The Recipe with Kenji and Deb - Bacon Egg & Cheese

Episode Date: December 16, 2024

There comes a point in every New Yorker’s life when they venture outside city limits and learn, to their horror, 24-hour access to breakfast sandwiches via bodegas spaced two blocks apart is not the norm in the rest of the world. When Deb and Kenji start breaking down each component, you will realize that it takes a lot of skill and discernment to a) choose the right ingredients b) prepare them all to perfection at the exact same time. You will never take the humble BEC for granted again.Radiotopia’s fall fundraiser is here! Donate today to support The Recipe. Thank you!  Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Hi, I'm Audrey Mardovich, executive producer of PRX's Radiotopia, and I want to thank everyone who's already donated to the network's fall fundraiser. Seriously, for real, thank you. It means so much. Truth be told, though, just a small percentage of our listeners donate to support the recipe and the network. If just 1% of our listeners donated, we would hit our goal today. We'd be in great shape for next year, which means that Deb and Kenji and the whole recipe crew

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And as a token of our thanks when you donate, you'll get access to a list of all of our show's favorite things curated by our hosts and producers. And it's really good. There's some really fun stuff on there. So that's radiotopia.fm slash donate. And thank you so much and happy listening. I always feel like it's gotta be kind of hard to track the origin of something like a sandwich because as long as people have had a bread and a need to go from place A to B with food, I would assume that some version of a sandwich has existed. If you say to someone, hey, think of a breakfast sandwich, I would argue that version of the

breakfast sandwich was invented by McDonald's. There's more in the middle of an egg McMuffin than an egg in the middle of a muffin. There's more in the middle of an egg McMuffin than there is in the middle of a muffin. More in the middle of an egg, egg McMuffin than he is in the middle of a muffin. Kenji, do you have a particular bias towards McDonald's? Like something about your upbringing that you might want to tell us? Um, we did, we did grow up literally above a McDonald's. There was a McDonald's on the corner of 125th and Riverside, and Broadway. I grew up on 125th and Riverside.

So the McDonald's was there up until about 10 years ago. But the egg McMuffin was invented in 1972 by a worker in McDonald's You know it became very popular soon after that. There's a an article in Time magazine from 1981 talking about the phenomenon of breakfast at fast food restaurants and by 1981 Breakfast accounted for 18% of all of McDonald's sales. And after McDonald's introduced that breakfast sandwich, that became sort of the standard form of the breakfast sandwich. All of the other fast food places

started doing breakfast sandwiches that way. And then from there, it's since evolved into sort of like, we get gourmet breakfast sandwiches from restaurants and all that and stuff. The concept existed and there are recipes for breakfast sandwiches, I think, that go back to the 19th century. In this article, I wrote for Siri Seats

about McDonald's breakfast sandwiches. I quoted Ray Kroc. There was that movie about him called The Founder. Michael Keaton played him. He's the guy who kind of took the McDonald's concept and franchised it and made it into what it is today. But he had an autobiography called Grinding It Out and he wrote specifically about breakfast sandwiches in that one. He says when one of the workers came and told him about this new invention he had, he says when one of the workers came and told him about this new invention he had. A breakfast sandwich. It consisted of an egg that had been formed in a Teflon circle with the yolk broken and

was dressed with a slice of cheese and a slice of grilled Canadian bacon. This was served open-faced on a toasted and buttered English muffin. I boggled a bit at the presentation, but then I tasted it and I was sold. Wow. And that was the origin of the Egg McMuffin, which I would say was the first breakfast sandwich as we know it today. In America. In America.

I hadn't heard that before. I didn't realize it went back that far. Yeah, 1972. It's older than me. Is it older than you? Watch it. But it's definitely older than me. I am just a baby.

From PRX's Radiotopia, this is the recipe with Kenji and Deb. Where we help you discover your own perfect recipes. Kenji is the author of The Food Lab and The Walk and a columnist for The New York Times. Deb is the creator of Smitten Kitchen and the author of three best-selling cookbooks. We've both been professional recipe developers for nearly two decades, and've got the same basic goal to make recipes that work for you and make you excited to get in the kitchen. But we've got very different approaches and on this show we'll cook and talk about each other's recipes comparing notes to see what we can learn from each other. This week on The Recipe with Kenji and Deb we're talking about the bacon, egg and cheese breakfast

sandwich. That's next on The Recipe with Kenji and Deb. So, Deb, you're a New Yorker. I'm a New Yorker. Are you aware that the BEC, the bacon, egg, and cheese, is, like, really specifically a New York thing? I am hyper aware of it because the thing is, the smell of morning in New York City... is the smell of bacon coming out of bodegas. It really is.

