Japanese Convenience Store Sandwiches At Home

These might be the most famous sandwiches in the world, but you gotta go all the way to Japan to eat them. Except not anymore. The Japanese Sando. More specifically, the convenience store Sando. These are staples that are craved on a daily basis. They're convenient, they're delicious, and they satisfy. You eat a sandwich, you feel good, you're good for a few hours. They're also phenomenal and extremely easy to make. So, that being said, let's make this, shall we? We have three sandwiches for you here. We're starting with number one, the creamy, most delicate, most luscious egg salad Sando. This is the one that everybody knows and loves. It's probably the one that people tend to go back to the classic 7-Eleven, Pan, Tokyo, et cetera, to get. We wanna make the best version of it while still paying homage to what it's supposed to be. So, we have 12 eggs, boiling water. I like to place them on a spider. You can also drop them in one at a time, but by doing them on a spider, you sort of lower your risk of cracking them. Lower them in, and you're gonna boil those for 10 minutes. All right, timer's up. We got a big old bowl of ice water. Eggs go in, carefully remove into the ice water. This is just to stop the cooking process. So, we're gonna let these cool. They don't need to be completely, completely, completely ice cold, but I would let these cool just until they're cold to the touch. So, once these are nice and chilly, we have a separate bowl of just plain water. There are many ways to peel an egg. This is an easy way to do a lot of them. So, you take your egg, and you're gonna lightly tap it on one side, and then I want you to kind of start to rotate it around on a work surface as you're tapping it, and I just want you to sort of crack the whole thing. You can even, like, lightly roll it. Very, very gently, not to smash it. All you're doing is creating little cracks all over the egg. So, when you start peeling this, you're gonna submerge this in the water, but listen carefully. Start at the bottom of the egg or the top of the egg. I prefer the bottom. You can usually tell the difference between the top and the bottom, because the top tends to be more pointed, whereas the bottom is a little more fat and rounded. So, start at the bottom, submerge in the water, and just start working your way at the bottom, carefully peeling and working your way to the top, keeping it submerged the whole time, and you'll notice that by doing that, that beautiful shell will peel off perfectly. 95% of the time, it works every time. Repeat that with all your eggs. All right, all my eggs are peeled. Now, the beauty of this method is you can drain the water. You don't have shells everywhere. You just take your bowl of shells, and so I have all my hard-boiled eggs. Look at these beauties, dude. So, these aren't like super-duper-duper-duper-duper-duper hard-boiled. I don't like hard-boiling my eggs to the point where they're powder. I think that's too much. I want a little bit of softness on the yolk. There's no need to separate the yolk. There's no need to get a blender. This is all done very simply. You're gonna start by cutting all of these in half. This yolk is essentially fully cooked, but it's not totally powder. There's still a little bit of moisture left in the center. That is what I want, and this is a two-step chopping process, okay? So, first, turn them all on their flat side so they can't run away from you. You never want your victims to be able to run away. Okay, so they're all turned over. They're not gonna slide around. Now, take your knife, bunch them together, and then just run your knife through them, up and down. One direction, now the other direction, and the other direction. There's no need to add extra steps. Egg salad is supposed to be simple and good. Make it easy on yourself. At this stage, you sort of have a rough chop. Okay, so place these into a bowl. This is where we're gonna finish the egg salad. We're gonna make them a little bit finer, but with just a fork. Just basically take the tines of your fork and mash that up against the side of the bowl, stirring occasionally, mash, mash, mash, stir occasionally, mash, mash, mash. Now, this is where personal preference comes into play. Mash it as fine as you want. You wanna go ultra fine? You can do that, or you can go moderate fine, or you can just leave it like this. It's up to you. I like to go, I would call, medium fine, which should look kind of like this. I love this technique because you get like different sized egg. I don't like uniform egg salad. I want it to be like a little bit of mystery on what you're