Toast Sandwich | Hacker News Reader

Toast Sandwich

en.wikipedia.org

178 pointsoulipian144 comments

I read this and dashed to the kitchen to make myself a midnight snack.

It was actually remarkably good. Had much of the crunch of a fish finger sandwich (an old favourite of mine).

It got to be a trifle dull towards the end but I think that could be down to my attempt to be moderately frugal with butter (a small concession to the fact that I'd already had a dinner this evening).

I'm not sure it is quite on par with a crisp sandwich (I just checked Wikipedia to remind myself that the majority of HN readers probably know them as 'potato chips sandwiches').

With salad cream of course.

Well, and most HN readers would know "salad cream" as the genericized trademark "Miracle Whip". :-)

One of my favorite memories as a kid was being at my grandma's house and having a ham sandwich with potato chips on it. Yummers.

I always assumed "miracle whip" was like a synthetic whipped cream or sweet mousse, never imagined it was salad cream?

I'm an Australian born in England - what on earth is salad cream? Let alone "Miracle Whip"!?!?!

I'm going to assume this is some form of mayonnaise until told otherwise.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miracle_Whip

It's fake mayonnaise essentially. From Wikipedia: "Current primary ingredients are water, soybean oil, vinegar, sugar, modified corn starch, eggs. Ingredients making up less than 2% of product include salt, mustard flour, paprika, spice, natural flavor, potassium sorbate, enzyme modified egg yolk, and dried garlic."

That sounds vaguely like what I know as "light mayonnaise", essentially mayo cut with more oil & water and some emulsifiers, and less egg. Is it a matter of degree, e.g. some proportion is "light mayo" and another proportion is "salad cream" or "miracle whip"?

I call it cheapo mayo with just enough corn stash to benefit from government invectives on corn products.

incentives... phone keyboard and all that.

> I'm going to assume this is some form of mayonnaise until told otherwise.

Indeed it is.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salad_cream

Well, kinda. It's got a strong vinegarish flavour and some mustard to it. I'd say it's more of a mayonnaise-based salad dressing than an actual mayo.

It's basically weak, pickle-less tartar sauce.

I live in Scotland - What on earth is salad?

I suggest you ask a Russian to make you a salad. It would break you in gently to the world of salad eating, I think you would enjoy it :]

I live in Scotland too, what's this toasting thing? Is it the same as deep fat frying my bread?

i thought it was mayonnaise?

Yeah, it is, essentially. But then, if you call a slice of toast between two slices of "bread" a sandwich, I can imagine how you would think that mayonnaise is something that should be put on a salad. ;)

Local view: The sort of bread I've seen people abroad use for toast sandwich, is essentially what we call "toast" in Germany too. Specifically, "toast", in Germany, refers to mostly pre-cut, soft bread with a squarish cross section so bland in taste and so deprived of nutrient content that only toasting will turn it into "food". Nutrient content is just as absent, after toasting, but at least the burned parts help digestion. :]

So here, a toast sandwich is a slice of (toasted) bread between two untoasted slices of the same bread, more or less. I've never seen any native eat sth. like this, in Germany.

On the other hand, we do have gustatorially misguided contemporaries here, too, that do think that mayonnaise-derived stuff belongs on a salad.

I'd made the same assumption, and even complained about the lack of salad cream in America. I'm sure there is a synthetic whipped cream, though...

You're thinking of Cool Whip

You mean Cool wHip?

Now you're just acting hweird.

"Cool Whip" is synthetic whipped cream, "Miracle Whip" is indeed a synthetic mayonnaise-like dressing.

I just ate a fish finger sandwich for breakfast, inspired by your post :)

Mayo+pepper in it and it's one of life's joys. You have to fry the fish fingers and drink tea with it though.

God yes. And some grated cheddar.

I used to include a fried egg but I received a stern letter from my arteries and had to abate the practice.

Ha ha that's hilarious. Will try some cheddar next time as well :)

I wish I had more than one up vote.

Just yesterday I had a fish finger and salad cream sandwich for lunch, followed by a crisp sandwich for dinner. These tasty snacks - along with Pot Noodle sandwiches - fuelled me through university many moons ago, and are delicious enough that I'm still making them now that I'm married with two children.

I must admit that I'm not totally sold on the plain recipe for a toast sandwich, though I could see it being tasty with a bit of garlic butter rather than just plain butter.

May I urge you with some force, to upgrade from Pot Noodles to a superior brand of instant noodles? There are many blogs devoted to reviewing the many variants of this versatile form of nourishment. e.g.: http://www.theramenrater.com/tag/ramen-review/

My current personal favourites are the Indomie 'Hot and Spicy' or 'Spicy Beef Rendang' or the Mama 'Pork Tom Yum'. I also hear good things about Sapporo Ichiban if you prefer something with a little less heat.

