I wish I could remember eating my first BLT. That first bite into its toasted bread slathered in mayonnaise sandwiching crisp lettuce, thick, streaky bacon, and perfectly ripe—and perfectly seasoned—tomatoes. The juice from those tomatoes running down my forearms and dripping onto the table before me. The way the toasted bread grazed and cut up the roof of my mouth, leaving me with a raw souvenir for my tongue to caress for days after the sandwich was long gone.
But I can’t. And while I may not remember my first, I have long known that the BLT is the ultimate sandwich. I’ve worked as a chef for almost 20 years, in restaurants, private homes, and test kitchens, and still, making—and eating—sandwiches is one of my top pastimes. The BLT is by far my favorite, so I make the most of eating them every year while tomato season is at its peak. Nothing beats a late-summer tomato, so you likely won’t see me partaking in a BLT outside of late July through October.
Ok, that’s an absolute lie; I’ll fuck with a BLT year-round, but will most likely complain about the mealy tomato as I down it.
It’s often said that sandwiches were invented in England in the late 1700s by John Montagu, the 4th Earl of Sandwich. Of course, sandwiches existed long before that—at least since the first century BCE, when Rabbi Hillel the Elder sandwiched lamb and herbs between sheets of unleavened matzoh during the year’s Passover
