HOWTO make a shooter's sandwich

From the Guardian, directions for making a shooter's sandwich -- a sandwich made by hollowing out a round loaf, filling it with two steaks and some cooked mushrooms, wrapping and tying it, and then compressing and slicing it. Yum!

Don't bother resting the steaks. Work fast and tuck the first one, dripping and hot, straight into the bottom of the hollow loaf...Dollop in your hot mushroom mixture...Tuck your second steak over the mushrooms. At this stage I usually smear hot horseradish on the top steak and Dijon mustard on the inside of the lid...
Wrap in greaseproof paper and tie with butcher's string like this. Then wrap in two layers of foil and smush flat under a heavy cutting board and as many weights as you can find
Leave under the weights in a reasonably cool place (don't refrigerate) for at least six hours or preferably overnight. Remove the foil and cut through string, paper and sandwich

How to make a shooter's sandwich (via Reddit)

(Image: Tim Hayward/Guardian)

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

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Anonymous

shooter sandwich is product of blessed union between muffaletta and hot pocket?
Giles Farmer

For the added touch, on the morning of the shoot, proceed as follows.

Open the bonnet of the Land Rover and place the foil wrapped pie on the rocker cover and secure in position with fencing wire.

Drive around for a bit, and kill a few birds and rabbits.

Come lunchtime, your shooters pie should be nice and toasty and ready to eat, so unwrap, add a generous dollop of Branston Pickle, a healthy slab of Red Leicester and wash it all down with a foaming ale of your choice.

Cheers me dears.

Giles
Anonymous

I made it. It was really yummy.
Tom Megginson

I agree that food safety concerns here may be a little overblown. The meat is cooked, so those surface bacteria will be dead. It’s sealed up pretty tight, and “overnight” (to me) implies fairly cool storage.

I’d tuck in without fear.
blueelm

Oh that makes me hungry.

As for leaving food out? Eh… I think it’s mainly eggs and maybe chicken isn’t it?

I don’t know. I’ll be honest in my anecdote. I eat food that’s been sitting out all the time. I’ve had stomach viruses twice and never had a bacterial infection. One stomach virus came from food at a restaurant the other from contact with a person who had a stomach virus.

I’m not so sure leaving food out is the big deal so much as making sure the food you prepare is unlikely to be contaminated with some kind of bacteria.
wigg1es

I watch and read way too much Bourdain to really care or be concerned about my food sterility. If it kills me, at least I’ll be a fat happy bastard.

How can you really be concerned about 6 hours outside of refrigeration when you’re using store bought steaks that most likely went through some pretty awful mass-market meat processing to begin with? I would much rather my steak went from cow directly to sandwich with little to no refrigeration over the commercial meat alternative.
Elmo Gearloose

Five out of five George Foremans agree: grill the sucker!
- Anonymous
  
  If you grill or foreman the whole sandwich you will most likely overcook the steak, tougening it past edibility. but it will be crusty.
Iscah

This looks amazing. With a nice big crumbly block of sharp cheddar, and some tart apples? mmm.
- sdmikev
  
  Now you’re talkin’ But then, I’ll have sharp cheddar with just about anything..
  Also, I don’t think it would need to be toasted or grilled if using a proper crusty loaf of bread as pictured.
TheCrawNotTheCraw

Thanks, but I’ll have the Beef Wellington, instead.
Anonymous

Making two of these this morning for our hike this afternoon. I’ll be using venison from one of our hunts this fall. Yum!
Kerov

There seems to be a lot of willful ignorance about food safety here. Even assuming that something fresh out of the pan/oven is “sterile”, bacteria will be deposited from the air, your hands, utensils, any non-freshly-cooked foods, etc. And room-temperature bacteria doubling time is around 20 minutes.

There’s a reason that food safety guidelines only allow food to be out of refrigeration for two hours. Two hours is only 6 bacteria-doubling times: colonies only grow by a factor of 2^6=64 in that time. Six hours means the potential for bacterial growth on the order of a quarter-million-fold (2^18=262144).

Food with very low moisture content, or food otherwise cured/preserved might inhibit the bacteria from growing quickly. But there seems to be very little about this wet-bread-and-uncured-meat concoction to keep it from being anything other than a wonderful bacterial growth medium.

