CUBAN SANDWICH AKA Cubano (All The Good Tasting Stuff in 1 Sandwich)

hey what's up if you think about it the cuban sandwich is kind of like the ultimate grilled ham and cheese but instead of just having ham and melty cheese it's also got super crispy bread it's got pickles mustard and tender roasty pork when you combine everything it's all the good tasting stuff all at the same time and oh yeah it's fried in butter to get started we need to make the marinade for this roasted pork for that i've got a glass bowl and into it i'm going to measure 125 grams of lime juice that's roughly three limes worth 125 grams of orange juice that's two medium oranges juice and then a bunch of garlic 75 grams worth that's roughly three full heads and a quick trick to get that much garlic peeled quickly is to smash apart the heads scoop them into a bowl cover that with another bowl and then shake it really hard for like 30 seconds it's very loud but it does work that's how we do it in the restaurant and usually about 90 of these cloves will lose their skins and you only have to hand peel just a couple of them now to chop all this garlic i'm actually going to use a garlic press it's a very useful tool in my opinion but if you're too cool for a garlic press or if you don't have one you can chop it up with a knife either way 75 grams of garlic going into the bowl followed by five grams of dried oregano 15 grams of cumin and 10 grams of coarsely ground black pepper i'm gonna whisk everything up to combine and there we go cuban flavored pork marinated super garlicky it's quite tart and it's going to make this pork taste very dope speaking of pork i've got a six pound or two and a half kilo pork butt that's from the shoulder and the bone is in the meat i prefer that in particular because the meat near the shoulder bone has a lot of marbling and that's gonna melt into a very luxurious tasting roast of pork now to make sure that the salt and the marinade are gonna fully penetrate this pork shoulder i'm gonna make three large scores on each side of the meat about two inches deep if we didn't take this extra step the outside would be very salty and sour but the inside would be pretty bland and that's not very pro next i'm gonna season the outside of this pork by thoroughly hitting it with some salt i'm gonna make sure to get that well distributed even deep into those cuts that we just made and don't forget about the sides of this thing there's a lot of surface area to cover here and uh yeah don't be shy with the salt this is a large piece of meat and it would take an astonishing amount of salt to actually make it taste salty next i'm going to grab the vessel that this is going to be cooking and that's my six and a half quart dutch oven but a cheap grocery store foil pan will also work really well and then we're going to snug the pork up into the dutch from there in goes half of the marinade that we just made on one side i'm going to make sure that gets rubbed all over everywhere especially into the scored part that i'm gonna flip it over from there the rest of the marinade goes down on side two and you might be thinking that this is an excessive amount of garlic going on this pork shoulder and you're right it is but to me to get the flavor of delicious cuban roast pork we kind of need it as it cooks that garlic's going to mellow significantly and get kind of sweet and taste very very good once this pork butt is well rubbed with the marinade i'm going to cover it now with the lid and throw it in the fridge to marinate for as little as 4 hours but preferably overnight the next day it's time to roast this thing so the oven gets preheated to 250f or 121c and as you can see the pork really hasn't changed much overnight it may be a little bit firmer from all that salt but it still looks very garlicky we know it's going to be good so the lid goes on and that pork goes into the oven to gently roast for six to eight hours six hours later my house is full of savory roasty pork garlic smell and this pork is perfectly tender the way i usually tell if pork is tender is by sticking a fork in to see how much resistance i get and in this case it's almost none and that's ideal the other way is to grab the shoulder bone this kind of acts as a doneness meter if you can easily pull it out clean like this with no resistance you're in business again cook times are going to vary widely depending on your oven i would say check at six hours no matter what but be prepared to go as long as eight hours now i'm gonna pop a lid on this pork and then set off to the side to rest and in the meantime i'm gonna thank the sponsor of this video bright sellers if you're not familiar bright sellers is a monthly wine subscription like netflix but it's wine and delivered to your door it really it's really it's the future basically apparently