Ómós Digest #108: The Best BLT

by Cúán Greene

Hello all,

This is a big statement, but I guarantee you this is the best Bacon, Lettuce, and Tomato sandwich you may ever eat. I can say this because I take no credit for its conception, but vouch for my ability in recognising greatness. For I am a mere spectator, taking approved action on passing its inception on to you. My only sandwich-building advice for this article and BLT is: don’t cut corners, this is scholarly work.

Cúán.

The Best BLT

It’s almost impossible to convince someone your mother’s recipe is better than theirs. What we have been brought up on, and thus consider the OG, causes powerful cognitive behaviours that condition us to refuse alternatives to what we are used to. Your mother’s stew or apple crumble, your father’s spag bol, recipes that have unconditionally formed part of our childhood, are considered primaeval, and god help any restaurant that aims to prove you wrong. While oats may in theory work in a crumble, it’s not what I grew up on, and therefore I don’t want them. I like the base of the crumble part soggy, because that’s how mum’s has always been. Whether that’s right or wrong, due to the nostalgic factors that these food memories convey, it’s going to take a lot to sway my opinion. So, for me to tell you that the following recipe and guidelines on how to make the best bacon sandwich, will indeed stop you in your tracks, may be a tall order. But I do have a confession, I didn’t really grow up on BLTs. Instead, a bacon sandwich was the mainstay in our household. Hot sizzling bacon, quickly removed from the grill (broiler) and placed directly over heavily buttered Brennan’s bread, sandwiched with another equally heavily buttered slice and cut in half. When timed correctly, the hot crispy bacon, slapped between a pillowy mass-produced white pan, melts the butter, causing a complete pooling disaster on your plate, but an absolute buttery joy in the mouth, capable of ruining any garment. And anyone who suggests ketchup, get out, that’s for chips. The bacon sandwich, not a butty (that’s for Brits), is a triumph both in flavour and texture, a nutritional and cholesterol hazard, but who cares? Not the Greenes on Sundays.

I have no reference point for the BLT. Nothing other than the placid triangular ones hurriedly grabbed at Pret A Manger, when passing through King’s Station. But, what I have had is many a sandwich. In fact, being Irish, I would consider myself a lover of sandwiches, if not an enthusiast, although it is fair to say I’ve had more poor ones in my lifetime than exquisite ones. What’s more, in Ireland, we are a ham-nation. Lovers of pork of all kinds, so much so that most lunch sandwiches of choice contain a meagre slice of ‘wafer-thin ham’, the reemergence of Brennan’s bread and of course butter, all wrapped up in plastic wrap and held in a bag until lunchtime, where it is consumed in under 30 seconds. It makes it a far inferior version to its perfectly timed and executed bacon counterpart. So I suppose, despite being a nation where sandwiches are our lunch of choice, we actually start life on quite a low calibre and therefore accept a lower standard than we ought to, typically swapping quality for sustenance, making a great sandwich a rare thing. However, what has recently been made aware to me by a close friend, is that sandwiches are best when made at home and controversially, that a BLT is not a bacon sandwich, but a tomato sandwich…