The Best Fried Bologna Sandwich You'll Ever Make!

Hi everybody. Welcome back. I'm Rachel from Rachel's Step-by-Step. Today I'm going to be making some delicious old-fashioned classic fried bologna sandwiches. Now my Ron loves these sandwiches and so do I. They bring back beautiful memories of our childhood and we're going to have a delicious lunch. Now I've got one large onion and I'm going to be using about three-fourths of it. I'm going to start out by making my caramelized onions. Now I'm just going to slice them thin, not paper thin, but not too thick either. Now you can use fresh onions if you'd rather do that, but the caramelized onions are delicious in a bologna sandwich. If you have any leftover onions, you can always put them in the fridge and use them later. That's good right there. Now I'm going to be using this skillet right here and I'm going to add my onions with a little bit of water in there to give them a kick start. I'm going to separate them all and make sure that you have them all separated before you put them in your skillet. You don't want to burn them. You just want them to caramelize. Today I'm going to give them a kick start. I'm going to add some water in here. This is how I'm going to give them a kick start. Now caramelization takes a while if you want to make just the best caramelized onions. Now by adding the water, what's going to happen is they're going to get real steamy and they're going to get limp and they're going to release their sugar and that's what we want. And I'm going to wait until the onions get real nice and limp before I remove the lid. Now the water is almost all gone. I'm going to remove the lid. These onions are looking nice and limpy. That's what I want. And I'm going to add some butter and I'm also going to add a little salt. This will draw out all the water from the onions. See how they're nice and limpy and they have released a lot of their sugar. So this will be a quick version of caramelized onions. I'm going to move them over here to the corner. Set the heat on low because you don't want to rush them. If you rush the onions you're going to burn them and you don't want burnt onions. You want caramelized onions. Now that the butter has melted I'm going to put them in place and I'm just going to let them sit there. Every now and then I'm going to come and I'm going to toss them slowly, slowly and they're going to start getting golden and then a little darker and darker until they're just perfect. Just like that. Now you can always add your favorite oil or a little butter. Whichever one you like. Now I'm going to toast my bread. I'm just going to be using some regular white bread. You can use your favorite. These are nice and soft and pillowy. I like using the mayo instead of the butter but you can use butter. Just a little bit like this. It doesn't take a lot. And I'm going to do the same to all four slices. When I was a little girl growing up you know my mom always bought bologna. Back then I don't think the people were into turkey and forest ham and things like that and you know I think it was a lot cheaper too. When it comes to sandwiches I don't think anything beats a beautiful bologna sandwich whether it's fried bologna or whether it's cold. They're both delicious. My dad used to love bologna sandwiches. Now the mayo side is going to go down. You don't want the heat too high so I'm going to lower the heat and this is going to happen quickly in about a minute. And I'm going to rub a little bit of mayo on the outside too. Now mayonnaise has a high smoke point so it just browns beautifully and you want a beautiful brown color on this bread and that's good. Just a little bit. That's all you need. After about one minute you're ready to flip them. See look at that. Beautiful. So my bread is toasted. I put a paper towel right here because I'm going to lean them against the cutting board because I don't want to put them on a plate otherwise they'll get soggy and they'll sit there until I'm ready to use That's good. Just like that. I gave my onions my undivided attention for about 25 minutes. I want you to take a look at them. See aren't they looking beautiful? Now you always want to caramelize your onions as long as you can so they can have a beautiful color but sometimes we have to push them a little bit to get them to caramelize a little sooner. So I'll leave them here so they can continue getting brown. Now we can jump over to the bologna. This is going to go fast. So I've got my bologna slices right here. I'm going to be using six. Now you want your slices to be at least a fourth of an inch thick. If they're too thin they're just going to get real dry so you want them a little thick and I'm going to use three per sandwich. Now you want to score them just a little bit right in the middle because once they start to fry on the outside they're going to get a big bubble right in the middle and you want to just cut a little x in here so that the steam can escape and then I do three little incisions right here. See like this so that they don't get all puffy but if you want them to get puffy because that's the way your mom did it or that's the way your grandma did it then you can just leave them alone. You know there's nothing wrong with them getting a little puffy and I'm going to do the same to all of them. When I was young my cousins and I my sisters would get together and we'd go to the