a couple of mit students who are really into wine got together to design a service that really helps people discover cool wines the process is super simple you take a 30 second quiz with their wine 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gonna grab my stand mixer and into the bowl of that i'm gonna measure 240 grams of warm water nine grams of instant use 15 grams of sugar and some lard 20 grams to be exact and this is pretty common in latin style bread but if you don't has any lard on hand go for 15 grams of olive oil instead behind that goes 350 grams of bread flour and 9 grams of salt the dough hook goes on and i'm gonna start mixing this on low speed for three minutes i'll mention real quick that the lard should be room temperature when mixed into doughs like this just like butter it's saturated fat and it will not be absorbed into the flour when it's chilled once everything's come together into a shaggy mess like this the speed goes up to high and we're gonna continue to mix for six more minutes after that six minutes this dough should be slapping around and clearing the bowl like this now to find out if this dough is where we need it we're gonna give it a little grip and rip to see if there's any shearing or tearing and that feels great so the dough goes into a medium bowl and we're going to round it off just a little bit to tidy it up this dough isn't going to get any strength building fold so this little bit of rounding helps keep things organized for shaping later on now the lid goes on and we're going to check back in 90 minutes 90 minutes later this dough will have more than doubled in size and when you poke it it's probably going to deflate just a little bit that's totally fine we're using really strong bread flour here and this dough is very forgiving now we're going to flip this onto a lightly floured work surface and divide it into two roughly 300 gram size pieces from there we're going to do a pre-shape to do that i'm going to fold in both sides flip the dough over onto those folds and then come back and round it off into a nice loose ball this pre-shaped move is going to give us a uniform piece of dough to start shaping from in a second and it is invaluable when trying to get bread into a longer skinnier shape once both of these dough balls are pre-shaped we're and cover them with a tea towel and let them rest for 15 minutes after 15 minutes these doughs have relaxed quite a bit and now they're ready to be shaped so for that i'm gonna move one of the balls out of the way and then flip the other one to be seam side up from there i'm gonna poke to degas this just a little bit and then stretch it out into a rectangle shape and then grab the bottom third and start to roll it over it's very important to note that as i roll this over i'm also tucking it back to create internal strength and tension it's not just a roll-up move i roll it forward then i tuck it back with my fingertips once this is rolled into a tube now i'm gonna use my thumbs and pointer fingers to gently roll this out and try and keep the seam that we just rolled up under the bread touching the board from there i'm gonna flatten out the ends a little bit and now this needs just a second more to rest before we fully stretch it into a longer roll so in the meantime i'm gonna grab a sheet tray with some parchment paper for these to land on and that's gonna get a solid pinch of semolina flour or cornmeal to keep these from sticking to finish these i'm gonna use the palms of my hands and my thumbs to apply pressure and roll these out that last 25 we're looking for a roughly 14 inch or 36 centimeter long tube and that looks perfect over to the parchment it goes i'm gonna roll number two that goes on the parchment now to finish this shape i'm gonna flatten the tops of each of these rolls fully round bread in my opinion always leads to a precarious internal sandwich structure so flattening it out a little bit is going to be a huge help from there we're going to top that sheet tray with another sheet tray and let these proof here on my cutting board for 60 to 90 minutes 60 minutes later these look gassy buoyant and alive to confirm they're ready for the oven i'm going to give them the poke test they're going to hold that poke and gently give it back that looks perfect now using a razor blade i'm gonna give them a score right down the middle about a quarter inch deep or so from there into a 350f 190c oven they go for about 25 to 30 minutes now it's a good time to mention that this is a pretty easily doubled recipe and there is no doubt that you could make four of these at the same time so it might be a good idea to double up and freeze a few of these guys for your future sandwich pleasures and after 25 to 30 minutes total we're gonna pull these out and take a look these rolls are a new staple