First thing I thought of: add salad cream (either as dip or spread on one or both layers), and a light dusting of white pepper or cayenne pepper, to make the perfect after-beer culinary delight. Must try tonight instead of oven chip butty + ketchup.

I was SURE this would be about some new Android operating system.

Times must be pretty hard for the HN community, given the level of interest in this post.

Or is this a manifestation of engineers' need to optimise, maximum calories for minimum cost? Reading the article and comments, it seems unreasonably palatable...

A memory from my childhood: Toast with butter and sugar sprinkled on top. For dessert...

From the wikipedia article:

"Mouthfeel is the great attraction of the toast sandwich. Given the diversity of textures and flavours of all kinds of bread, many variations can be easily devised and tested in order to enrich the experience of the consumer."

In other words, it's a sandwich made out of bread- that is, a "hack" of the sandwich. Totally at home on HN :)

People just want anything that's not bitcoin or NSA.

Or they're just hungry?

You're the product, not the consumer.

I'm sure you've witnessed the glorious invention: Cinnamon Sugar[0].

[0]: http://www.spiceislands.com/Adjustable_Grinders/Cinnamon_Sug...

That sure is fancy, I just mix some ground cinnamon with some sugar and put it back in the cinnamon shaker. And yes it goes remarkably well on buttered toast, also diced apples and pancakes.

Cinnamon butter is another godly invention.

Next Android OS name should start with the letter "L", not "T". That's how you know ;)

Toast notifications are those little gray popups available to developers in the Android OS

Well, I'll be—you're absolutely right! How did I not notice this before?

    Cupcake (1.5)
    Donut (1.6)
    Eclair (2.0–2.1)
    Froyo (2.2–2.2.3)
    Gingerbread (2.3–2.3.7)
    Honeycomb (3.0–3.2.6)
    Ice Cream Sandwich (4.0–4.0.4)
    Jelly Bean (4.1–4.3)
    KitKat (4.4)

Or a new API feature. The standard toast is too boring!

“Toast sandwich profitable”

> A memory from my childhood: Toast with butter and sugar sprinkled on top. For dessert...

Weird. I thought this "delicacy" was exclusive to Russia (we didn't toast the bread, though).

Greek here, totally had this (and was delicious). We didn't toast the bread either.

For another version, mix some cinnamon in with the sugar.

S America. We used old bread, toasted on that tray under the oven when cooking something else.

That also sounds a lot like the Australian 'delicacy' Fairy Bread - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairy_bread

Can confirm it also exists in Spain and England.

Try the Shooter Sandwich... you'll need a loaf of hard crusted Italian bread, 3 ribeye steaks 1 lb mushrooms, an onion, some bacon, and cheese.

http://imgur.com/a/ahZOF

That looks pretty amazing, I'm rather tempted to try it.

For the first couple frames I thought this was ridiculous, a la Epic Meal Time[1]. The surprise ending has me thinking "brilliant" now...

[1] http://www.youtube.com/user/EpicMealTime

what happened to the third steak?

...good question. Since it suggests waiting 4 hours for the sandwich to press flat, maybe you could eat one of the steaks in the meantime as a snack? Just an idea.

By the looks of it the first layer of steak is made up of pieces of two steaks.

This reminds me of Torteria Barriga Llena[1] in Seattle. Large amounts of assorted meats compressed between bread. And spicy!

[1] http://www.labarrigallena.com/ENGmenu.html

Having made this a few times now, I can't recommend it enough - so awesome.

That looks similar to a house favorite, "Marlboro Man"-inspired sandwich, which is much quicker to make:

    1. Sauté mushrooms, red pepper, onions, garlic and butter, reserve.
    2. Cut meat into thin slices, brown and season with salt, pepper, 
       worcestershire and a little soy sauce.
    3. Put the vegetables back, add a dash of whisky, flambé.
    4. Cut french bread / baguette open, stuff with meat and slices of
       a strong cheese like emmental or edam.

Eat immediately.

/posted on Hacker Foods (the mods must be asleep)

Sounds yummy, I'll probably do it before a shooter's (which is on my list of food to prepare someday). But qualifying edam and emmental as strong cheese sounds really weird from an European viewpoint

Indeed. It's possible to get decent Emmentaler, but most of the prepackaged Emmentaler is really the European equivalent of American sliced "cheese food".

I can't find the right word. I meant "strong" as in "not mozzarella, american cheese etc", the more bitter the better :)

Tasty, maybe? Got your point, though :)

> I used 140lbs of weight and let it sit for 4 hours

O.o

This is beautiful. Can you help me a bit with more details about this sandwich? Email in signature.

