St. Louis Hot Brown sandwich

It's an open face sandwich loaded with sauce that cannot be eaten as an actual sandwich. Nothing is sandwiched between bread. In chef-terms it is similar to a croque monseur (crispy mister) and that suggests you could add an egg in semblance to a croque madame. But those are with sliced ham and the St. Louis hot brown is made with sliced turkey.

But not pre-sliced sandwich turkey such as you buy for convenience.

No. It's made with sliced turkey breast such as left over Thanksgiving turkey. Or a turkey breast purchased separately.

If all you have is Wonder bread then just forget the whole thing.

The bread has sliced turkey breast, tomato, mornay sauce and bacon.

There are dozens of videos about this on YouTube and no two are the same while each one is problematic in some way. It's like sandwiches as handwriting. Sandwiches as various ASL styles. Sandwiches as personal accents.

The best one is advertisement for Tillamook cheese. The second best adds an unnecessary step of grilling all the ingredients. The third best is two goofball arrogant chefs who do not explain the basics and brag about living a drunken lifestyle. Most neglect freshly scraped nutmeg which is fairly crucial.

This video is the chef who speaks in a sing-song voice with truncated locution and cheesy humor. He is the only one who includes cayenne pepper but he doesn't bother toasting his bread. He is also specifically particular about his choice of cheese and that is not necessary. There are a bewildering number of great choices.

That means, in the end, do whatever you want to.

Crossing two strips of cooked bacon is authentic and IMHO a bit weird.

Those will be the first things you lift off and eat separately.

Because it's a pain the butt to cut them with a knife to include a bit of bacon with each bite.

The last couple of years I've switched to the Applewood smoked bacon. This is usually sold separately at the deli counter of grocery stores. Sometimes they have it pre-cut and packaged. It's almost always too thick to use as ordinary bacon. It's more akin to pork-jerky. Tough to eat. A bit hard on the teeth.

In nearly all cases I cut it up frozen and cook it as bits in a small pot on low-medium heat. It's amazing how evenly it cooks this way. Constant stirring and repositioning assures it renders evenly and as you watch it cook in its own oil it all turns crisp in an instant. The pot tilted so the oil collects. And that can be used in place of butter. After all, the oil is where the flavor is that you paid for. And you paid dearly.

These bacon bits can be processed to dust with flour using a coffee mill and used with the rendered oil to flavor crackers or cheese breadsticks.

I think that I just now talked myself into making cheese breadsticks again. They are light as balloons and veritably melt in your mouth leaving behind a small bread-wad to swallow and the lingering flavor of excellent bacon and excellent cheese. All because of the bacon, and the smoke-flavored oil.

I chose one of the videos on YouTube because this site, It's a Southern Thing, said, "If not for the Mornay sauce, the Hot Brown would be a remarkably simple sandwich – turkey on open-faced toast topped with bacon."

How silly. Mornay sauce is simple béchamel with added cheese.

If this is the video where the chef says don't pay attention to the quality of tomato, don't listen to him. If it is summer and tomatoes are in season, then pick good farm tomatoes while available. They make all the difference in the world.