I was going for a run yesterday morning and I passed about six small bodegas on my way and every one of them has the smell of bacon coming out of them. And it's really just, you have to love it or hate it. If you're hungry, it probably smells amazing. Most of the time I'm like, wow, that's a lot of bacon to be smelling. I'm not really interested in thinking about bacon. This was one of the things that surprised me when I left New York, having grown up there

and then leaving, the idea that there wasn't a bodega like every two blocks. And that if you wanted a breakfast sandwich, you couldn't just walk, you had a bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich like wrapped up in paper every two blocks, right? Yeah. But it's not, it's really a uniquely New York thing. Can you describe what a bodega breakfast sandwich

is like in New York? All right, a bodega breakfast bacon, egg, and cheese is probably gonna be on, my husband feels strongly that it should be on a Kaiser roll. It's a German thing, but you don't see Kaiser rolls regularly in other cities. No, absolutely not, and apparently in New York, there's actually, I didn't, I literally learned this yesterday

while I was doing research, it's called a bulky roll. Have you heard of a bulky roll, Kenji? Yeah. Okay, I had never heard the term bulky roll before, but it kind of looks like a Kaiser Roll without the seeds on it, without the poppy seeds. It's also called a hard roll in New York sometimes, but it's like a little pinwheel that's got five petals

that kind of go into a central point, and kind of a shiny crust, often with poppy seeds. It's kind of got a very loose, kind of lightweight, almost like a manufactured Italian bread kind of texture inside. They were originally knotted, but these days, they're kind of done with more of a press, so more like if you're saying it mass produced,

to create that look that looks woven. Oh, you mean that shape is kind of stamped onto them now? Sometimes they're stamped into it. Yeah, originally they're kind of not it. It's not a stamp. It's like a shaper of some sort. Some people, such as the person I married, feel very strongly that it should be on a Kaiser roll or no other, but you can also get it on toast, white bread, or I love how delis have this. They'll literally have rye bread too, which is like such a New York thing. And an English muffin. I don't see it on biscuits at bodegas, but that's a separate thing. And it's usually gonna, I think, I want to say, is it more typical for it to be scrambled or fried?

I would say it's more typical for it to be either very lightly like scrambled on the griddle. Like they would break an egg onto the griddle and then maybe like swirl it around with a fork. But I've never seen them separately scrambled it in a bowl and then like pour it on, you know. I would say it's like somewhere between scrambled and fried, yeah. It's gonna have American cheese. We're not messing around with any kind of fancy cheese.

We're using cheese designed for melting unless you ask for something else. It's gonna come pre-sliced and it's gonna have bacon on it. Usually thin bacon that's pretty crispy and it's been kept warm on the griddle the whole time. I feel that the over medium egg doesn't get enough respect and this is like its moment to shine.

The over medium egg is the perfect egg for a runny egg sandwich. So I would say, yes, I agree. In an egg sandwich, which I think is like a food of convenience, you know, one that you should be able to hold in your hand and drive or walk down the street or whatever, depending on whether you're in New York or a place that is car-based.

I don't want eggs squirting out of my sandwich. You don't want to be eating it one-handed and it's like rolling down your hand. Yeah, and for those of you who can't watch Deb right now, she's indicating Egg Yolk dripping down her arms. We already know my feelings about getting my hands messy with foods. I don't mind getting my hands messy with foods, but there's a time and a place for that.

And an egg sandwich, yeah, I want my egg to be, whatever form it is, I want it to be cohesive. And so for me, yeah, an over-medium egg, in fact, what I would call the McDonald's round egg, which is like an egg cooked in a ring mold, like a round mold, to me that form is the best. And it's the best when the egg is just barely set. So it's still like, yeah, like jammy or like fudgy or whatever the texture you wanna call it. So not drippy, gooey, sure. Not drippy, but still like moist

and still adding like a nice textural contrast. I feel like when you cut the sandwich, the yolk can roll out, but it shouldn't go past the crust. It should keep your hands clean. Cause it's about portability and efficiency and getting from one place to another without making a mess of yourself. When you cut the sandwich with the knife that you keep

in your purse or in the car. You don't have them cut it? I guess they don't always cut it. They'll do the one layer of like parchment or deli paper, cut it and then wrap it again. It does get wrapped. Wait, is that? It has to get wrapped.

The wrapping is an essential part of the cooking process. That even if you were making a breakfast sandwich at home, when I make a breakfast sandwich at home, I wrap it still and let it sit. Wow. Do you keep the deli paper right next to your griddle? I'll do a piece of foil, wrap the sandwich, and then put it right back in the pan to heat it up on both sides through the foil. But the idea is that when you wrap it, you trap in that steam, and the steam from the

hot egg kind of gets the cheese to melt, gets the whatever the bread is to soften up, and the whole thing gets like a kind of cohesiveness, what Ed Levine calls the cosmic oneness. You know, it all just comes together into one thing instead of a stack of separate ingredients. The cosmic oneness, I love that so much. One of my pet peeves with the way some bodega bacon, egg and cheeses are made is that I don't like it when the cheese is an afterthought. Like they make the whole sandwich and then they throw the cheese on because it often doesn't melt enough.

It's supposed to, but it doesn't. And I went on this whole thing a bunch of years ago where I have a recipe on my site where I call it like my bodega egg and cheese and people don't like it because it's not bodega style. But I basically thinly scramble an egg and I fold, like almost you pour it into a pan like a crepe and you put the piece of cheese in the middle, fold the sides over into the perfect packets

that when you bite into it or cut into it, you get the perfect cheesy melt down the center. So sometimes when I make a breakfast sandwich, I call them origami breakfast sandwiches for my kids, but we do that where we make like a real thin omelet and then you stack like your cheese directly on the egg and your English muffin halves directly on the egg and then you fold it all together. There's a way you can fold it so that it all ends up as a sandwich and the cheese ends up also wrapped like kind of inside everything in the same way.