in my arsenal for sandwich making you guys subs italian beefs cubans grinders whatever you name it okay now finally it's time to sandwich to get this cuban cooked properly i'm gonna use two cast iron pans i'm heating up my good well-seasoned one here over medium low heat and then the second one is just a flat heavy thing to press this sammy and that's gonna get set off to the side to build this sandwich i'm gonna lop off the ends of my roll then cut it in half and then half again from there we're gonna get it set up on a little baby sheet tray and then start to build first goes down yellow mustard i prefer store-bought nuclear yellow stuff to anything homemade or fancy or dijon this stuff is burman's from aldi and it costs 89 cents it's super sour and it tastes like it looks yellow then comes swiss cheese and if we played our cards right these rolls should just about perfectly fit this cheese now goes down some nice ham roughly three to four slices is what i prefer because i like a ham centric cuban sandwich also make sure that this ham is nearly shaved my deli has a scale for thickness and i asked for the thin end of number two please once that ham is thoughtfully shingled on next comes the roasted pork and if you're wondering hey brat wasn't that just a giant chunk of meat a second ago and yes to get this stuff sandwich ready i scooped out about half of the rendered pork juices from the roasting and then went in hands first to gently tear it apart don't over shred this you guys this stuff is very tender and it should stay in large nice bites that are barely held together it can't get too broken down once everything's looking good i'm going to toss it to coat with those juices and then give it a taste it's freaking juicy now the sammy's going to go into the oven to warm up for about three minutes because in most scenarios the ham and shredded pork are probably coming straight out of the fridge after that three minutes everything is getting toasty and now we're gonna finish the build of the sandwich by shingling some long slices of pickles this is a big dog sour pickle that i got from the deli by the ham and to slice it this way i cut it in half with my serrated knife and then went along the bottom like this you might be able to buy pickles that are already sliced long and sandwich ready like this but i wanted to show you guys that i am a bad boy with a serrated knife and yeah you should know that about me finally the pickle side is going to get laid onto the pork side and now we must do the most important step for a cuban the press over at my preheated cast iron i've got some clarified butter or ghee going down i'm gonna lay in about two tablespoons and spread that around regular butter has salads in it that would burn and that's not ideal for frying sandwiches next goes in our built sammy and i'm gonna make sure that that's well smeared in butter and then i'm gonna press it down with my hand to flatten things out from there comes my heavy flat thing in this case it's a neglected kind of oxidized cast iron pan that has definitely seen better days but it doesn't matter it's just here for mass we're gonna press the sandwich into the pan for about two minutes to get that signature toasty brittle crunchy cuban crust after two minutes we're gonna check back to see how it looks but be careful because some cheese melt might have gotten things stuck to the pan and you definitely don't want to tear anything up so i use a tool to gently lift it up like this that looks very toasty so we're going to flip it over hit it with some more clarified butter and then we're going to press it again with the cast iron after two more minutes or four minutes total we're gonna uncover this sandwich and look at this thing oh my gosh it looks crisp it looks melty and toasty and it looks ready to eat so of course we're gonna move this over to a cutting board and give it that classic diagonal cut to keep it your dish and listen to this thing it sounds perfectly crisp and brittle and i want to call out the texture of a sandwich like this is just as important as the shaved ham the melty swiss or the roasty pork pair it up with some garlicky dill pickles and some super sharp yellow tasting mustard and honestly this might be the best tasting sandwich on earth so i really hope you press yourself one of these soon let's eat this thing [Music] you

Channel: Brian Lagerstrom

Views: 761,256

Keywords: cuban sandwich, cubano sandwich, cubano roll, best cuban sandwich, sandwich, best cubano, Cuban sandwich recipe, cubano recipe, cuban pork, how to make cubanos, homemade cuban bread, Cuban bread recipe, sandwich recipes, pork, ham, pork butt, pork shoulder, Brian lagerstrom, weeds and sardines, cooking, recipes

Id: zi5zmZn6y9Y

Length: 12min 15sec (735 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 29 2021