A BLT is Not a Bacon Sandwich. It is a Tomato Sandwich | Kenji's Cooking Show

hey everyone it's kenji and i'm gonna make a blt so this is my favorite sandwich um honestly it's good any time of the year but during the summer is when it's best because that is when tomatoes are at their best especially if you get your tomatoes either from your backyard or from from your neighbor's backyard um these tomatoes are from my neighbor alana who you will see right here hi i'm alana kenji's neighbor i have chickens and i grow tomatoes um and then uh this bacon is actually from a friend of mine um jesse bacon dealer he makes this bacon at his house hey i'm jesse lindemann a friend of kenji's i make bacon and a ton of other stuff in this smoker uh you can follow me on instagram bacon.dealer so blt one of those things where the quality of the ingredients really makes a difference because there are so few ingredients and they vary so much in quality so the most important thing to have in a blt is a good tomato because i strongly believe and you may disagree with me on this but i strongly believe that a blt is not a bacon lettuce and tomato sandwich it's not a bacon sandwich with tomatoes it's actually a tomato sandwich that is seasoned with bacon once you start with that premise and everything else kind of follows all right so i got bacon going over relatively low heat this is a cast-iron pan that was preheated quite well i let it sit there pre-heating for about 10 minutes over low heat and now i'm going to go nice and low and slow so that renders nicely and crisps up evenly that's really the key to bacon now the other ingredients we got are these tomatoes these are this is a dixie gold and this is a purple cherokee these are actually this one is from the farmer's market and this one is from my neighbor alana's backyard both of them are great this lettuce is also from atlanta's yard actually well this lettuce from the lion's yard this lettuce is from the farmer's market everything is local you know with tomatoes you really want to get the best tomatoes possible and that means getting them from the farmer's market or if you can grow them yourself even better because the thing with tomatoes is that when you buy them from the supermarket usually they are picked when they're under ripe when they're very green because they need to be shipped um and uh jostling you know jostling a nice juicy tomato around in the back of a truck being shipped is gonna squash it so they pick the tomatoes under ripe and then they ship them while they're still green and they gas them with um a gas called ethylene which is it's a gas that's naturally produced by ripening vegetables and it causes them to ripen further but what they do is they take green tomatoes and they artificially ripen them so that they look nice and red um but they don't have the flavor that a tomato grown in your backyard can get a tomato that's mostly ripened on the vine it doesn't have to be ripe in completely on the vine but has to get most of the way there for you to really get the maximum flavor out of it okay so great tomatoes great lettuce the this is bread that i got from um this is shakupan which is a uh japanese style milk bread you can use any you know any kind of sliced bread you want you can use sourdough if you want but i really enjoy shokupan because i think it toasts up really nicely it's probably just biased because it's the kind of bread my grandmother had grown growing up and then the last thing we're going to do is make some mayonnaise so these are eggs also from my neighbor atlanta's backyard flock you can use you know you can use hellmann's if you're if you're in the south you probably swear by dukes um you can use store-bought mayo just fine it's not a problem um but if you can make it fresh it's quick enough it's it's really quick and easy it'll take it'll take less than a minute honestly so here i got my whole egg in there i put a couple cloves of garlic in just that i want that garlic flavor you don't have to have the garlic the juice of a lemon oops i gotta fish that out later now the real key though is that you have an immersion blender and you have a jar that just barely fits the head of it so if it's you can't do it in a big white space you need the volume um you need the you need to have a bit of height in there which is why the head needs to just barely fit in there for this to work and then we're gonna add oil this is uh rice bran oil but you can use you know canola vegetable any kind of neutral oil is fine i'm gonna add about a cup of it in here to get it started and then what i'm going to do is i'm going to finish it the rest of the way with some of this rendered bacon fat let's see how that bacon's doing i begin to make too dark yeah it's looking perfect some people like their bacon a little bit sort of you know with that sort of tender chew to them i like my bacon crispy all the way especially in the blt because i don't like it kind of pulling out in the middle of the sandwich all right so we're going to take some of this bacon fat let me get a uh what am i going to pour them into and we're going to add it to our mayonnaise here baconaze okay so watch this so i'm going to turn this on high power and if all goes right it's going to turn into mayonnaise right before your very eyes ready we're going to slowly pull this up perfect a little bit more oil all right and that's how you make mayonnaise we'll taste it for seasoning probably not gonna need too much salt because that bacon fat probably has some salt in it but no need some salt let's pull the salt over here so when you're making mayonnaise you can make it the traditional way which is where you you know whisk the egg yolk and you um slowly trickle the oil in um the idea is that you're building an emulsion and the egg yolks have emulsifiers in them lecithin and that's what kind of helps the fat in the oil and the water and the egg yolk mix together and form a stable emulsion um so you can do it the old-fashioned way or you can just do it with a hand blender like this um and the reason why the reason why you need this narrow thing is that because you need to create this sort of vortex because you want the oil to slowly get sucked down into the egg yolk as you're whisking it if you try and if there's too much space in there it doesn't emulsify and your mayonnaise will come out kind of runny and it will separate it over time when you do it right it comes out nice and thick and well with like a mayonnaise texture delicious all right so now we got our bacon fat mayonnaise i'm gonna take this bread put our bacon out and i'm going to first dip it just get the rest of that bacon fat onto it we don't want to waste any of that bacon flavor okay and then i'm going to take my bacon mayonnaise spread a very thin layer on one side [Music] okay i'm just gonna pop it at the toaster you could do it in the pan um i'm just gonna do it in the toaster today because that pan is not quite big enough for two of these slices of bread and i didn't feel like heating up my baking seal today all right so we're gonna let that toast um and what i'm gonna do is i'm gonna cover the camera like this and then uncover it again and the bread's done okay so we got that sort of toasty bacon flavor built in on one side by the way if you're only using homemade mayo sorry store-bought mayo what you can do is just dip the bread and the bacon fat um and you can toast it in the bacon fat directly on the skillet um or you could dip it in the bacon fat and put in the toaster so i'm gonna put that bacon fat on the inside um and just the toasted part on the outside so that my fingers don't get super greasy and now here's how i like to construct my blt um i think it's really important to have direct contact between the mayo and the tomato um you know tomato tomato mayo toast after the blt just plain tomato mayo toast is probably my second favorite sandwich which is just a piece of toast with mayonnaise and tomato on it but i think that combination of mayonnaise and tomato is super super important here you need direct mayo to mayo tomato mayo to mater contact all right so we got our mayo on both sides and we also need direct bacon to mayo contact i feel so we're going to shingle on our bacon here that one guy yeah a little bit's a little darker than i wanted it but it's all right i can tell i know i'm going to read some comments saying hey bro you burned the bacon already um that's fine you can feel that way if you want but i'll know if you've watched the video before i'm posting that comment now all right so tomato on here another tomato there oh oops i forgot the most important part so tomato seasoned the tomato you know i grew up disliking tomatoes i thought they were i just thought they were kind of bland watery things that didn't really add anything and that's because i'd never had a good tomato and i'd also don't think i'd ever had a properly seasoned tomato the tomato needs salt it doesn't need pepper but pepper doesn't hurt it a tomato without salt is like it's like a bath without bubbles all right so tomato tomato tomato tomato let's get our lettuce on there this is just some red leaf lettuce from the farmer's market um i you know a lot of people dislike iceberg lettuce i actually really enjoy iceberg lettuce and i think you know for some reason people say iceberg doesn't have as much flavor as romaine and i think they're flat out wrong i think romaine is a lot water more watery than iceberg iceberg has a sweetness to it and it definitely has really good crunch to it i think iceberg is a great sandwich lettuce so i have nothing against using iceberg especially shredded iceberg in a sandwich like this okay there we are now important the last final important step cut into triangles because it is a scientific fact that triangles taste better and are we ready to go oh boy check out that guy this sandwich is going to drip in fact i might even step directly outside to eat this one so that it drips outside instead of inside oh my goodness that is so good and look at this guys tomatoes are their favorites good girl all right guys gals non-binary pals that is the blt and i will see you next time you