The cheese needs to be kept in a little like heating pad of sorts. Well this is one of the reasons why the Egg McMuffin I think has a basic flaw to it. Could you describe the Egg McMuffin? Like think, has a basic flaw to it. Could you describe the Egg McMuffin? Like, pretend I was born on another planet. All right. So an Egg McMuffin is a English muffin that's been lightly toasted. And if we're going from the bottom, so you got your English muffin bottom half, then there's a slice of American cheese.

On the bottom. Which is the wrong order to do it. Yeah, exactly. Wow. A slice of American cheese On the bottom. It's the wrong order to do it. Yeah, exactly. Wow. A slice of American cheese on the bottom. And then you have a, what they call the round egg, which at McDonald's, they crack the egg to order and they have like a round Teflon mold.

The Teflon mold goes on the burger griddle or maybe there's some kind of special pan and the egg goes into it and then it gets steamed. So there's no color on it per se. There's no like frying that's going on. It's all kind of steamed, but it's steamed into this round shape that is exactly the size of an English muffin.

And then on top of that, there's a slice of Canadian bacon. That's also exactly the size of the English muffin. And then all of that gets placed on top of this slice of American cheese, and then you have the top bun. So it's, I mean, it's just Canadian bacon, round egg and American cheese on an English muffin. But the main, the big flaw in it is that the cheese is at the bottom, which does not make any sense to me.

It's such a choice. I don't know that it's a choice. So I've heard people variously say that, okay, part of it is that it protects the bottom English muffin from getting soggy. Although there's not really any, like the eggs are trying to kind of cook pretty hard. There's not really anything that's going to get the bottom English muffin soggy there. I think it has more to do with the way the McDonald's line is set up and it's like there's the English muffins and the cheese on one side and it gets slid over to the griddle

where there's the where the egg and the bacon are there. And so that gets just stacked on top rather than having to like slide things back and forth. I think it has more to do with the production operational side of it than anything else. If the egg is hot, it's going to ensure that the cheese is melted even if it wasn't just from hitting the English muffin That's one of the problems is that it's only sometimes melted very often you get it and the cheese is just like, you know It's just like a little piece of plastic sitting there. It's so sad It's so frustrating because you want that cheese to be easy

Is there any softness to the egg whatsoever? Like is it ever like if you eat it the second it comes out of the paper Is it ever a runny egg or it's just not even designed to be? No it's not designed to be that way yeah no I don't think you're ever gonna get a soft egg at McDonald's. No they're hard-cooked you know it's not like they're not scrambled so the whites and the yolks are separate but the yolk is broken with a fork and then it's just kind of yeah kind of hard-cooked. Excuse me sir I have a question I've never had an Egg McMuffin.

I should have done that in research for this. I did have a bacon, egg, and cheese this morning, though, in preparation. So... The Egg McMuffin's not even the best breakfast sandwich at McDonald's, by the way. Oh, it isn't? What's the best breakfast sandwich? Bacon, egg, and cheese on a biscuit. Oh.

Some people would say McGriddles. I don't like the fake maple flavor, but bacon, egg, and cheese on a McDonald's biscuit is like my... When I used to drink, it was my go-to hangover breakfast. I don't like the fake maple flavor, but bacon, egg, and cheese on a McDonald's biscuit is like my... When I used to drink, it was my go-to hangover breakfast. And it's still like, if I go to an early morning flight at an airport, like that's what I want. I want a McDonald's bacon, egg, and cheese. So, I wanted to know, is the Canadian bacon crisp or is it just like a slice of Canadian bacon?

Is it brittle? No, it is not crisp. It is not browned at all. I mean, I don't think Canadian bacon ever gets crisp, right? Because Canadian bacon is kind of like ham. No, but you can brown it in a pan and pretend to give a texture. The Canadian bacon is not browned at all. I mean, I don't think Canadian bacon ever gets crisp, right? Because Canadian bacon is kind of like ham. No, but you can brown it in a pan and pretend to give a texture. The Canadian bacon is not crisp. The Canadian bacon is straight out of one of those little plastic steam trays.

Now, the English muffin isn't buttered at all before all this stuff goes on, is it? It might be like fake buttered. I don't know. Honestly, I'm not sure. I'm quizzing you like you're Mr. Ronald McDonald. It's also the English muffin is also not like a, you know, it's not like a Thomas's English muffin with nooks and crannies. It's more like a Arnold or a friend's English muffin, which is, which I think actually works

better for breakfast sandwich. It's got a smoother surface. It's a little bit sturdier, like a real like nook and cranny English muffin. Sometimes like it can just fall apart a little more easily. Okay, let's get back to our ingredients one at a time. Do you want to start with the bread? So we talked about Kaiser rolls. We talked about bread. Okay, let's get back to our ingredients one at a time. Do you want to start with the bread? So we talked about Kaiser rolls. We talked about bread. Okay, let's talk about bread. What was it called again? The bulky roll, which I hadn't even heard of. Bulk rolls, hard rolls, Kaiser rolls. They're all pretty similar.

