No-bread Bacon & Egg “Sandwich”

This “sandwich” is the love child of a hangover and frittata. True story.

I used to eat a LOT of sandwiches. Or toast. Or toasted sandwiches. They were easy. And cheap. I didn’t know any better. I don’t tend to think back too much on food like that; it was bland, boring and pretty uninspiring stuff. But add in one too many alcoholic beverages and the following morning, a sandwich was ALL I COULD THINK ABOUT. Yup, sometimes I make bad decisions. Involving wine. Because it’s made of grapes. That is my logic and I’m sticking with it. So, anyway, sandwiches. There’s no way – even in the thrall of post-alcohol-misery – I’m ever going to eat a sandwich. But the idea of a lovely bacon vehicle I could pick up in two hands was too good to pass up. Several months ago, Mr Meatified’s favorite breakfast had been what we dubbed “the egg cake”. It was kind of a cross between a pancake and a frittata: half the thickness of a frittata because it used fewer eggs, but cooked until firm so that it almost was like a savory pancake. Remembering that, I took the idea and ran with it. If I could get it to hold up firmly enough, I could use it as “bread”.

Cooking eggs like this is kind of going against everything you’ve ever been told when it comes to making eggs. You don’t want it “soft” or “fluffy” or “light”. You want to cook it very slowly so that it becomes firm and even a little dense. It needs to hold up to some manhandling in order to stand in for bread; so the trick is to manhandle it a little. Essentially, you want to cook the egg over a very low heat so that it doesn’t brown too much, but you need to cook it for quite some time for it to all set. It feels counter intuitive for sure and can take up to 15 minutes depending on your stovetop. I like to add veggies to mine – in part to combat the denseness of the egg with some crunch and also to give more texture to the “sandwich”. It’s best not to use anything with too high a water content (mushrooms!) as that will dilute the egg mixture down. For this reason, I saute the vegetables first to give them a head start so that they don’t release a lot of water into the eggs later.

So, first saute your vegetables. When they have softened a little and cooked off some water, beat your eggs. Scoot the vegetables away from the very edges of the pan. This means you get a nice curved edge from the eggs when you add them in later, like this:

Now, over a low heat, you want to slowly cook the eggs without browning them too much on the bottom. See here at the edges? They’ve rounded off and set. Now you need to watch those bubbles on the top of the eggs. Once they’ve stopped moving, test the doneness of the eggs at the top. They probably won’t be set yet: cover with a lid and cook for a few more minutes.

When the top of the egg mixture is set, remove the eggs to a plate and cool. Slice into quarters and use as the base for your two “sandwiches”!

Take a peek at these posts:

Bacon & Green Onion Guacamole Bacon & Berry Bites with Dark (& Dairy Free) Chocolate Sauce Leftovers Love: Scrambled eggs with sugar snap peas Cabbage Cakes