Something related to this is the stuffed bread. http://www.cucumbertown.com/no-bake-stuffed-loaf-recipe-dish If you have sometime to sauté some veggies, this makes for an excellent meal.

Looks like a nice recipe, but not a contender in this context. Needs more steak, bacon, and lead weights. I know of a food truck that sells a pork belly bánh mì that might be worth a look, if only it didn't leave out the pâté.

See that is crazy, all that stuff would taste better not stuffed into a sandwich.

Dear God, this is beautiful!

Sorry to not share the enthusiasm, but this looks clunky, bulky, ugly, and disgusting.

A sandwich has always been and will always be half a fresh baguette with butter and parisian ham and/or gruyere. Everything else is a fake.

Sad day to realize that Wikipedia, the bastion of all knowledge, has no entry for a Wish Sandwich.

A kind of sandwich where you take two pieces of bread and WISH you had some meat.

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=wish%20sandwi...

Wikipedia (and other anthropological databases) standards for citation and notoriety means that it underrepresents the culture of the poorer classes, which is maintained through oral history and not published documents.

Well, that's why we have Urban Dictionary. Not everything has to be in Wikipedia.

Although often hilarious, Urban Dictionary now pretty much allows people to make shit up.

It's a shame as I'd like something that fills it's former boots (i.e. there has to be at least some attempt to record reality rather than invent it)

> Although often hilarious, Urban Dictionary now pretty much allows people to make shit up.

Which is precisely what happens when you don't demand citations to good sources. You can't really have it both ways.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_Biscuit

It does, at least, have Stone Soup:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_soup

Ever heard of a rubber biscuit?

It's kind of interesting how HN admins removed a string of posts yesterday relating to the Node.js sexism issue without any explanation, and yet this remains. It's also a bit sad that a post like this gets way more attention than 95% of the "Show HN"s.

I would like to officially apologize for offending the android and cyborg populations, by bringing too much attention to the food desires of the meatbag population.

There's a node.js sexism issue? Never mind - of course there's a node.js sexism issue.

This is perhaps the single most potent piece of evidence that HN's glory days are all in the past. Oh well, it was a good run.

I'd take at as a good sign - it's something different from what you normally see here.

Oh calm down, it's a Sunday night!

I'd be great to read another Bitcoin article instead, wouldn't it?

One of the linked references also supplies these tasty ideas:

The toast sandwich isn't the only recipe in Mrs Beeton's compendium to use cold toast as the basis for a meal. She recommended toast soup - 1lb (0.45kg) of bread crusts boiled in 2oz (0.05kg) of butter and a quart (1.1 litres) of "common stock". Or for a refreshing drink, what about "toast-and-water"? Made with, you guessed it, a slice of stale loaf toasted, then soaked in a quart (1.1 litres) of boiling water until cold.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-15760897

I remember this article coming out, coincidentally, when I had just started university; thankfully I haven't been that desperate yet!

Bum soup is made from technically free ingredients:

Hot water, ketchup packets, saltines.

You joke about toast and water but...

One of my favorite drinks, Korean in origin, is scorched rice water. When you cook rice in a stone pot (e.g. the same pot that is part of dolsot (inside stone) bibimbap), the bottom layer gets deliciously scorched and you get tasty water if you add boiling water, or you can cook it again to make a little porridge.

There's even little candies made out of that stuff, and I can only imagine toast and water is pretty much along the same lines.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nurungji

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rice_water

This reminds me of my dad teaching me how to make a "poor man's burger" when you don't have any beef. Basically you just toast the bun and then throw on all the condiments.

It's surprising how close it tastes without any actual burger.

Now I'm thinking instead of toasting the bun, I should leave it cold and put toast inside as the "beef".

Aka unburger or nothing burger.

Burger King USA will sell this to you, cheaper than a hamburger.

Try a Welsh Rabbit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welsh_rarebit

That sounds fantastic!

Cool. Speaking of sandwiches, have any of y'all been to the local deli recently? The variety of meats available these days is astounding, and their prices are very low. A lot cheaper than going to Subway or your corner store, if you've got the time to make you meal at home (and it doesn't take much).

You don't even need to make it at home. I used to just but all my stuff on my way into work on Monday and store it in my office. Most of the stuff we put in sandwiches (bread, butter, cheese, cured meats, pickles, condiments) will last a week or more in an air-conditioned office. Just store it in an air-tight container and give it the smell test before you eat it.

I would eat one, if only the infrastructure existed to get it to me within thirty minutes. By air.

By air? Surely what we need is a hyperloop for sandwiches?

The toast sandwiches can be prepared anywhere in the world, then sent under the ocean in little magnetically accelerated capsules. Because the capsules are travelling in a vaccume, your sandwich would arrive still warm.