They are. Yeah. I mean, honestly, I think most bulky rolls I get from bodegas are pretty terrible. And that's why I started getting mine on Brite toast and everyone thinks I'm so weird. But I like what I like. I understand it's I'm so weird, but I like what I like. I understand it's not New York standard, but I like what I like. You wouldn't get a breakfast sandwich on a Kaiser roll outside of New York. I can think of, there's one place in Seattle,

Volunteer Park Cafe, they make their own real fancy hard rolls, you know, Kaiser rolls with poppy seeds, but I've never seen a Kaiser roll as a breakfast sandwich item most places. Like it's generally gonna be biscuit, English muffin, or bagel, which at least when I was a kid in New York, bagel was not an option as a breakfast sandwich vehicle. A real, like a real, like boiled, thick, hearty bagel is very tough to eat an egg

sandwich on. My husband does it all the time. It doesn't bother him, but I actually prefer the more Canadian, Montreal style bagel that they have at Black Seed, if I'm gonna get a bacon, egg and cheese or breakfast sandwich, because it's a little more, I'm gonna get in trouble for saying this, but it's a little more bready and a little softer, and it works better for sandwiches.

When we were kids in New York, and you can tell me if your experience was different, but when we were kids in New York, bagel shops were bagel shops, and they didn't have any kind of meat in them. Like a deli and a bagel shop were two different things because of kosher laws, right? You couldn't mix the fish or the cream cheese and the meat. And so like a bagel shop would have fish and cream cheese and eggs, egg salad, but you would never find like pastrami or bacon or anything

like that at a bagel shop. I worked for about five minutes in high school, maybe like a weekend or two at a bagel shop. I grew up in New Jersey, so this was, bagel shop was in the strip mall in my parents' town, but it was my weekend job. And we did used to make egg sandwiches, but you're gonna be horrified, because I was thinking about this when you mentioned the ring egg from McDonald's. This is how they would cook the egg.

Are you ready? Like, don't get upset. I'm just telling you how we did it. They would take one of those like little glass Pyrex dishes, you know, like every mom has those. I'm a mom, I have that. Microwaved? Yeah, so they would spray it with a little Pam,

they would put the egg in and you microwave it for like, I don't know, 20 or 30 seconds. It kind of, it bubbles up and gets very puffy. And if you do it right, the egg can still be runny or you can scramble and it'll be, and I remember sometimes we would put in bacon bits or scallions or whatever people wanted. And then it was kind of perfect

because you would like unmold it right onto the bagel. Anyway, I got fired after a couple weeks there. I was really bad on the register. And I went on to work at a bakery in my town and the rest is history. I've seen that and I've done it that way. The other way I've done eggs for breakfast sandwiches that I think works really well is,

I put out a video recently, but about how to cook eggs with an espresso steam wand. What? Oh. Like the steam wand on an espresso machine. So you put eggs with an espresso steam wand. What? Oh. Like the steam wand on an espresso machine. So you put eggs in a mug with a little bit of butter. You just stick your espresso steam wand directly into the egg and you steam it for about 30 seconds. It comes out with a real unique texture

that you can't replicate in a pan because you can get them anywhere from medium to hard cooked or whatever. But even when they're hard cooked, you're adding moisture to them because of the steam and then you're aer of aerating them. So they come up with this kind of like almost real fluffy, real moist texture that I think actually works really well in a breakfast sandwich.

And you can do that in a mug and then directly unmold it because it's soufflés get in there because of all the steam and then it kind of slowly deflates. And when, once it deflates, it's like a really nice texture for a breakfast sandwich. The other way I like to do my eggs when I want a round egg is I take the lid of a mason jar, and depending on whether you want like some kind of like browning or not on your eggs, so you can take the ring of the mason jar and just drop it into the bottom of a skillet,

like a non-stick skillet, spray it with a little non-stick spray, put a little butter in there, and then just break your egg into it, and then it kind of contains the egg in that shape, which is almost like a wide mouth mason jar is just the right size for an English muffin. But if you want it more sort of McDonald's style, where it's just completely steamed, you can actually like a wide mouth mason jar is just the right size for an English muffin. But if you want it more sort of McDonald's style,

where it's just completely steamed, you can actually just take the entire mason jar with the lid and the ring, put it upside down in the skillet, brush it with, I brush it with bacon fat or spray it with nonstick spray, and then put it in a skillet, add a little water to the skillet, break the egg into it, and then just cover it.

And then the egg comes out and it's like, I've seen people also do it with tuna cans, whatever, and you just need like a ring shaped thing that you can steam the egg in. And I find wide mouth mason jar lids work real well for that. Now I know this isn't specifically an episode about like different egg cooking techniques,

but my dad would always, when he would fry an egg, he would put a lid on it. And I loved the way it would get that kind of, somehow the white would go over the yolk more, you'd get that over medium effect about it. Like it was, I don't know, does that happen when you do the jar thing too? Where it kind of coats a little bit more? It does, yeah.