city pool and we'd go swimming during the summer and you know what happens when you swim you get out of the pool and you're starving and we were starving by the time we got home and we always had bologna in the refrigerator and I remember we'd get everything out to make our bologna sandwiches and we'd never finish because I'd get the bologna not start biting into the bologna and take two or three bites of the bread and then the lettuce and the tomato and by the time you knew it we were full and never made the sandwich. Now that I've cut the little slits like this I'm going to put them right here on my hot griddle. You want your griddle to be nice and hot. Now you're going to notice that they're going to start you know to shrink that's why you want them a little thick and if you can get them a little thicker that's good too. See you see how the little slits are starting to open because they're starting to shrink because of the heat. Now you want to be lifting them every now and then and checking them from the bottom before you flip them over to the other side. So I checked them and they're nice and charred from the bottom. Now I'm going to flip them over. See look at this. Now I'll just give this side a little longer so they can get nice and charred from the bottom. Can you smell them? Okay. We've got some old-fashioned bottles of soda in the garage. My Ron brought them over so they can be a little closer. I'll put them in the refrigerator. Okay I say he was following his nose. I'm going to turn off the heat and I'm just going to let them get a little charred on that side. So I'm going to put the sandwiches together. It'll only be a couple of minutes so you can sit over here. Keep me company. What do you think? I've got a big fat red tomato here and I'm just going to cut them into slices and then pieces. I'm not going to put them in the sandwich because I don't want the sandwich to get soggy. See I like to just cut them in fours like this and put them on the side. Oh look at how pretty these tomatoes are. I like to go to the farmer's market and get them there and these are local. I'm going to set them right here on the plate so they can be ready. Now that I've sliced my tomato I'm going to add my cheese right on top of the bologna slices. I'm going to be having American cheese, white, and my Ron is going to have the yellow one. It doesn't matter. It's just a matter of taste. Now you can use your favorite cheese but if you've seen my enchilada videos you'll know that I always use American cheese because it melts beautifully. It gives you the best flavor but you can use your favorite cheese. Not a problem. Now I'll just give them just a little bit of time until the cheese melts and I'm going to get everything ready so we can assemble. Now while the cheese is melting I'm going to get my bread and butter chips out of the jar and I'm going to remove some of the liquid because I don't want them to get the bread soggy. If you're not picky then you can just put them in like that but I don't like soggy bread. The bread and butter it's just a great contrast you know with a rich bologna and the cheese and this is ready. I'm going to be using regular yellow mustard but you can use any type of mustard that you like. Now you can use mayo or ketchup whatever you like. We like you know just using mustard because mustard with a bologna and the cheese is just so good. Now here comes the bologna. One slice right here and I'm going to overlap it domino style and then here's the third. Oh look at that. Now I'm going to add some of my caramelized onions right on top. Oh these onions look beautiful. And some pickle slices. You can add as many as you want. That's good and now I'm going to top it with my bread like that. Oh now here comes my ronds. You can just use one slice of cheese if you'd rather do that. Now this is not something that we have every day especially when you're trying to lose a little weight but you can treat yourself to this every now and then. There's nothing wrong with that. Oh the onions. Now the pickles. Oh this looks delicious. What do you think honey? Oh I can't wait to try it. So now I'm going to slice this sandwich in half. Look at this. Look at this. So I'm going to put them right here on this plate. This is such a quick meal. Sometimes you don't want to fuss in the kitchen you see too long. Just something quick and super delicious. I'm going to put my lettuce right here. This is romaine lettuce that I washed very well and then I chopped it up and now my tomatoes right here on top. Look at that. I'm going to sprinkle a little pepper and just a little pinch of salt. I'm going to be serving these with potato chips because we love potato chips but you can also serve them with corn chips or anything you like. Look at this. Here you go Ron. That's yours. Thank you. Now I'm going to put mine together. What can I say? Some cold lettuce right here on the side. Some tomatoes. Sprinkle a little pepper and just a pinch of salt. My chips. My Ron is going to have a Coke Zero and I'm going to have the Fanta Orange. You want to open these for us honey? Yeah. Oh yum. Are we ready for the taste test Ron? I'm ready. And hearty. These are my wonderful fried easy bologna sandwiches. If you like my recipe give me a thumbs up. Send me a comment and tell me what you think and tell me how you prepare yours. And if you haven't subscribed please do. Thank you.