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by jstanley 981 days ago
Very enjoyable writing, though I must admit I never understood putting crisps in your sandwiches.
5 comments

Uhh no don't oh dear I guess I must:

Two lightly toasted slices of NOT white bread, lightly apply very good mayo 1/8 lb of good smoked ham sliced very thin 1 large dill pickle sliced fairly thin

...aaannnnddd a bunch of ruffles potato chips.

Assemble a thin layer of ham, then pile the pickle slices in a second layer, add another ham layer, then pile the chips as the next layer, and add a final thin ham layer to insulate the chips from the top bread slice mayo layer

Eat quickly. Probably need two hands. Likely need to stop walking. There will be crunching noises. I'm not ashamed to admit I've been addicted for 50 years.

Just made this with homemade French fries, really holds up. Thanks for sharing. Does it have a name?
Hang on, is that chips or crisps? As in pommes frites or Walkers?
I think 'potato chips' is always American crisps, nobody specifies 'potato' for British chips?

Also fwiw, amusingly, your attempt to internationally disambiguate the terms fell down because Walkers is Lays everywhere except the UK!

Pretty sure that was crisps. Though a chip butty is also alright on occasion.
It requires butter. A lot of butter. It's not a French delicacy but it still requires it. The butter complements the dryness and crunch of the crisps.

The bread protects the mouth. One of the biggest risks to scoffing down a bag of chips is that it scratches and scrapes your mouth.

So butter to complement the dryness and crunch and bread to soften the blow. It makes perfect sense.

Well if we’re on the front page of HN discussing sandwiches, bring it on.

1. Toast one side only of two slices of fresh white bread.

2. Construct a sandwich with the untoasted sides facing out.

3. Inside the sandwich place mushed banana and a sprinkle of sugar.

As you bite through you get soft, crunch, soft, crunch, soft. It’s a thing of beauty.

Another weird combo is crispy bacon and marmalade. In regular toasted bread.

Ah, sandwiches. One of the great foods. Source: I’m from the North East.

You need good bread for that. Store-bought bread in the US is quite bad.
My local Walmart has about 100 different breads in the bread section - too much for a single aisle.

Even the Aldi, known for having just a single option for everything, has about 15 different breads.

I'm sorry if your options are bad, but don't claim that the entire US sucks.

You've just reminded me of a German colleague who moved to the US that was asked in his first week "How are you enjoying things? What have you found surprising?" and replied with "Shopping has been difficult because I don't recognise most of the brands or products. The supermarket has like 100 different types of bread, except as best I can tell it's actually just the 1 type of bread in 100 different shapes. Also it's not bread, it's more like a cake."
I mean it's the same in the UK - there are probably 30+ different types of bread in any supermarket, but it's all the same. It has the same shape, same taste, just different bakery that makes it.
Yes, American bread is far too sweet - mostly HFCS, but even molasses make an appearance.

Let them eat cake.

P.S. But I do like the sourdough and rye bread (uncommon in UK).

Good bread is something you buy from a bakery. It's made from flour, water, salt and yeast. The stuff you get in supermarkets is full of additives to "keep it fresh" and a lot of it has added sugar.
Not every sandwich tastes as good with that style of bread tbh. Sliced store bread just "gets out of the way" sometimes.
What does the number of options have to do with how good they are?
I don't think this is generally true. It's very common for US grocery stores to have freshly baked bread, and there's always a huge variety of prepackaged sliced bread, it's not just like sugary wonder bread or something.

You can also just go to a bakery. Not sure how accurate this site is, but it looks like the US and UK have about the same number of bakeries per capita. https://www.ibisworld.com/industry-statistics/number-of-busi..., https://www.ibisworld.com/united-kingdom/number-of-businesse...

Certainly there are some places where your only option is a dollar store that probably won't have anything good, but I've been a lot of places in the US and I've never found this to be an issue.

The one time I visited the US the bread was alright! But I also had a PBJ made from a loaf of Texas Toast bread, and it was _by far_ the worst bread I've ever had.
And also in the UK.
I can see the appeal, but I offer:

1. thickly cut doorstops of wholegrain crusty bread

2. apply very mature crunchy cheddar

3. cut banana, not mushed, is layered on top

4. a blanket of either ready-salted or salt and vinegar crips

5. and the killer blow, on the opposing slice of bread, thickly, oh so thickly spread marmite.

I'm afraid, like a vampire, you've just invited me in.

My recipe, marmite and lettuce sandwiches.

Two slices of high fiber, low carb, multigrain bread. Toast if you can hold off your food-in-mouth-now need for a couple minutes.

Spread hummus on both slices. Hummus is a great butter/cheese/mayo replacement.

Sprinkle a mix of seeds (sun flower kernels, hemp, chia, flax, sesame) on one side.

Add red beet and cabbage sauerkraut, then turkey slices, to the other side.

Slap together and eat!

My personal recipe invention strategy is to constrain my experiments to high-flavor moderate calorie superfood combination bombs with construction times in the 30-60 second range. Prep: 1. Big jar of three months worth of high nutrition seeds. 2. There is no 2. This one is a staple now, but others' tastes may differ.

Even better, marmite & sliced cucumber
Wait until you see a chip butty then.

Urk: I’ve gone from “Chip buttie” to “chip butty”, I’m not a fan, I’ve had to correct my spelling twice, but I’m not trying to sneak my spelling corrections past anyone.

"butty" is correct, at least according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chip_butty (and me)
it's a texture thing. most things that go into sandwiches are pretty soft, so a crunch can be a nice texture.

it also helps that they are salted, and salt is a pretty good flavor enhancer.

Any sandwich plus crisps is a better sandwich.
One of my favourite sandwich places in San Francisco used to occasionally do a chicken roll that had corn chips in it. That extra textural element was ssoooo good.