I mean, it's just because I think the white that's over the yolk is setting as opposed to if you'd like to do like a sunny side up egg, that white remains uncooked. So your over medium egg process, what do you do? My over medium egg process is I tend to cook. I sometimes like a crispy hard fried egg and I'm doing it at high heat and it's really splattery. But honestly for an egg sandwich, I don't want those tough crispy white parts because they're hard to bite into.

So I'm probably gonna use either, you know, just a lower heat or just, or a nonstick pan. I'm gonna use a pad of butter and I'm gonna flip it when the, it just starts to set underneath before it picks up a lot of color. And then I'm going to add any water at all or anything like that. I sometimes add a teaspoon of water or milk to a scrambled egg, but I don't do it for a fried egg.

I have to season both sides of the egg. And the second the egg is cut open and the yolk spills out, that has to be season two. My kids know I have this thing. I'm like, we don't eat unseasoned yolks in this family. Like, I can't even look at it. If there's like that yellow spilling out and nobody's put salt and pepper on it, like it needs to have seasoning.

It upsets me, I mean, but you already know that I have weird issues. However, I don't like getting a bacon, egg and cheese at a bodega or deli that is over medium because it's too unreliable that it might be completely set by the time I eat it five minutes later or sometimes they cook it a little too long. I usually will just get this scrambled instead. Scrambled, okay.

And hope that they don't overscramble it. Sometimes I'm watching the griddle, I'm like, it's cooked, you can take it off now. I don't say it. I'm just thinking it in my head. I would never tell anybody how to cook on a griddle. But you can see that it's like, it's done, take it off. So I tend to get it scrambled if I'm picking it up because I don't like it when it's set completely and then you just have this two texture,

both dry thing on your egg sandwich. So Deb, when you're making an over medium egg or a fried egg of any kind, over easy, over medium, sunny side up, whatever it is, especially if it's destined for a breakfast sandwich, how do you go about containing the shape of it? Like shaping it? Do you poke around with a spatula?

Do you tilt the pan? So actually what I do a lot is as I'm pouring the egg out of the shell, I'm kind of doing it slowly and kind of trying to hold it in place a little bit. Like if I feel it pulling to one side, it's not perfect. Ooh, okay. I'm sure the handwishings I'm doing are very helpful on a podcast to explain this.

But just imagine pouring it slowly and you're like, oh, it's spilling this way. I'm gonna push it a little bit that way. I even might use the edge of the shell to kind of push the yolk to the center a little bit, as much as I can. Do you try and match it to the shape of your English muffin or whatever it is, or your roll, or do you?

I do, however, it's easier if you use my bodega egg and cheese on the site, where that's, as I said, it starts with a scramble and you can even do it as a one egg. And that one I use a very flat, almost like a crepe pan and you start with a round and then you put your square of cheese in the middle and then you fold the sides over. You have a perfect little packet that fits beautifully. I mean, you do have corners, but it's really perfect, even on a round English muffin. Are you Team American cheese, or are you putting like Gouda or like Pepper Jack on yours?

Are you getting fancy? So generally I am Team American cheese. However, I also don't mind having, like, you know, I've had fancy breakfast sandwiches, or I've made breakfast sandwiches at home that have like a good aged cheddar or something on them like that. And I really don't mind that

in a breakfast sandwich context. I find American cheese is real necessary for certain types of burgers, where it's like you need that gooeyness to hold everything together. Like a real smashed burger or a burger that's like real, real loose, and you need the cheese to bind it together and add back some fat to it. But in a breakfast sandwich setting, I think American cheese is good, but also not completely necessary. And I've had some real good breakfast sandwiches

that were made with like a pepper jack or a cheddar or something like that. I have a friend who makes a breakfast sandwich with cheddar and honey. And I've had breakfast sandwiches that, especially if there's like a nice homemade sausage, like if you're at a restaurant, like a breakfast place that does like a good homemade sausage, like if you're at a restaurant, like a breakfast place that does like a good homemade sausage,

and maybe you're getting some mayo on there also to add to that, to add some fat, then I don't think you necessarily need the American cheese. But I'd say, yeah, in a very basic breakfast sandwich, I think American cheese is the choice, especially if you're not gonna add any kind of sauce to it at all, because American cheese is like a cheese

that kind of makes its own sauce. Well, the thing with American cheese is I think it's more forgiving as the egg sandwich cools down and other cheeses are not. Wait, so Deb, should we talk about what American cheese actually is? We should definitely talk about it. And by us, I mean you, because I think you're very knowledgeable about these things. Okay.

Well, we'll talk about cheese next on The Recipe. Welcome back to The Recipe with Kenji and Deb, and we are going to talk about cheese and the very best kind for your bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich. I'm Team American Cheese. I think it's reliable. I think it melts well. It's reliable. It's predictable. It's forgiving if your sandwich cools down. It doesn't get that weird waxy post-melted

texture. Congealed texture. Yeah. I mean, it's a very natural thing that happens with American cheese. So, right? It's of the earth. Well, we should. American cheese is natural. I mean, you know, people will talk about how American cheese is like a... is processed, but all cheeses are processed, right? There's no cheese that just naturally occurs in nature.

