SippitySup

Precise measurements. Fancy ingredients. Adherence to traditional methods. Sometimes a recipe can fail or fly depending on how much care and effort you put into the details. Then there’s that other sort. Recipes that simply cannot fail no matter what you do. Sure, these foolproof recipes are often simple to prepare. But that’s not what makes them guaranteed winners. An omelet is simple to prepare yet notoriously difficult to perfect. Not so with the humble egg sandwich. I don’t care how you make it or exactly what you put in it. As long as you’ve got eggs, cheese, and bread clutched in your fist you’re probably holding the best-sandwich-ever. Every time. In all its infinite variations.

Perhaps it’s in our DNA. Eggs are elemental on many levels and cheese never ceases to satisfy. I guess that’s why the egg sandwich simply cannot fail in any regard. It cannot fail to nourish. It cannot fail to please. It cannot fail to make me look twice every time I come across it on a menu. I may not order it every time I come across it, but when I don’t I find myself wondering what I missed.

Would it be…

…simple and glorious scrambled eggs with ham and cheese on toast?

…open-faced and fancy with Gruyère and herbs?

…made sweet and savory with apple butter and super sharp Cheddar?

…a contradictory fried egg white with Swiss cheese on an everything bagel?

…served Southern-style on a biscuit with cheese in every bite?

…folded into a tortilla with fried carnitas and green chilies?

…or, in the classic and possibly greatest conception. Crisp bacon, runny eggs, and melted cheese on a roll. A soft roll. The kind of roll you know you shouldn’t eat.

In NYC delis they call this sandwich the BEC and it deserves to be every bit as famous as the BLT because there’s never been a bad egg sandwich in the history of the world. Period. GREG

Expand Recipe…

Deli-Style Egg on a Roll 

By: Greg Henry

Print This Recipe Total time Yield 1Source Adapted from NYC DelisPublished April 26, 2017

Ingredients

• 1 soft roll (such as a Kaiser roll or brioche bun)
• 3 tablespoon unsalted butter (at room temperature, divided)
• 2 large eggs (at room temperature)
• salt and pepper (for seasoning)
• 1 slice sharp, white Cheddar cheese
• 2 slice bacon (cooked until crisp, then halved crosswise)

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Directions

Turn on the broiler.

Heat a large dry skillet over medium-high heat. Slice the roll horizontally and toast until hot and crispy. Set the roll aside and lower the heat on the skillet to medium.

Butter the toasted roll with a one tablespoon butter on each toasted side. Let the butter get absorbed and continue to work edge to edge using a whole tablespoon on each side of the bun.

Add the remaining tablespoon butter to the hot skillet. Once it melts and gets foamy crack the eggs into the skillet. Get them close enough to be touching. You want them co-joined. Cook the eggs over easy, taking care to keep the yolks intact when you flip them. Lightly season with salt and pepper.

Remove the skillet from the heat and roll the white under if necessary to make the eggs bun-sized. Lay a slice of cheese and 2 half strips of bacon crisscross on top of the eggs. Set the skillet under the broiler until the cheese just begins to melt, and the bacon softens somewhat about 1 minute. Remove from heat. Lay 2 remaining half pieces of bacon crisscross onto the bottom of the roll. Top these slices with the egg and cheese combination. Close the sandwich with the top of the buttered roll. Eat immediately.

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