gonna get next. Crushed egg, look at that. Beautiful, stunning. Now, we're gonna add a tiny pinch of sugar to taste. This is mostly for the egg sando, right? Like, you don't have to add sugar, but they do add a tiny, tiny bit in some of these stores, supposedly, followed by a tiny pinch of white pepper, generous pinch of kosher salt. You can always season it more if we have to. Just toss that all together, and now for the mayo. So, mayo is a consistency thing, right? You add as much or as little as you want. Here's what I'm gonna do. So, I'm gonna start with around a third cup, mix that in, and see how I feel. I can already tell that's not how I want it, so I'm gonna do another equal, call it about a half cup total. Oh, yeah, now we're talking. Look at that, it's like a cloud. So, about a half cup of mayo will do it. I don't like mine super runny. I want mine to have some stiffness to it. I want it to have some structure to it. It's got a great texture. Now, at this stage, you can taste it and see if you need salt. I'm gonna add just a little bit of salt, and finally, this is a personal Josh ad. Highly recommended, but not a necessity. Would be about a tablespoon or two of very thinly sliced chives. I think it looks nice. I think it tastes nice. That's just me. It doesn't ruin the sandwich. If you don't do this, but it's really good. Plus, you're already here. You might as well just grab some chives and toss them in. It also just adds a nice little pop of color in there. That's pretty much it. Now, we can assemble our sandwich. Slice your milk bread into one-inch slices. Spread a thick layer of your egg salad from edge to edge. Place your top slice of bread on top. Trim the crust off all the sides. That's really optional. At this stage, you'll like to wrap it in plastic wrap, place it in the fridge to set for about 30 minutes to an hour. Honestly, you could just eat this right now, though. You don't have to do that, and after that, slice it at a diagonal and enjoy. The next is the strawberry sando. Now, this one is, honestly, the most basic. I think anybody could make this with very little technique whatsoever. So, two to two and a half cups of heavy whipping cream, and you're just gonna start beating this on high speed with electric beaters till it starts to get a little fluffy, and once it thickens, you're gonna add two tablespoons of powdered sugar. Keep beating until you get a whipped cream consistency like this. Start by slicing the crust off of two slices of milk bread. Lay down a sheet of plastic wrap. Place one slice down. Spread a generous layer of your whipped cream on the bottom slice. Layer two to three strawberries diagonally across the whipped cream. This could also be other fruits, like kiwi, whatever you want, really. Then, cover the fruit completely with more whipped cream. Add your other slice. Carefully wrap with plastic wrap. Place it in the fridge to set for about 30 minutes. This one really does see some help from some fricturation, so I would recommend it. And then, be sure to sharpie along the diagonal where the fruit is. That way, you know where to cut because you will forget later. I promise you, I've done this before. Then, just repeat with up to four sandwiches. The katsu sando, you're gonna need two one-inch pork chops. Split in half, or I guess, hypothetically, you could have them just split this for you. This is how these came, so we're going to butterfly this in half. You get two thin guys here, and now we're going to pound these bad boys out. Take plastic wrap, lay that down, followed by a chop, another layer of plastic wrap. Then, you're just going to pound that out nice and evenly and flat until it's about a quarter-inch thick, and repeat that with all your chops. And then, just season them generously with salt in one layer, flip, and then season the other side. It's really important that you season at this stage because if you don't, first of all, you'll fry it, and all your seasoning will be on the edge, but also, second of all, they won't retain as much moisture when you fry. They dry a lot easier when you don't get this initial cure. Now, a very simple tonkatsu sauce. Into a sauce pot over medium-low heat, we're gonna add half a cup of ketchup, three tablespoons of oyster sauce, a quarter cup of Worcestershire sauce. I'm starting to pronounce it correctly, you like that? And three tablespoons of granulated sugar. And then, you're just gonna heat and stir that until everything's homogenous, but really, the only reason that we heat this is specifically to melt the sugar. So, just keep stirring and heating until the sugar is completely dissolved, and then, take it off the