Thursday, December 19, 2013

Three lunch sandwiches made in a breakfast sandwich maker

After my last breakfast sandwich binge, I wanted to make some more ... lunchy sandwiches. So here they are!

English Muffin Pizza


This is a great use for leftover Italian sausage. Start with a generous smear of tomato caponata or some thick marinara or your favorite pizza sauce on the bottom half of an English muffin, then add some slices of cooked Italian sausage. Top with a nice melty cheese like mozzarella, or even jack. Heat in the sandwich maker until the cheese is melted.

Yes, I left this one topless. So you can make another sandwich from the other half of the muffin. Sneaky, yes?

Tuna Melt


I'm guessing that Tuna Melts are a love-hate thing, right? People either love them or say, "ewwwww, warm tuna salad!" But if they're done right, the tuna salad stays mostly cool while the cheese gets a little melty.

Instead of an English muffin, this time I used a bagel. To be honest, the bagels I bought were a tiny bit too large for the breakfast sandwich maker, but that was an easy fix. I just cut a wedge from the bagel, and pushed the cut ends together making a smaller circle and it fit perfectly. Sometimes you just have to improvise.

I started with a few slices of tomato on the bottom (which also helped keep the tuna salad from falling through the hole in the bagel!) then a generous portion of tuna salad, then some cheese. It was too tall to fit into the sandwich maker with the egg-cooking plate in place, so I just moved that aside and let it cook for about 3 minutes until the cheese was melty. Then I put the top part of the bagel on.

If I wanted that top part of the bagel toasted, I could have let that sit in the sandwich maker for a minute after I took the main part of the sandwich out, but I was fine with it untoasted.

Ta daaaa!

Veggie Delight


This little sandwich combines some of my all-time favorite foods. And the colors are really pretty together. The olives add a nice briny flavor to cut the richness of the avocado and cheese and the red pepper adds a bit of lightness.

For something meat-free, this is pretty filling and VERY satisfying.

On the bottom half of the English muffin, I spread some avocado. Okay, maybe it was a LOT of avocado. Then I added some pitted kalamata olives, sliced in half lengthwise. That went into the bottom half of the sandwich maker. I but a big slice of roasted red pepper on the egg-cooker part, then topped that with some mild cheddar cheese. I let that cook until the cheese was almost melted, then topped with the top half of the English muffin to let it get a little toasty. Another minute and I called it LUNCH.
Yum