Portugal’s Best Sandwich
What is a Francesinha sandwich?
Porto’s francesinha sandwich is the food equivalent of an out-of-control freight train. It’s loaded up with dense, calorie-packed goodies and will race through your gut leaving nothing but chaos in its path.
It’s also so freaking delicious that you won’t care, and might even come back the next day to punish your body some more. So let’s break this sandwich down:
Between two slices of thick, nutritionally-useless white bread is about a year’s supply of meat.
First you’ve got the ham. Now, a lot of sandwiches might just stop there.
Not this sandwich though.
Nope, this sandwich is trying to satisfy John Cena’s monthly protein needs. So, let’s add a steak in there too.
But steak and ham… it feels like it’s missing something. Oh that’s right, sausage. Would one type of sausage be enough? Probably. But let’s put in two just in case.
Alright, so far we’ve got bread and Frankenstein’s meat monster. What else do we need?
Well, no sandwich is complete without cheese. So let’s drape a layer of it like a blanket over the entire thing, and then melt it.
At this point, it’s becoming hard to see how anyone could eat this with their hands—like a sandwich should be eaten. But just in case you had any doubt, the chefs of Porto want to make sure that you have to use cutlery to take this beast down.
How do they do this?
By adding a perfectly runny fried egg on top of the whole thing, and then serving it in a bowl full of tangy, brown sauce. Try to eat this with your hands and you’re going to look like someone threw it at your face.
Don’t ask about the recipe
And the sauce, oooooh the sauce. It had the colour and consistency of baked beans sauce, but with so much more umami. I’ve looked up and down the internet to find out what’s in this goo, but no one seems to know.
Apparently, Porto’s cooks are pretty secretive about their secret sauces. They vary by bar, but mine definitely had some sort of meat stock base, with some Piri-Piri tang.
Whatever it was, it sure tasted good with all those fries that came with it.
What is a Francesinha sandwich?
Porto’s francesinha sandwich is the food equivalent of an out-of-control freight train. It’s loaded up with dense, calorie-packed goodies and will race through your gut leaving nothing but chaos in its path.
It’s also so freaking delicious that you won’t care, and might even come back the next day to punish your body some more. So let’s break this sandwich down:
Between two slices of thick, nutritionally-useless white bread is about a year’s supply of meat.
First you’ve got the ham. Now, a lot of sandwiches might just stop there.
Not this sandwich though.
Nope, this sandwich is trying to satisfy John Cena’s monthly protein needs. So, let’s add a steak in there too.
But steak and ham… it feels like it’s missing something. Oh that’s right, sausage. Would one type of sausage be enough? Probably. But let’s put in two just in case.
Alright, so far we’ve got bread and Frankenstein’s meat monster. What else do we need?
Well, no sandwich is complete without cheese. So let’s drape a layer of it like a blanket over the entire thing, and then melt it.
At this point, it’s becoming hard to see how anyone could eat this with their hands—like a sandwich should be eaten. But just in case you had any doubt, the chefs of Porto want to make sure that you have to use cutlery to take this beast down.
How do they do this?
By adding a perfectly runny fried egg on top of the whole thing, and then serving it in a bowl full of tangy, brown sauce. Try to eat this with your hands and you’re going to look like someone threw it at your face.
Don’t ask about the recipe
And the sauce, oooooh the sauce. It had the colour and consistency of baked beans sauce, but with so much more umami. I’ve looked up and down the internet to find out what’s in this goo, but no one seems to know.
Apparently, Porto’s cooks are pretty secretive about their secret sauces. They vary by bar, but mine definitely had some sort of meat stock base, with some Piri-Piri tang.
Whatever it was, it sure tasted good with all those fries that came with it.
