin' Fresh I think he's got a bright future as a heavily autotuned rap singer. I want to be in his band and I'm going to tweet this at them as soon as I'm done here and that also is no joke. This is serious stuff.

Biscuits make for pretty pictures.

It was so tasty I had to make another.

The Sandwich - Bacon & Cheese Biscuit, Chicken Egg Over-Medium, with Arugula and Dijon. I took it as a sign when I had all items on hand so I did not stray from the recipe - even on the second sandwich. The one detail that I would have changed is to use an American Single for the cheese, which I didn't have. I used Stone Ridge Marble Cheese - a combo of monterey jack and colby which melted better than I thought it would. You can't tell from the photo but I broke the yolk on the second sandwich trying to fish out a large chunk of shell. As a result there was no runny yolk but I managed to eat it anyway. You can see I cooked the eggs using the puck method. It just makes sense when you're dealing with a round bread such as a biscuit.

The Result - This was a winning combo, indeed. The dijon adds a proper spiciness and blends with the peppery arugula. That, combined with the bacon more than atoned for the somewhat bland cheese choice. The biscuits held up admirably and were perhaps just a little too dense. They weren't as flaky as Pillsbury would have you think and they're a touch on the sweet side. They didn't crumble though and that's crucial. I have dubbed this sandwich the McEvan, named after the original requester. This is what it will be called at my all day breakfast sandwich restaurant that I will never open cause I'll be too busy playing bass on tour with Poppin' Fresh. 

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Breakfast Sandwich #82 - You Gotta Think Outside The Bun To Really Get Inside The Bun

Sandwich: Steak, Blue Cheese, Arugula, Chicken Egg, Sriracha Mayo on a Kaiser Bun
Location: The Lab
Date: January 19, 2017

I was entering the grocery store with my usual list of junk and just as I approached the produce I heard the calling of the breakfast sandwich. It was very faint but grew louder and gained clarity quickly. It soon coalesced around the thought that nobody offers a steak-based breakfast sandwich. (I'm sure somebody does, but I haven't seen in on a menu.) Why is that? This is a question that can be explored in the lab.

With that in mind I started grabbing items that I thought would make for a good sandwich.

At the time I didn't notice that little piece of blue cheese in the upper left but it looks so cute up there. 

I would eat that. Twice. And so it was done.  

The Sandwich - Top round steak, arugula, blue cheese, chicken egg, Sriracha mayo on a whole wheat kaiser bun. I knew the blue cheese wouldn't get melty and gooey like some cheeses so I added the Sriracha mayo for viscosity. I never buy thin steaks for pan frying and I was worried it would be a bit tough for a sandwich, but my fear was unwarranted. When I went to cook the steak I realized I was out of butter, I had dropped the last stick on the floor a couple of days prior, so I fried this in olive oil. Always remember - this is not a cooking blog. The egg had runny yolk and the blue cheese behaved as expected - it didn't melt but softened a bit. The kaiser bun was lightly toasted and barely kept everything in check, but in a good way. It squished and wrapped itself around the goods but didn't fall apart. I think this sandwich would have been OK without the Sriracha mayo but ultimately it was a proper addition. This was a perfectly sloppy sandwich which might be obvious from the second photo above.

The Result - 4.43 Positive Results out of 5 Positive Results. This would be a fine sandwich on any restaurant menu but I'm not sure the demand is there. I don't know if people would order it which is damn shame because I wolfed this thing down and went right back into the lab and made another one the exact same way. They say an experiment cannot be considered a success unless it can be duplicated, or something like that. Also, all the stuff was still sitting on the counter. I didn't take photos of the second sandwich, that would have been ridiculous. 

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