I can understand individuals making the decision that the “yum” factor is worth the risk of occasional food poisoning. But let’s not pretend there’s no significant risk.
- Kaden
  
  Makes one wonder how we managed to survive as a species long enough to reach the point where we could invent refrigerators and be safe from the deadly and ubiquitous bacterial threat.
  - Kerov
    
    We survived without refrigerating our food the same way we survived before we learned to wash our hands, before we pasteurized milk, etc.
    
    Humans can survive without modern food safety practices. Mostly. But not without accepting a higher incidence of utterly preventable illness.
    - Kaden
      
      There are many utterly preventable health risks inherent in civilisation as we know it. Do you do a properly researched risk assessment on every aspect of your daily life? If so, you’re to be commended for strength of character, because I know for a fact that if I personally stopped to consider how many potential health hazards I encountered every day I would spend my life cowering under the bed.
      
      You’re an inspiration to us all.
  - wigg1es
    
    A lot of the food safety problems of the modern era didn’t arise until we started to mechanize the process and mass produce the product. Its easy to survive without refrigeration when you buy fresh in single use quantities from local sources. Unfortunately economies of scale have largely destroyed the feasibility of such a lifestyle.
    - Kaden
      
      Your conjecture flies in the face of Kerov’s omnipresent bacterial menace. Which is it?
      - wigg1es
        
        Well, I’m not saying he’s totally wrong. Science has of course advanced our understanding of bacteria growth, health hazards, etc. and there is of course an element of risk involved.
        
        But when you have news stories like this:
        
        http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/31/us/31meat.html
        
        Whats a few hours out of the fridge? I mean, you can eat beef completely uncooked and chicken medium rare with virtually no risk if its coming straight from the yard to your table.
        
        But if your ground beef is made from trimmings off the hide, the most likely part to come into contact with cow shit, you’re probably going to have some issues.
- mgfarrelly
  
  Oh…YAWN.
  
  Such hand-wringing is so very tiresome. Cheese and milk and meat are all packed with ways to rot you inside out. Mushrooms are fungus, even bread can hide dangerous molds.
  
  We should, if we were “good”, all be chewing leafy greens and drinking only the purest water. Tsk, don’t COOK your food, need those nutrients!
  
  That way you can live to a 105, wishing you were dead the whole damn time.
  
  I’ve eaten a Shooter’s Sandwich, as a child even, and managed not only to survive, but to thrive. I suppose I’m just a deeply fortunate outlier?
  
  Bacterial science is lovely. Sit down and eat!
- phenocopy
  
  I think 20 minutes is for E. coli in rich media (LB, SOC, or equivalent) at their preferred temperature (37 C or about 98.6 F). Flattening the sandwich in a cool place would slow them down considerably, and, really, it’s not like other foods aren’t left out for hours and consumed with impunity. You could argue that the dessert at a diner is more risky, since it sits out on that cake display all day.
  
  In truth, I would pretend that there was no danger here. Or, at least, no more danger than there is at a potluck or other party where snacks are left on the table for hours. Is that dip safe to eat? Probably not. Do we eat it anyway? Yes we do. Certainly, it’s a numbers game any time you are looking at a rare event, and I would consider getting sick from this sandwich to be a rare event.
Anonymous

Food safety concern trolls:
Go find an aging bachelor. Preferably one that hasn’t ever lived with a lady or at least hasn’t for a very long time. This bachelor should not be rich. Now live with said bachelor for a while (renting a room from the bachelor works well). You will be amazed what a human is capable of successfully digesting without illness. Dumpster diving might be a more gourmet option. Cue the elderly abuse concern trolls.

Me? I’m going to make a rustic loaf and buy some marinated steak, red wine and veggies.
The Gunner

This is a great, great sandwich. I enjoyed it when The Two Fat Ladies put it in their first cookbook. And I know the Guardian’s all good’n'green and in favor of recycling and all, but it might have been graceful of the columnist to cop to the copying by giving shout out to ‘em at least.
chudez

best line: “Serve sliced like cake accompanied by something vaguely vegetable-based to assuage the guilt”
Anonymous

People take sandwiches to work or school every day and they sit for 6 hours before they’re eaten.

I suspect most of the people saying this is unsafe are in the employ of a food megacorp who are currently trying a combat a resurgence in home cooking and the spread of organic ingredients. Food like is a direct threat to their chemically bleached, pre-packed, tasteless fare.

