bánh mì: the experiment

Background: a couple months ago, my boss told me he'd be open to having a bulgogi sandwich for the December meal—our final monthly luncheon for 2023. Before I could stop myself, I instantly reacted by making a face: when I was a kid, my mother had occasionally made bulgogi sandwiches, and since bulgogi meat is often dotted with green onion and even yellow onion, I wasn't a fan of the sandwich: my hatred of onions started early. These days, I'm more used to eating onions of all sorts in Korean food, but I digress—the point is that I have bad memories of bulgogi sandwiches, and even today, I don't find cold bulgogi all that pleasant. I think the boss was disappointed by my brusque dismissiveness, but I have to admit that his meal proposal stuck in my head, and my unconscious mind kept working on the concept. A few weeks later, like a flash of satori, it hit me: put the bulgogi meat inside a Vietnamese bánh mì! The bánh mì is Vietnam's signature sandwich, a fusion of French colonial culture and local cuisine. The term simply means "bread," and as you might imagine, the sandwich might have started off simply, but it rapidly exploded into countless regional varieties. Some people will tell you that a bánh mì has to have liver pâté, but in fact, there are many species of bánh mì that don't use any pâté at all. The sandwich's proteins can be anything from pork (including sausage) to shrimp to chicken to fish—all of which makes using bulgogi that much more plausible. Arguably the most common sort of pork for the sandwich is Chinese-style char siu, which you'll recall I made the other day as a sort of practice run.

Below are the elements for making two types of bánh mì: (1) a "classic" bánh mì with liver pâté and char siu pork, and (2) a Koreanized bulgogi bánh mì whose proteins are char siu pork and bulgogi beef with a sweet bulgogi glaze. I made all of this in the spirit of an experiment to get a better idea of what I really wanted to serve the troops. I wanted to see what harmonized or clashed with what, and I wanted to taste a bánh mì for myself since I'd never had one before.

Nothing that you see below is original. Everything is either store-bought or made from a recipe. The baguette comes from the Paris Baguette bakery in my apartment building; the char siu pork (which you'll note is brown and not the traditional weird reddish color) comes via Coupang; the vegetables are all store-bought; the pickled carrots are from a Joshua Weissman recipe; the can of liver pâté also comes via Coupang, as does the fresh cilantro. The hoisin mayo is a Chef John recipe, and the garlicky chili sauce is another Joshua Weissman creation.

A bánh mì has a lot of moving parts and requires a ton of prep. I can imagine the massive task of prepping if I worked at a sandwich shop: once the ingredients are ready to go, putting the sandwich together isn't a problem, but getting everything ready beforehand must be the chore to end all chores. And just about everything has to be fresh, too, so timing matters.

First row: glazed bulgogi (looking dark and gross), store-bought char siu pork

Second row: sliced fresh cucumber, can of pâté, sliced-on-the-bias chilis, pickled carrots, hoisin mayo

Third row (somewhat uneven): baguette (Paris Baguette), chopped cilantro, garlic-chili sauce

I forgot to get a picture of the sliced pickled turnip (store-bought, saving me some work):

Here's the "classic" bánh mì as assembly begins:

Almost fully assembled:

Closer, food-porn angle:

The second sandwich, i.e., the Koreanized one with glazed bulgogi:

A slightly sexier angle:

Verdict: I can't say that the bánh mì came out perfectly, but if the real thing is anywhere close to what I made, then Vietnam should be proud of itself because that's a damn good sandwich despite missing things that you'd find in a typical American sandwich, such as lettuce and tomatoes and cheese. It's also missing American pickles, but there's plenty of pickled crunch from the carrots and the turnip. On top of that, you've got the fresh cucumber, chili peppers, and cilantro, and everything gets accented by the hoisin mayo and the garlic-chili sauce. As sandwiches go, this one's fantastic, but as I said, it requires a lot of prep, especially if you're a home cook, and you have no partner or underlings to help prepare the necessary ingredients.

I used Paris Baguette's baguettes because Paris Baguette, despite having "baguette" in its name, makes generally shitty baguettes whose texture is nevertheless better for bánh mì. A real baguette should have a crunchy, shatter-y exterior that contrasts perfectly with a wispy, gossamer interior. Paris Baguette's version of this bread has a crust that's soft and an interior that's rather heavy and dense. This is, in many ways, more of an anti-baguette than a baguette. Ironically, this may be close to the Vietnamese baguette that's used for bánh mì: the Vietnamese bread contains some rice flour that results (so people say) in a slightly chewier baguette. I think my problem was that I bought my baguette in the morning but didn't use it until nighttime, giving the baguette time to get a bit dryer and stiffer. This noticeably affected the sandwich's overall texture.

Also somewhat problematic was the canned liver pâté. I got this from Coupang, and when I opened a can, expecting a strong whiff of liver, I smelled nothing. When I spread the pâté on the bread, it behaved the way pâté should, but when it was time to eat the sandwich, the pâté ended up having texture but little flavor. My attempt at a "classic" bánh mì was still awesome even with the insipid pâté, but the Gestalt was not what I'd call an "A+."

So the "classic" bánh mì, which also included Joshua Weissman's garlic-chili sauce, ended up being around a B. The Koreanized bánh mì, by contrast, kicked even more ass, and despite suffering from the same bread-related problems, it deserved an A, and I've decided to go exclusively with the Korean version of the sandwich this Friday. If the crew wants to try a "truer" bánh mì, there's a Viet-style sandwich shop not far from our office. In the photos above, the bulgogi with glaze looks dark and gross, but trust me: it was good, and the preparation was based on Maangchi's mak-bulgogi/막불고기 recipe. For the beef, I fell back on skirt steak, my go-to cut of meat, which I cut into short, thin strips and marinated for an hour. The Korean sandwich also had char siu pork in it, and the whole thing worked as a harmonious whole. I considered sticking kimchi into the sandwich, too, but in the end, I felt that the kimchi might overpower the sandwich's other elements. As it is, the Korean bánh mì will be a symphony of sweet, spicy, sour, crunchy, vegetal, and meaty. I need to make sure the baguettes I use are fresh; any staleness will detract from the sandwiching experience.

The sandwich's final form will be a pile of three meats: store-bought char siu, homemade char siu (the wacky red/pink pork), and homemade bulgogi (with sweet glaze). There will be pickled carrots and turnip, as well as fresh cucumber, chili peppers, and cilantro. Hoisin mayo will round everything out. No pâté, no garlic-chili sauce. I hope the crew enjoys this.

Now—should I also make a batch of Toll House cookies? It's Christmas, after all.