I'm a fan of the peanut butter and sour kraut, myself, it's much more nutritious. Throw some sardines in there if you're trying to stock up on good omegas.

That sounds so nasty I almost downvoted you. :P

Try dill pickles and cheddar on cinnamon rasin toast. Tastes way better than it sounds.

Minimal Viable Sandwich

Not quite.

When I was dead broke, I used to have bread sandwiches.

On really spare days, I'd have half a bread sandwich.

Funny that you should link to this as a friend of mine on the weekend decided he'd invented something similar. Essentially a sandwich (or open sandwich) but with a lettuce leaf as the top slice of bread.

"Invented" is a bit of a strong word.

Have you ever heard of a Wish sandwich?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYyBZE0kBtE&t=0m35s

Sometimes I don't get how articles move to hn front page...

We all eat. We're also curious about oddities, especially when they somehow warrant a Wikipedia page of their own. Add to that the anticipation of assuming this couldn't surely be a sandwich with toast in it but might be a new gadget or programming language or Android release.

We all poo, too...

[citation needed]

http://www.amazon.com/Everyone-Turtleback-Library-Binding-Ed...

It's a food hack. C'mon, loosin' up, mate.

It's a self-executing sandwich...

It's not a food "hack", it's a bloody sandwich :)

Actually, it's not bloody at all!

This is the correct response.

Seriously.

A similar type of mouth-texture is achieved when you wrap a crunchy taco with a soft taco shell.

I find that eating a corn chip between two regular salted potato chips (or I really should say, crisps) is also strangely delicious...

Basically sugar as a texture with butter and salt & pepper. Yeah I can see why this is delicious. We generally love anything we sugar :)

Can someone clue me into the underlying message here? This is a little vague even for HN's off-topic wikipedia standards.

Of course, I had to read this a month after being diagnosed with Type II diabetes :-(

(You may downvote at will ... just noting that this is essentially carbs sandwiched between more carbs, dammit.)

There is an interesting study from Great Britain on "healing" Typ-II-Diabetes. Maybe that might give you some hints.

I was looking for some information, as my Dad is an overweight longtime Typ-II Diabetic, who lost more then 10kilos during the last year and now can live without injections, only with the pills, he used to take some 10 to 15 years ago.

Press Release by University: http://www.ncl.ac.uk/press.office/press.release/item/diet-re...

Page of Study (with further links): http://www.ncl.ac.uk/magres/research/diabetes/reversal.htm

FAQ regarding the study (pdf): http://www.ncl.ac.uk/magres/research/diabetes/documents/Diab...

Never imagined Toast Sandwich to be anything like that.

This is what Toast Sandwich is in India.

http://i.imgur.com/sP7ctxG.jpg

That's a Bombay Sandwich, technically.

Is this actually something that's new?

For years I've had just butter or margarine on toast when I would occasionally (certainly not frequently) feel like it. I know of many people who would consider this an uncommon, but quite normal thing to do as well.

Maybe it's an Australian thing? Possibly passed down from British heritage? I'm not sure.

"Plain" toast is actually a good choice when you're sick and attempting to eat again. It always feels "safe".

The link is about sandwiches made from a slice of toasted bread between two untoasted slices of bread. Not plain toast.

I prefer the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baked_bean_sandwich

So a too-long article (with a corresponding thread that is way too pedantic for the topic of bread and butter) makes it to the front page of HackerNews but solid articles on entrepreneurship and technology get missed by lack of votes? I'm in awe.

There used to be an (Australian) Standard on Toast colour: http://infostore.saiglobal.com/store/Details.aspx?ProductID=...

I'm trying to avoid carbs.

Then make it "platter style", without the bread.

I just made myself one after this, thanks for the reminder it was amazing.

Want frugal? My parents always tell me how they were so poor growing up, they put lard on a piece of bread and sprinkled with some sugar.

They had lard? Luxury!

You laugh, but I've heard of people making the same with Crisco.

Indeed. My mother always told us that we should be thankful for all the beans and lentils we had when money was tight because when she was going to school, the really poor kids had Crisco sandwiches for lunch.

(And her mother spent time in a Siberian labor camp as a youth, so we'll all be eating supper at the table like a family, and not like a refugee, thank you very much.)

With sugar? With sugar? My mouth shudders at the thought. We used to use lard with some salt and pepper.

Madness.

I thought perhaps this was going to be the term for when more than two popup notifications slide up from the system tray at the same time.

Better known in the UK as an austerity sandwich - the cheapest meal you can make.

That's really unhealthy.

But it's vegan if you use margarine!

How did this get on the first page of HN?

This is the next soylent

More like the anti-soylent. Nice texture, no nutritional content.

Anyone tried Soylent on toast yet? Or does that disturb the nutritional balance..?

Nice post! Thanks for sharing! (",)

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