Also outdoor huntsmen are bit hardier than city folk :-)
Anonymous

Can anyone tell me if there’s a specific US equivalent to ‘crusty loaf’? I understand that there’s probably no hard rule, but I’d hate to ruin what looks like the perfect sammy by being caught up by a britishism
- MoonBuggy
  
  Can anyone tell me if there’s a specific US equivalent to ‘crusty loaf’? I understand that there’s probably no hard rule, but I’d hate to ruin what looks like the perfect sammy by being caught up by a britishism
  
  It’s not really a term that refers to anything specific, just any bread with a good crunchy crust. I’m sure it’d be delicious whatever your preference of loaf is, as long as you use something fresh and good quality; the only way you’d be likely to ruin it would be using Wonder Bread!
- SamSam
  
  Can anyone tell me if there’s a specific US equivalent to ‘crusty loaf’?
  
  It’s a loaf of bread. It’s crusty. It’s hard to get more specific than that.
  
  If it comes wrapped in air-tight plastic, is pre-sliced, or has the word “Wonder” in front of it, it probably won’t do.
Anonymous

Bakeries are not native to Korea, but every town and city now has at least a few. And most bakeries have a counter filled with tasty grab-and-go sandwiches and rolls. These include all kinds of meats and cheeses. All of them sit out in the hot summer afternoon. SOMEONE is buying and eating them, eh?

Koreans’ life expectancy is about a year less than that in the US, where kids aren’t allowed to play outside and have to wash with antibacterial soap. So I guess the lack of refrigeration isn’t too much of a problem. Or maybe the kimchi kills all the bacteria.

Would you stash your shooter’s sandwich in the back of your shooting brake?
lemonkid

I was so delighted seeing this recipe, but couldn’t get the ingredients to make it when I was in China.. however I did make it at home here in Montreal last fall.

I survived the room temperature action.

When your perceptual experience does not conform with physical facts

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mobilisinmobili/4954056497/in/set-72157624963009388/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mobilisinmobili/4954644412/in/set-72157624963009388/
IndexMe

This looks extremely delicious. Got me to thinking about one of my favorite old stories, Roald Dahl’s Danny the Champion of the World. He had this amazing sounding meat pie and well… yep you can find it in Google. Danny’s father is a glorious pheasant poacher.

http://eatocracy.cnn.com/2010/06/28/feast-on-fiction-danny-the-champion-of-the-world/

and

http://marriedwithdinner.com/2010/03/07/dark-days-pork-pie/
(This is “Raised Pork Pie” based on the RIver Cottage Meat Book, click on photo collage for a graphic explanation).

The passage:

“Very carefully, I now began to unwrap the greaseproof paper from around the doctor’s present, and when I had finished, I saw before me the most enormous and beautiful pie in the world. It was covered all over, top, sides, and bottom, with a rich golden pastry. I took a knife from beside the sink and cut out a wedge. I started to eat it in my fingers, standing up. It was a cold meat pie. The meat was pink and tender with no fat or gristle in it, and there were hard-boiled eggs buried like treasures in several different places. The taste was absolutely fabulous. When I had finished the first slice, I cut another and ate that too. God bless Doctor Spencer, I thought. And God bless Mrs. Spencer as well.” – ‘Danny, the Champion of the World’ by Roald Dahl (1975)
Anonymous

The meat is covered by the bread, the paper and then two layers of foil. There will be very limited 02 for the bacteria to use for respiration- so there shouldn’t be anything to worry about right? Or am I missing something?
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  Or am I missing something?
  
  Anaerobes. Nasty.
freshacconci

I need to express a clear and emphatic no to toasting this. This nonsense to toast all bread is going too far. Toasting occasionally is fine but it only works when freshly done. But not all sandwiches need to be toasted. I think this all started with an increased use of cheap bread in mass-produced food. The only way it didn’t taste like stale chewy goo is to toast it. If the bread is of top quality it doesn’t need toasting. And for this particular sandwich I think it would ruin it.

Yeah, I know, personal preferences and all that…
Anonymous

Great post! This type of sandwich has been around for hundreds of years. There’s a similar recipe in Escoffier’s book called a “Bookbinder” sandwich.

