I just find turkey bland and dry as a meat. Every other common meaty alternative tastes better imo.
Deli turkey always smells like farts.
The teenager making your sando uses French bread and an ungodly amount of salt, butter, and mayo, duh!
Also salted lettuce, tomato, pepperoncini, red onion and cucumber. The meat is stacked tall to give it volume and let you get a better mix of ingredients in each bite instead of laying flat. The mayo is flavored with herbs and spices and likely a bit of sugar. The French bread is fresh, as the store gets its bread delivery daily. It may just be hours out of the oven when it hits the cutting board.
Lots of factors working towards a better sandwich here, with most of them being within your grasp if you can summon the most complicated ingredient in all of cooking : effort. That’s the real secret, and its an absolute fucker.
I will point out that it generally takes more effort to make one sandwich, than it takes to make one sandwich out of a hundred. Getting fresh bread and (fresh?) spiced mayo is extra work that you only need to do once per multiple sandwiches, but it doesn’t really get easier when only making one.
All I’m saying is, enjoy things made by specialized professionals, economies of scale mean that it’s more efficient for one person to make sandwiches for their surroundings anyways!
Amen to effort being the absolute fucker!
You can make a really good sandwich at home with pre-sliced bread in a bag. With just some basic creativity it can be even better than anything you get from some chain sandwich store.
On bread that is sweet enough to be described as ‘cake’.
The secret To a great sandwich is, great ingredients, and even distribution. Every bite should be the same. The textures also need to balance each other, no soggy tomatoes and soft bread with bologna.
I feel like my usual answer with the “why are restaurants better?” question (“butter and salt”) is probably only half correct when it comes to turkey sandwiches.
It’s because you didn’t get the good mayo like I asked you to.
They got Miracle Whip
When I was a kid we used Durkee’s Dressing, but I never seen it in the shops anymore.
I can say a lot about this but i dont wanna text it all. lemme find a video that taught me sandwich making. I tried a lot of these things and they hold true.
biggest game changes were to lube the sandwich and to actually wrap it, even at home
I’ve seen this before, it’s gold. I have yet to actually use any of this information. I can’t even find decent hoagie rolls in my local grocery shops… Nevermind assemble a sandwich with one. I’m no baker so, I’m unlikely to put together ingredients to make such a roll, nevermind have the materials or equipment, to do so.
I’m stuck at step 1.
Maybe some day I’ll try my hand at baking, or find a lovely bakery in a reasonable vicinity to my home that I can start making good sandwiches instead of meat inside of bread with cheese and some kind of sauce… Oh well.
Lube the sandwich? 😳
you heard me, lube it and wrap it
Lubrication. To reduce friction.
Like mayo?
No you Crisco the whole thing so it slides down like those old pneumatic tubes.
Yo there was this food place at the mall food court near me that cooked up a full Turkey daily. You could walk in there in March and get a Turkey sandwich or even a full on Turkey dinner with cranberries, potatoes and everything. I miss that place, but my waistline doesn’t
Wetness
This used to be true, but as with just about all eating-out experiences, quality has dipped.
I am blessed to be from Jersey, and delis are a big part of our life here. Throw turkey, pastrami, swiss on the griddle, add mayo and lettuce on a Kaiser roll, and boom, great sandwich. But as of late, pastramis too fatty, turkey slimy, lettuce too wet, the sandwich slides itself apart.
I’ll make a simpler sandwich at home. I essentially shave the turkey, skim coat of mayo. The sandwich stays together and that’s somehow now a metric for determining good sandwich.
Tough times we’re in.
I am blessed to be from Jersey
I’m not saying you’re wrong but on a scale of blessed from 1 to 10 that’s like a 3.
Local sub shop is divine and as required uses ac rolls. It’s lovely. Good pizza too. Not from them though. Just like. In the area.
The secret is an extra slice of gravy-soaked bread in the middle. I call it “the moist maker.”
MY? SANDWICH?!?
pigeons take flight
That’s my username on onlyfans.
i was gonna say it’s no use without the moist maker
Well known fact that food tastes better when other people make it. ;)
Especially sandwiches
-turkey, bacon
-provolone, pepper jack
-grilled sandwich
-mayo, honey mustard
-cucumbers, pickles, red onion slivers, lettuce, avocado
Good turkey sandwich right there
Seriously. Am I the only one that doesn’t ever get a turkey sandwich while out because I do it better at home?
This is the at home sandwich, and I would slum it for Subway? No thanks.
It depends on the place. I have found a lot of local sandwich shops (and some less local, eg McAllister’s deli in Denver and Kansas City) with amazing turkey sandwiches and I’m always willing to try a good sandwich. Also BBQ places tend to have incredible smoked turkey meats, I feel like people underestimate how good that turkey is
The first time I ever had a meatball sub was at this small local deli. i was maybe 12, and it blew my mind how good it was. Consistently amazing for years. The first time I had a Subway meatball sub, I was sure that had messed up, it was so bad.
But they hadn’t, it was I who had messed up eating at Subway.
And yes, turkey can hit if done well. It’s just rarely done well.
If I’m getting a sandwich somewhere it’s going to have Italian deli meats, even a great turkey sandwich isn’t going to hold a candle to that.
Amen to that.
The replies pointing to salt and spices are correct, but missing one thing. You want to soak the veggies in a vinaigrette just enough to pick up flavor, but not enough to make them soggy. They need to still crunch. It takes more planning than you can do when making a quick sandwich at home. When you’re out to a deli, especially during lunch hour, they can set this all up just right because they’re churning their ingredients over constantly.
There are some types of food that are just better when they have market scaling on their side.
Alternatively you could soak some veggies in a brine or mixture of vinegar and sugar! I like tangy onions or pickled-daikon-style carrot in a sandwich.
Salt, moisture, and surface area.
You’re missing the secret ingredient.
