Breakfast Sandwich #158 - Lab Report: Happy Hour Sandwich aka Don't Try This At Home

Sandwich: Lab Sandwich - Summer Sausage and Port Wine Cheese Spread
Date: March 25, 2020

I warned you that there may be a rash of Lab Reports coming your way and here we are but this is still not a cooking blog. I am going to try to keep this mercifully short but we'll see how that goes.

These items were leftover from a little Happy Hour event at my Mom's - cheese spread, sausage and crackers were a staple during cocktail hour at her place. I thought perhaps that might make for an interesting breakfast sandwich, minus the crackers.

Summer Sausage on a breakfast sandwich is not without precedence - it's been used previously in the lab and also appears on the menu at Graze. We've also experimented with cheese spread before.

I didn't mean to leave the Merkts out for a photobomb but it looks good back there. Also, note Merkts melty cheese spread oozing out of the sandwich.

The Sandwich - Merkts Port Wine Cheese Spread, Johnsonville Summer Sausage, chicken eggs, wheat bread. This required a little planning ahead as I wanted the cheese spread on the bread before toasting it. If you're familiar with cheese spread you know it needs to be out of the refrigerator for a bit before it's ready to spread onto a cracker or other carb vessel. I planned ahead for this scenario. I also did well with the eggs and the yolks remained in their yolky state.

The Result - A somewhat unsatisfying mess. It wasn't a bad sandwich but was a bit too gloppy and the flavors just weren't right. Regular cheese spread may have tasted better than the port wine variety, but I was working with what I had. The cheese spread didn't hold up to toasting, it shifted into a bit of a jam-like consistency, but it was really the flavor that didn't sit well with me. Not bad, but certainly not worth repeating. On that level, this was a failure. Summer sausage can be used effectively on a breakfast sandwich but it wasn't the proper protein here.

We did learn that happy hour foods are perhaps best reserved for cocktail hour. I tried to turn the tables on that thought process and envisioned breakfast sandwich items at a cocktail party. Picture a waiter with a tray of hors d'oeuvres at a gala-type event, perhaps offering a thin water biscuit cracker topped with a tiny fried quail egg and a little crisp of pork belly and an even tinier dollop of spicy aioli. That sounds like a winner and somebody needs to make that. Not this reporter.

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Breakfast Sandwich #115 - TL;DR (Lab Sandwich)

Sandwich - Bacon, Egg, Cheese Spread
Date: 4/6/18

It was Friday morning and I was just going to make myself a simple breakfast sandwich and be done with it but I was struck by a bolt of inspiration and before you know it I had the lab coat and goggles out and there were beakers with colorful smoke pouring out of them and I was doing some bonafide sandwich research. What I mean is that when I was assessing my cheese situation I saw that I had cheese spread and I realized I hadn't tried it on a breakfast sandwich. I've used pimento cheese but not cheese spread. It's only a matter of time before I buy a can of spray cheese and give that a try. If you're not going to click that link regarding spray cheese just know that it contains this line - "Proponents of natural cheese cited this additive when lobbying to have Kraft’s products regulated as “embalmed cheese.” Embalmed cheese. That sounds pretty bad-ass. Cheese spread is probably a step up from spray cheese and with the Owl's Nest you get a gum trifecta - guar, xantham and locust bean. That is quite a blend of thickening agents but the product does have a smooth spreadability so they must know what they're doing.

This is pretty much the look I was going for.

This is the other side of the sandwich. Whatever. 

The Sandwich - bacon, chicken eggs, cheese spread. I already knew I was going to go with a soft scramble for this sandwich. That's been my preferred style lately. When I realized I would be using the cheese spread that's when this took on a more experimental tone that might be worth writing about. (That's debatable). I put a thin layer of cheese spread on both pieces of bread and added a generous splash of green Cholula hot sauce. The eggs turned out exactly as I wanted them.

The Result (TL;DR) - This was a winner. The most valuable data taken from this experiment was that the soft scramble eggs, horseradish cheese spread and green hot sauce combine fantastically - both texturally and flavorfully. This pillow of flavor rested on top of the bacon to create a relatively simple but delicious sandwich.

(The plan was to make this the shortest review yet. Write a brief description and then lay out the results. Throw in a photo and publish it. Simple. Then I started listening to sitar music and that changed everything. Perhaps the theme of this review is that my intentions and plans are malleable and easily thrown off course by processed dairy products and sitars. Things could be worse.)

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