Too bad Americans are far to worried about refrigerating everything at every minute. Most foods are fine overnight on the counter so long as everything is fresh and clean.
HDN

It’s been 18 years since the health dept class to get the card to work as a line cook, but I seem to recall bacterial growth is a function of temperature too. What’s room temp in the UK considered to be? Might not be that big a deal there, but worse say here in Las Vegas. In either case it’s not the worse thing. If you’re freaking paranoid, put it in the fridge.
BabsonTask

The two fat ladies (well, one of them at least) will show you how to make a real shooter’s sandwich.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7EmdzWETK8
Church

Anyone else reminded of the Golem from Pratchett’s Making Money? She would make a ham sandwich by putting a ham between two loaves of bread and smashing them together. The result was a sandwich three feet long and a quarter inch thick. I suspect that something like this gave Terry the idea.
TenInchesTaller

For some reason, this really grosses me out in some weird way that I can’t elaborate on. And I’m as big of a meat eater as can be.
MoonBuggy

Well, that’s tomorrow’s lunch sorted; I believe a trip to the bakery is in order.

As for the food safety thing, my utterly unscientific experience is that those of us familiar with conversations along the lines of: “You going to finish that pizza?” “No, go for it.” “How long’s it been there for?” “What month is it?” “Meh, I’m sure it’s still good.” are ill far less often than the ones running around with hand sanitizer and food safety guides. YMMV, of course.
Anonymous

…and also. Way for everyone to freak out and blow everything out of all proportion. I myself frequently eat pizza left out all night. I make my own kimchi (have to cuz I like more ginger) sauerkraut and have even experimented with cheese. The initial comment stands. Its considered a violation to do things in this manner, in a restaurant, where I live, and may be in the rest of the US too I think, anyone servsafe certified out there back me up on this. And for your info those of you who have ever had a flu or stomach flu and thought you got it from someone else? A large percentage of these are actually food borne illness that we unwittingly attribute to getting from someone else.
I would eat this sammich in a heartbeat. I just wouldn’t serve it in a restaurant I owned NOR more importantly in this context would I recommend it to millions of people in an online forum.
Antinous / Moderator

I’m fairly certain that the bologna, Kraft American cheese and Wonderbread sandwiches of my youth could have sat unrefrigerated for decades without spoilage.
artaxerxes

I’ve thoroughly enjoyed this threadâ€¦ as I’ve thoroughly enjoyed eating the various versions of this “kind of sandwich” (I’m with you joeposts! You’re right-on. It’s a form; not a specific recipe.): the pain bagnat, the muffaletta, the shooter’s sandwich and variations on the theme.

Just like the “ingredients contained in a wrapper” isn’t necessarily a burrito, or a pie, or a samosa, or a sandwich, or a kibbeh lavash, or an eggroll, or a spring roll, or a tamale, or a rice ball in banana-leaf . It’s a culturally diverse form of combining ingredients that emerged in different cultures at different times. It’s actually just common sense cooking, usually devised to allow the mobile working members of the community to travel with a non-dripping meal that would sustain them through their daily activities, be they hunting, agricultural or industrial.

I am a bit surprised that our friends from Nawlins haven’t chipped in with raves and sophisticated critique of the muffaletta, but I’ll wait eagerly or their responses. I have certainly swooned over a fair few muffalettas, but I’m not from the right part of the US to comment.

But I wanted to thank you, IndexMe, of that favorite passage from Danny, Champion of the Word. Many great memories.

I was raised by a grandmother born in 1909, so I know quite a bit about cooling food without refrigerators. Later on, I learned to cook indian food with a friends’ mother and she used similar cooling techniques. I’d just like to just offer a reminder that these women were feeding many, many of our progenitors, often 24 at a time during harvest, and they didn’t poison a damn soul. But they had many rules about sterilization and safety which were passed down generation to generation.
Telecustard

I am wishing seriously that I could tuck into one of these RIGHT NOW. Obviously I’m going to have to make them before bed so I can wake up and eat them for breakfast. This is wonderful, thanks for posting!
Cochituate

This sounds like the most delicious sandwich to pull out of my pocket since my wife introduced me to her mother’s Cornish pasties. YUM. I will save this recipe.
francoisroux

Me personally, I’d be happy to spend a whole week on the throne shitting my guts out for just one bite of that deliciousness. Man, that thing looks so good, I think it’d taste good even if I just licked the picture of it on my screen right now.
Fireweasel

Like others, I made this when it was published.

I had a slightly too small loaf and so ended up with some steak trimmings and some of the mushroom duxelles left over, which I promptly ate together while they were still hot. I almost wept with food joy.