heat, and that's done. For our mayo, very simple. You can just use plain koopie. If you want, you can season your koopie. So, we have a half cup of koopie mayo, a little bit of salt to taste, and a little bit of dry, hot mustard. I'm putting like a half teaspoon. You can go even more, depending on how spicy you want it, and then, just stir that in. That's it, that's your mayo. So, somehow, cabbage defies the laws of physics. Even a quarter head of very thinly sliced cabbage will probably be enough for four sandwiches. So, cut your cabbage in half, and then, in half again. So, you have a quarter. This is one quarter. Remove the core, and then, you're just gonna slice this as thinly as you can. You can also use a mandolin, as thin as you can go. I want it paper thin, all right? That is what I would consider paper, paper, paper thin. Look at that, that's plenty of cabbage for four sandwiches. Super duper thin. This cabbage is not gonna get dressed, so you want it to be so thin that it's almost just there purely for crunch, without distracting of the other flavors. And last of all, simple three-tier breading setup. First, wet hand, dry hand. I usually leave my dominant hand as the dry hand. So, start with wet, then into the dry. Pork chop, press it down into the flour. Flip, I'm on my dry hand now, since the flour is dry. Coat it thoroughly, shake off the excess flour, and then, into the egg. Now, wet hand. Flip it, get it thoroughly coated on all sides with egg wash, and finally, into your panko. Just to be clear, for this tray, we have about a cup and a half to two cups of flour, three to four eggs beaten, and then, about two cups of panko breadcrumbs, just for volume, all right? And then, that is one cutlet. Then, just repeat with all your cutlets. Once it's time to fry, you'll probably have to fry these one at a time. It's not a big deal, because this sandwich is essentially served room temperature or cold. So, one at a time, you'll take one of these bad boys into oil that is at 350 degrees Fahrenheit. It's filled about halfway up a six to seven quart pot, so that's three quarts of vegetable oil, neutral tasting oil. It could be heated that hot, ideally. Lay it away from you, and just let that fry. Once that's fried, it'll take about five minutes per piece. Should be nice, crispy, golden brown. GBD, golden brown delicious. And the internal temperature should be about 165 Fahrenheit. Let that drain in a wire rack. Repeat with the rest of your pork. Once that's done, reassemble. Spread your hot mustard mayo on both sides of your bread, then place an even layer of cabbage on the bottom slice, season lightly with flaky salt. Place in your freshly fried katsu cutlet, a generous spoonful of your tonkatsu sauce, then crown your king, cut off all the crusts before slicing at a diagonal and serving. We have our three sandwiches. Woo, let's go! Little weird when I see this strawberry one next to all this other stuff, but that's fine. Look, let's just go for it, right? Katsu sando, one of my favorites. Cheers. This is way better than the one that I had. I'm gonna train it for being honest. But also weirdly reminiscent in a lot of ways. It kind of just tastes the same, it's just fresher. It's good, though. Egg salad. You know, I've never been a huge egg salad guy. And I take that back. Wow, that's actually insanely good, holy s**t. Egg salad has gotta be the most high-calorie thing you could possibly eat in a sandwich. It's mostly just mayo. All right, last but not least, our beautiful strawberry. I was actually gonna s**t on this one, but it is really good. I mean, strawberries and cream are a classic combo for a reason. It's very similar conceptually, essentially to a strawberry shortcake, but in the form of a sandwich. Much lighter and not very sweet at all, which makes a lot of sense. That really tailors itself to kind of the expected sort of sweet dessert area of Japanese cuisine. It's never too sweet. It's always more balanced, more fresh. And this gives you that. You want convenience store sandwiches that taste just like they do in Japan? These really do taste like them. If anything, I think they taste better because you're making them fresh right out the gate. Not to say that they're not making them fresh, but I mean, you can eat them right away without them going to refrigeration. But the biggest benefit of all is you can flavor this however you want. You wanna add seasoning to your katsu? You can. You wanna add some crunchy pickles or whatever the hell to your egg salad? You can. You wanna use a different fruit than strawberry? You can. And that's the power of making things at home. Love you so much. Subscribe.