All cheese starts as milk that we've done a whole bunch of things to to turn it into whatever cheese it is. American cheese, it starts out as regular cheese, right? It starts out... The original American cheese was made with cheddar and Colby. These days it's made with a specific cheese that's made just for American, but it's very similar to a cheddar cheese. And then all you do is you take the cheese, you add extra milk

protein, some extra fat, some extra liquid, and then an emulsifying salt. And the emulsifying salt, the job of the emulsifying salt is to make sure that as the cheese melts or as the cheese heats up, the proteins in it, which form this kind of matrix, you know, that whole, like in any cheese, there's a protein matrix that's holding in your fat and your water. And as those proteins tighten up,

with most cheeses, they squeeze out. And so that's why, like, if you leave a hunk of cheddar cheese out in the sun and it warms up, it starts to sweat, you know, it starts to get little fat beads on it. Or if you heat it up in a bacon, egg and cheese, it'll sweat out the fat and then once it cools down, that fat is no longer in there. And so your cheese ends up with a kind of tighter, waxier texture.

Whereas American cheese, it's like you can melt it and cool it again and it'll be exactly the same as when you started it. Maybe a little bit less moisture because of those emulsifying salts. That's the whole point of American cheese, I guess, in a melting context, at least. I take it that you didn't have American cheese in your household growing up? No, we absolutely did.

We used it for grilled cheese. That was it, yeah. We used it for grilled cheese, not that often. I didn't have it when I met my husband and whenever I'd make an egg sandwich, he's like, can you get American cheese? I'm like, no. We're gonna, like, I was horrified. And then I've absolutely come around

that it's just, it's better at the job. How long did it take you to come around? Probably not very long, because he's very convincing. And I don't tell him I said this, but he's right a lot. So, shh, he's right a lot. So he was right about this, but it makes, I think he just, he doesn't want to faff around with oil wicking out now tight solid cheese.

And he's not wrong. Like if you don't want to be disappointed, it's more, it's going to be more reliable. One option, and we've talked about this in our, we talked about this in our grilled cheese episode. One option you can do is if you do a combination, like a slice of American cheese plus a slice of a much more flavorful cheese.

Right, because the emulsifying salts in the American cheese, like there's enough of it in there that it actually helps other cheeses nearby. It lends its strength to other cheeses. It just holds the cheese's hand and helps it melt a little bit better. Aw, I actually, that's right, I remember now, I did that with my grilled cheese sandwiches

a lot where that was like the nice halfway where we could have a nice, I would do some grated sharp cheddar and then one slice of American cheese and I'd kind of break them up together and it was a really nice middle of the road. Yeah, I mean American cheese is the glue that binds our sandwiches together.

I feel like so many people hate it so much. In fact, I remember when I first did my style bodega egg and cheese and I explained that I was using American cheese in the center, but you could use whatever you wanted. There was a lot of pearl clutching in the comments. There was a lot of horrors where people expected better from me, but I have aimed everyone's standards

since then and now it's less surprising. It's totally fine if you want a different cheese on your sandwich. You put whatever cheese you want. We've talked about the bread. We've talked about the egg. We've talked about the cheese, but we have not talked about the bacon.

The meats, yeah. The meat of the matter. I have thoughts on this. Where for a long time I thought I preferred thick cut bacon. I love the idea of thick cut bacon, but it's so often not cooked perfectly. It's a little trickier to get it right. And when it's wrong and it's too tough and hard,

you try to bite into the bacon, but your teeth can't break it and you rip out the whole piece. I hate biting into a bacon and cheese sandwich and having the bacon just pull out. Yes. And I don't know, like, are my teeth not even enough? Do I need like biting? The bodegas, they use real bacon. the bacon and cheese sandwich and having the bacon just pull out. Yeah. Yes, and I don't know, like are my teeth not even enough?

Do I need like biting? Oh, the bodegas, they use real thin bacon and they get it real crispy on a flat top. I love that bacon that gets kind of curly. When you say you like the bacon that gets kind of curly, do you mean, do you like it when bacon has bits that are crispy, but bits that are also kind of chewy and still a little bit like fatty?

I like a little mix, mostly crisp, but I think so. I have a friend who works and he does a lot of, you know, like hope run, like the kitchen at like a large facility and the, this one place where he was working, the bacon was always very curly and wonderful. Like it was so fun to like put on a sandwich and he said, yeah, it's just that and they just deep fry. And honestly, I'm not even sure that I don't think that bacon could actually absorb more fat in a fryer. I suspect. Oh no, if anything, it would become less fatty because you're rendering out, you're heating

it up more and you're rendering out more. That's my theory. So deep fryer bacon, Kenji and Deb approved. But I have to say it was wonderful. If you do it real quick, you get this curly, mostly crispy, like 75% crisp, little pockets that are a little softer, and it kind of scrunches up, and it's so wonderful on the sandwich. Making a bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich at home, it's a commitment, right? Because the whole point of a bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich, I think, is that it's convenient. You can get it at a fast food restaurant, you can get it at a bodega, you can get it at a bagel shop, wherever, and it'll be done fast and easy, and it'll be cheap. And doing it at home, if you can get it at a bodega, you can get it at a bagel shop, wherever, and it'll be done fast and easy and it'll be cheap.