The sandwich was fantastic for the next week, too. I can’t believe the number of people moaning about food left out at room temperature, I never have a problem with this and my kitchen is not the cleanest.
haggidubious

Oh, steak, mushrooms and horseradish ‘n mustard…I feel a powerful need to make this happen. But leaving it for six hours isn’t really an option this far above the tropic of Capricorn- room temp here is around 30 deg. celcius, even at night. Maybe a couple of hours will do the trick, or I could stash it in a cooler with some of those keep-cool bricks. BabsonTask, thanks for tracking that video down!
semiotix

I was surprised to find myself reacting very negatively to this story about a perfectly tasty-looking sandwich, but I couldn’t figure out why.

Then I realized it was the name. “Shooter’s sandwich” is too similar in form to “Writer’s Chaiâ„¢,” the $8-per-tin bog-standard black tea that Barnes and Noble sells along with special pens that will make you a writer, special notepads for writers, special inflatable cushions to pad your writerly ass on your writer’s chair, etc. You know. All that stuff they sell directly beneath the mural of Fyodr Dostoevsky, Mark Twain, and Zora Neale Hurston sitting in a coffeehouse looking writerly.

I don’t know why I fixated on the tea when the whole thing just screams “we have less respect for the intelligence of you, our consumers, than we do for things we scrape from between our toes.” But I guess it ruined all food-nomenclature of that form for me.

/no YOU’RE off-topic!
- PaulR
  
  Chicken Cacciatore, AKA “Poulet Chasseur”, is Hunter’s Chicken.
  
  The recipe involves tomatoes, an acidic food, which keeps the unrefrigerated chicken dish from spoiling for a while. Perfect for a day trip.
  
  /no you’re NOT off-topic!
  
  //now know what to make for supper!
curly_brace

Matambre. That’s where it’s at. A rolled cut of meat filled with vegetables, egg and other tasty things. Mmmm. Very Argentine… I mean they could just cook the meat with veg but they feel compelled to throw in a few eggs as well.

Mmm hunters sandwich…
MikeyV

Not to mention leaving food out at room temp is a food safety no no. Any restaurant that did this would get shut down with a critical violation.
- Anonymous
  
  even if eating unrefrigerated sandwiches is a problem, the weather in the uk is cold enough to keep it fresh.
  just keep it out of the rain or snow and it’s good for all day, and don’t eat sandwiches in the 2 week summer we get in the uk if you that worried about it.
  if you don’t live in the uk, then you should keep it in some kind of cooler (so no reason to be jealous and troll).
- Pantograph
  
  This is a sandwich we’re talking about. Countless brave souls, many of them little children, have eaten unrefrigerated sandwiches,with the cheese and bacon sweaty from eight hours stuffed in a backpack in the blazing sun, and lived to tell the tale.
  And that was just my school trip. We were much harder back in the ’70s.
  - Anonymous
    
    We were much harder back in the ’70s.
    
    I agree, so was I. But our food supply was safer back then, too.
    
    In the 70s, I used to enjoy runny eggs, unrefrigerated meat sandwiches, etc.
    
    Nowadays? I wouldn’t attempt it. Something bad happened to our food supply sometime around the ’80s (coincidently around the time Reagan decided that the food industry was “over regulated.”)
    
    And those of you who say “this is how we do it in Europe,” well, I have to assume your food inspection and safety laws are more stringent than those in the good ole free market US of A.
  - MikeyV
    
    I’m not saying I think its unsafe, hell I have arguments with the food inspectors here when they catch me trying to make my own creme fraiche. I’m just saying if you make this according to the recipe don’t do it in a professional kitchen and not expect trouble from the food pigs.
  - PaulR
    
    Not to mention, we had longer penises then, Pantograph.
    http://www.boingboing.net/2011/03/18/-friday-freak-out-ju.html#comment-1060440
    
    Well, the outside of the bread would normally be stored at room temperature anyway with only a longish-term risk of mold.
    
    The insides are all sterile, having just been cooked. And the horseradish and mustard probably have some antibacterial properties.
    
    Then, by smooshing it all down, you get the air out; most of the water’s already gone. It looks safe to me.
    