Channel: J. Kenji López-Alt

Views: 833,750

Keywords:

Id: 5BfZn9HHKI0

Length: 13min 13sec (793 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 17 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/PezCherryFlavoredPez]

"BLT is not a bacon sandwich."

**makes bacon flavored mayo, slathers toast in bacon grease, constructs 6 piece "bacon shingle"**

**note: I'd swim across a moat of hot bacon grease for this sandwich**

[u/earlgreypoupon]

100 percent agree. I can make a good blt with meh bacon but can’t make a good one with meh tomato.

[u/[deleted]]

I enjoy Kenji’s videos! They are well done and he explains his process of constructing the food! This sandwich looks delectable. I’d definitely try making this.

Kenji makes a good point about the quality of ingredients going into the food. If all premium ingredients are used the sandwich will taste great. If decent ingredients are used the sandwich will taste okay.

[u/onwee]

Wait, you can put cooked bacon directly back into the tray that was used for raw bacons?

[u/AlexsanderGlazkov]

I agree. I try to tell people this all the time but they never listen

[u/ChecksUsername]

Would people rather prefer the sandwich without the bacon or without the tomato?

[u/JStarshine]

Love that Kenji shares my "tomayo" preference. Lettuce goes in the middle.

[u/DuFFman_]

I always thought whatever the dominant protein was makes it that kind of sandwich. Which is why a grilled cheese is only a grilled cheese until you add meat. Then it's a grilled sandwich.

[u/mountains-o-data]

I slightly disagree with Kenji here and I think it entirely depends on the quality of your tomato.

Making it with my home grown heirloom Paul Robeson slicers? It's a tomato sandwich - almost don't even need the bacon at that point because the tomato is just that good.

Making it with store bought tomato? It's a bacon sandwich.