And doing it at home, if you're doing it with maybe sausage or you're doing with no or Canadian bacon, it's a little faster. If you do with no meat, it's a little bit faster, but it's a process, right? You got to toast your English muffin or toast your bread or whatever. And you got to do the timing on that English muffin, right? Because muffin lasts forever. And you got to cook your bacon and cooking bacon takes a long time. If you're going to do it right. It's like at least a 20-minute process

where you're doing multiple cooking tasks, right, before you put it all together. And it's just to get something that you can get for a buck 99 at McDonald's. It'll be better than McDonald's, but it'll be more expensive and more time-consuming when you do it at home, right? It's a choice you have to make. I've done it for like the four of us for a weekend breakfast. Actually we've done it once in a while. It's like a breakfast for dinner. When you're making a bacon, egg, and cheese sandwiches for four people, how do you cook your bacon? I'm probably gonna do it in the oven. It's not my favorite but I

feel like if I put it on a rack and it drips down I can still get a little of the curliness. It scrunches up nicely. So I might put that in the oven so it can stay warm. Then I'm gonna toast all the English muffins in a toaster and then I'll do the eggs on the stove. I have no discomfort frying four eggs at once. That's fine. Yeah, it's the bacon element that's always the trickiest. So I tend to do it in a pan, but I'm usually not cooking for more than a couple people

or maybe two or three sandwiches and we're sharing them. But yeah, I'll do my bacon in a pan and I like to put a weight on it. So I use like a chef's press, those presses that have ventilation. I need to get one of those. Oh, they're great. Yeah, you should get them.

But I use those because they keep it flat. You know, it's like my mom, when we were growing up, she would cook her bacon in a real hot, nonstick pan. And when you cook bacon real hot, it curls up a lot, right? Because it's like a bi-metal strip where the fat shrinks faster than the meat does. And so that's why bacon curls, you know? And so it would curl up in a pan.

And so you'd only get like partial contact with the pan. And so the bacon my mom made growing up was like real crispy in some spots, but then real chewy and like completely unrendered fat in other spots. And I kind of liked that, but not in a, like in a sandwich, I want it to be completely crispy and I want it to be thin in a pan. I will press it down like with that, using a press, or if I'm going to do it in the oven, I will put it between two sheets of parchment paper, put a sheet tray, sheet of parchment paper,

lay the bacon on it, second sheet of parchment paper, and then a second sheet tray on top. Wait, I did that method of yours. I think I made your BLT maybe this summer episode where we did that and I did your method of that. It was really cool. It's interesting, I don't know that I'm looking, I don't know that for an egg sandwich,

I need the bacon to be flat. I like it a little ruffly and bumpy. You know, the egg is usually on the flat side. The cheese, there's not like, so you can make the sandwich a little thicker and more dramatic with the bacon without it feeling like, I don't know, like one of those giant burgers that you have to like unhinge or draw like a snake to eat.

Yeah, I guess it is more dramatic. I like my English muffin also flat. Like I cut it, if I'm gonna make a sandwich, so normally if I'm just gonna toast an English muffin, I would split it with a fork. So you get more texture. We were supposed to, those are the directions. Yes, but if I'm making it for a sandwich, I'll split it with a knife

because I like to like fry it in the pan, in the bacon fat or in butter, whatever, and I want good contact between the cut surface of the bread and the pan. And also because I wrap my sandwiches at the end, having like roughly bacon just kind of smooshes it down and it messes up the egg and it messes, like I like everything to be flat and stacked and layered

so that I can wrap it up tightly and let it steam together and it gives the sandwich the cosmic oneness. Okay, so Deb, would you add anything to a bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich? I don't mind at all a thin slice of good tomato. Like if the tomato's in season, it's a nice beefsteak tomato. I actually love tomatoes on almost every sandwich. I need it to be sliced thinly.

It can't like take over, but I kind of need that. I like that juiciness. So I like it on eggs. I actually like it on a grilled cheese too. I did have a bacon, egg and cheese this morning that turned out to have a little bit of mayo on it. And it was like a caramelized onion mayo. And I didn't notice it at first.

I kind of liked it though. I like mayo. I like a good flavored mayo, like a Chipotle mayo on a bacon, egg and cheese. I like that. I like regular mayo. There was a food truck outside the Home Depot in San Mateo when I lived there that I used to go to. And it was a taco truck. So they Depot in San Mateo when I lived there

that I used to go to and it was a taco truck. So they always had like a little condiment rack with pickled jalapenos, pickled jalapenos. They called their sandwich, the breakfast buddy. It had mayo and I would put pickled jalapenos on it. And that was real killer. There's a place in Seattle called the Seattle biscuit company. They make excellent biscuits, but their signature sandwich is a breakfast sandwich

with a fried egg, cheddar cheese, kind of thick-cut bacon, and blueberry jelly, like blueberry preserves. And it's real good. Yeah, there's a place that does like a tomato jam on theirs. Tomato jam's good, yeah. I don't need that sweet element, though. You don't need it, yeah.

I would find it weird if I went to like a New York bodega and they put like some smuckers on there. That would be strange. God, the grape that's been passed around through every person, because nobody ever uses it. The Welch, like you know what I'm talking about? Like it's been there forever. It doesn't go bad, it doesn't go away.

