The World Table

An interactive culinary compendium: recipes, lexicon and study

Nebraska · Main

Nebraska Reuben Sandwich

  • Easy
  • 25 min
  • roughly 3 of 4 for cost

rich · tangy-ferment · earthy Leads with richness that coats and comforts, ferment tang with real depth behind it, settling low and earthy.

Ingredients

  • 8 slices rye bread
  • 500g corned beef, sliced
  • 300g sauerkraut, drained
  • 8 slices Swiss cheese
  • For Russian dressing: 150g mayonnaise, 3 tbsp ketchup, 2 tbsp minced pickle, 1 tsp horseradish
  • Butter for the griddle

The skills inside

Griddle & plancha work

Allergen screen

Found: gluten · dairy · egg

Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.

Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.

Method

  1. Whisk the dressing ingredients.
  2. Butter one side of each bread slice. On the unbuttered sides, spread dressing.
  3. Build: Swiss, corned beef, drained kraut, more Swiss, and close with butter-side out.
  4. Griddle over medium heat 4-5 min a side, pressing gently, until the bread is deep gold and the cheese melts. 5 min
  5. Cut on the diagonal and serve hot.

How to tell it is going right

This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the technique it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.

Griddle & plancha work 45 recipes

  • Full contact with the metal: the food lies flat, with no dome in the middle and no curled edge lifting it away, so browning reaches the entire face rather than a ring of it.
  • Contact is immediate and audible, and the food stays where it is put rather than sliding around in a slick of its own released liquid.
  • The cooked face is an unbroken sheet of even colour: the whole surface browned, not a pattern of marks with pale ground between them, and not a dark centre with pale corners.
  • The metal around the food is dry: no spreading wet patch steaming out from under it, nothing weeping onto the surface and boiling there.
  • Turned once or twice and no more, and lifted while the crust is still brown: a piece flipped repeatedly never holds heat long enough to build one.

Where it goes wrong The surface was crowded and its temperature crashed, so everything gave up its water at once and stewed on the metal: pale, damp, grey at the edges, and stuck fast where the crust never got the chance to form.

At the Table

The Pour
Cabernet Sauvignon or Malbec
Also Right
Tempranillo (Rioja Reserva)
From the Taps
Amber ale
Zero-Proof
Sparkling water, make room

Tannin binds to seared protein and fat: each bite softens the wine, each sip resets the palate: the steakhouse equation.

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Film school

This dish, cooked on camera Search films of Nebraska Reuben Sandwich Search YouTube: J. Kenji López-Alt on Nebraska Reuben Sandwich A YouTube search for J. Kenji López-Alt and this dish. No affiliation.