    And just to thing to go with some Huntsman cheese. Bonus: by combining the shooter’s sandwich and the cheese, you won’t need to climb down from your shooting blind for a week!
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huntsman_cheese
    
    (I used to be able to find Hunstman all the time in Montreal, but now that I live in N.-B., I can only find Ilchester’s Five Counties. Not as good – too many flavours dull the palate.)
    - Snig
      
      Agreed. Mustard is bacteriostatic, horseradish has antimicrobial properties against gram positive and gram negative (from the PDR of Herbal Medicine). The vinegar they’re made with would also discourage bacteria. If the bread is fresh from the oven, it’ll be sterile, if it’s really on it’s last legs, it’ll be full of penicillin molds, which will also keep the bacteria at bay. YMMV
    - Hypnoid
      
      Re: #19:
      If you’re in NB, try the cheese counter at the Farmer’s Market in Fredericton. Can’t remember if they carry huntsman or not, but it’s pretty likely. If they don’t, they’ll hook you up with something good.
Nylund

All this food paranoia reminds me of last year’s obsession with burgers not growing mold. It started out with people being convinced that the initial McDonald’s burger must be EVIL for not getting super nasty, but it turned out that all burgers don’t actually have much propensity for rot and mold:

http://aht.seriouseats.com/archives/2010/11/the-burger-lab-revisiting-the-myth-of-the-12-year-old-burger-testing-results.html

It seems to me that if everything is freshly cooked, initial bacteria levels will be minimal, and if you wrap it up a ton and keep it reasonably cool, (ie, overnight on a counter in a non-tropical location), and wrap it up with all that paper and foil, you’ll severely limit the growth of any existing bacteria and prevent most outside bacteria from getting to the food. Will it be bacteria free? No.

Let’s say the chances of someone getting sick are 1%. If you make this just for you, 99% chance you’ll be fine. If you make 100 of these for the 100 customers that buy from your sandwich shop, then someone is likely to get sick. That one sick person can sue you and/or report you to the health dept and ruin your business.

A minor risk for the individual can be devastating for a shop due to both scale and the nature of potential consequences. Its a bit silly to apply the same rules for both, IMHO. “Restaurants would get shut down for doing that!” simply won’t persuade me for this reason.
- bmcraec
  
  Your analysis of the risk and the costs associated with the risks I think is spot on. We are all scared crapless (or supposed to be) by health concerns that affect industrialized supply chains. The corporations that might have ambulance chasing class-action sniffing shysters looking for millions is not the same justification for applying the standards at home.
  
  When preparing food, I KNOW when I wash my hands, when I need to sneeze, and when I’ve stopped and cleaned up before preparing something new. In a factory, the minimum wage or less staff are being harrassed by supervisors pushing them to work harder, not take bathroom breaks, etc. and there are probably a few resentful actions that happen as a result. That’s the real reason for all the extra precautions.
  
  The marketers have just figured out that they’ll move more product by scaring the crap out of the consumers, so they’ll throw out food that is perfectly edible because a printed label tells them to, without performing any kind of checking, based on senses evolved to do just that. Check if something is edible or not.
joeposts

I love this kind of sandwich. I usually make it with nice cold cuts, along with cooked mushrooms, onion and peppers and cheese. It works just fine if you squish it in the fridge, imho. That’s how I learned to make it.
- Kaden
  
  Yeah, I love this sandwich too, except I make it with egg salad, pickled banana peppers and mango chutney in a 12 grain pita.
  
  Oh… wait.
  
  You know what a recipe is, right?
  - joeposts
    
    This ****kind**** of sandwich. As in a squished one with cooked parts that have saturated the bread with yumminess.
    
    You know how to read, right?
    
    Actually, I retract my comment. Ignore it, please.
chawke

I understand the commenters in this thread being concerned about it sitting for 6 hours, but it is in a cool area and the various other ingredients do sere as a preservative. Just think about the previously mentioned bachelor’s pad, the people – kids and office workers who pack their own lunch, campers, and others.

But for people concerned about contamination, or vegetarians – this recipe adapts nicely to baked tofu, various meat simulators – or my favorite – tempeh.

And this goes nicely with wine – red or white – or beer, I prefer stout.

Of course, I also enjoy this using meat.

cheers!
Anonymous

me neither. this is some tasty snackage that is going on right here, and you guys are going on about who took pictures of what and whether or not meat/gummi bears taste better after sitting around at body temperature for six hours? STFU, i want this in my mouth as soon as possible. maÃ±ana, this gets made. (with the addition of fancy cheese and chimichurri)
- Anonymous
  
  chimichuri… thats lunch.
Antinous / Moderator

Sock puppet removed.
- Jake0748
  
  Bless you. You are the most moderate moderator, evarh!
- rebdav
  
  It would be more interesting to see what the sock puppet was saying and how lame the game is when it turns out to be some other users hand under there.
  