I feel like avocado is a pretty common addition on egg sandwiches these days. It's not my favorite. I love avocado on a sandwich, but for me it's avocado or egg on the sandwich. I don't need both. And I actually love an avocado LT. To me, avocado is like nature's mayonnaise. You know, like it adds a texture element and that can compliment everything else without overpowering it. I don't mind avocado on there. I don't need it with eggs though. I feel like it's too rich.

What about fried shallots? Fried shallots mixed into mayo. Smash. Yes. I actually did an Instagram poll once asking people what they put on their bacon, egg, and cheese sandwiches and I got a bunch of weird responses and I have it all in a spreadsheet that I should have pulled up before this episode. Sometimes I ask people and sometimes I wish I hadn't asked. Sometimes I get really good ideas though. We haven't mentioned ketchup.

I feel like ketchup must be a thing. People are really of two minds about ketchup. I think food writers tend to be pretty snobby about it. I know people who are just horrified by everything, but I'm not horrified by it. I don't care for it on my eggs. But if I'm at a diner and I have a big omelet or plate of scrambled eggs, and there's potatoes, and then there's ketchup, and then the ketchup touches the eggs, I'm not like, oh my God, get it away from Jesse.

I'm not trying to make them touch, but like if it happens, I've accepted it. All right, Kenji, can you waffle a bacon, egg and cheese? Yeah, for sure. Yeah, I think it'd be kind of good. Any sandwich can be shoved into the waffle iron and come out, like to reheat. Wait, have you waffled bacon before?

Yes, we did that. That was a thing we did at Serious Eats. We did it, we waffled a bacon weave. Oh my God. But I actually think it would be nice for Canadian bacon maybe. No. Works for Canadian bacon. So when you waffle bacon, it gets that thing

where you have like the contrasting bits of crispiness and chewiness. Cause the bits that are in the wells don't crisp up, but the bits that are on the grooves get extra crispy. All right. Can you taco a bacon, egg, and cheese? Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah, yeah.

Does it leftover? I don't want to eat a leftover bacon, egg, and cheese. If I think I'm not going to finish it right away, though, that's definitely where for me the scramble comes in, because I think that holds it better. Than like an over easy egg or an over medium egg. Sure. It often takes me a while to finish my sandwich.

I shouldn't admit this, especially if it's from- I finish my bacon, egg, and cheese, I finish my sandwiches in like four bites. That's like everybody I live with, but I feel like- I get comments all the time on Instagram that I'm a very aggressive eater, which I never noticed until I started posting pictures of myself eating publicly.

And now you have a complex? No, I don't have a complex, but I notice when I'm out eating with other people that I'll finish my sandwich before people have taken their first bite. Did you grow up in one of those like eat or be eating households? Like, you know, you gotta eat fast or? No, we grew up in a household where stuff was put on your plate and you were forced to eat all of it no matter what.

And so, and sometimes I could take a lot, like sometimes my little sister would be, I remember there were dinners we had where she would be at the table by herself for like two hours after the meal was over. That was me. Because she didn't want to finish eating what she was given. Okay. Can you cook it in a pan with butter? Obviously.

Yes. I don't know that you need to butter your bacon, but that is between you and your heart gods and not me. I was at a cafe once in New York. This was Le Monde, which used to be up on the Upper West Side in Mooringside Heights. And I was sitting there and the table next to me was this British couple with a little kid, no, not so little kid. He had a strip of bacon and he was taking butter

from the butter dish and buttering his bacon. He's like, mother, I'm buttering my bacon. And I just remember him very distinctly like spreading butter on it and saying that and just thinking it was hilarious. It sounds so cultured when he says it. It's like, wow, what a great idea. It's all lack of.

Yeah, yeah, buttered bacon. I don't know if I'm for it or if it's necessary, but you can definitely do it. Yeah, I'm not saying it in a dark room where nobody can see me, I wouldn't try it. Can you get a bacon, egg, and cheese out of kids' clothes? Ideally, it shouldn't get on their clothes in the first place because your egg should be

at the very least medium cooked so it doesn't squirt out. Of all the sandwiches that are designed for convenience, the bacon, egg, and cheese should be the neatest one because it's the one you're eating first thing in the day. You don't want to get any mess on your clothes when you're on your way to work. Like it should, a bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich should be a neat affair, I think.

I mean, you don't want to mess up your sweatshirt on the way to elementary school. That's definitely something my kids are great at. My kids are feral. They'll get anything on anything. So can I get it out? Probably. Grease stains can be tricky, but I think I can. That's it for today's episode, but we want to hear from you. Is there another recipe or food you want us to chat about? Any comments or questions about this week's dish? Tell

us at TheRecipePodcast.com or at Kenji and Deb, or call us and leave us a message at 202-709-7607. The recipe is created and co-hosted by Deb Perlman and Kenji Lopez-Alt. Our producers are Jocelyn Gonzalez, Perry Gregory, and Pedro Rafael Rosado of PRX Productions. The executive producer for Radiotopia is Audrey Mardovich, and Yuri Losordo is director of network operations. Apu Gotay, Emmanuel Johnson, and Mike Russo handle our social media. Thanks for listening.

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