  Also the sandwich is making me hungry, probably been years since I splurged on an actual steak.
- siliconsunset
  
  I agree with rebdav, it would have been rather helpful to not only see their comments but also the screen name they chose. Maybe they will use it, or something like it, elsewhere. Is it possible to leave a post intact but highlight or otherwise mark it so people know that it’s puppetry?
W. James Au

This looks like a good start, but I think you really need a nice finishing touch: Stick it into a panini maker, so all that mushroomy, steaky goodness is surrounded by crispyness.
pepik

Is it just me? I keep thinking the pic is of lembas bread. (I know, I know, there’s no filling in lembas.)
penguinchris

Am I the only one who was confused by what was meant by “shooter”, and couldn’t think about any other part of this story until that was resolved?

It’s not like it’s hard to imagine what it might be referring to – according to the article it’s just referring to hunting, which was my best guess originally – but it’s rather open-ended out of context.
- Gordon JC Pearce
  
  The idea is that when you’re out shooting you want a tasty sandwich that’s not going to fall to bits when you go to eat it. Since game shooting over here tends to involve a lot of tromping about boggy moorland, you have to have a nice dense sandwich otherwise it wont survive the morning.
  
  There is absolutely nothing to stop you taking it shooting as in photography, as opposed to shooting as in firearms. The same principle applies – tasty snack that won’t fall to bits when you’re trying to eat and hold onto stuff. With photography you’ve got the added advantage that the ponies won’t try to steal it from you. Probably.
  
  The piccalilli looks like a nice touch too. You’d probably want a bottle of decent beer to go with that – maybe a nice sharp IPA.
  
  Hungry yet? I’m off to put some bread on, and then going to the shops to buy some steak…
Anonymous

I’m guessing ‘not refrigerated’ means in a cool pantry in those environments where temps are not in extremes. It looks yum to me and a bit of aging is going to enhance the flavour.
Dinny in Adelaide

Looks DELISH! But I tend to agree with W. James Au, Toast the bugger!
TopDog

A little mayo at the appointed time would complete this for me.
Anonymous

@MikeyV
I disagree that it is unsafe. We eat this sort of stuff all the time here (UK and France). Life expectancy is comparable to anywhere else in the modern world … Part of the reason why there are so many food allergies today is that kids are brought up in too sterile an environment so they never build up the resistances required to handle “everyday” stuff.

@Others
Agree on the toasting but that would mean it had to be eaten immediately as opposed to left in the Range Rover while out hunting … I suppose a camping stove on the tailgate …
Anonymous

Really? There are sock puppets on a thread about a sandwich?
- brix
  
  if they follow up with concern-trolling about washing your hands, sharing, and the Letter R, our pilot episode of Wholly Negative Internet Sesame Street will be complete!
Anonymous

JFreeman
This sandwich is pure evil! I am racing to the grocery right now! My last wish is that I die as I swallow the last sinful bite. Call me shooter.
Patrick Austin

I made this when the Guardian first posted the recipe.

It does not disappoint.
Anonymous

this is essentially a very manly version of a pan-bagnat, a classic sandwich from nice, france.

the technique is the same. hollow out a loaf of crusty white bread, pack it full of stuff and put it under weight till its flat and all the flavours have mingled.

the only real difference is that in france they use tuna, capers, hardboiled eggs, red onion and lettuce and stuff.

pan-bagnat translates to ‘wet bread.

its tasty, but i am totally gonna try this steak version.
Jewels Vern

Oh, ok, I guess. I have a problem with the steaks. They would have to be sliced thin enough to bite. Maybe I just don’t know how to buy steaks. Or we could make it with turkey, ham, and bacon and have a sack lunch version of turducken.
- Anonymous
  
  A valid concern, but you can get thin-cut fillet of steak at most supermarkets…I’d probably look for cube steak, aka “minute steak,” to make this, or maybe London broil.
Anonymous

Hooray for someone mentioning the Two Fat Ladies. I think their’s was round steak, seared on the outside and nowhere near cooked on the inside. Nom.
pinehead

I had something like that sandwich a long time ago. The only difference was in the cut of beef – mine was made with roast beef instead of cuts of steak. As I recall, it was good but heavy.