2023 year-in-sandwich-review

2023 was a great year for sandwiching. I wrote 50+ posts throughout the year about various items between buns or bread. To recap the year in sandwiches, I’ve selected some of my favorites with quick descriptions and comments about what I enjoyed most in its blog post.

Each sandwich is ordered by date and grouped by month below.

Click the titles or images to jump to the blog post. If you haven’t been a reader since the beginning of 2023 then maybe you missed a sandwich or two?

Cheesy flatbread pizza melts

If you weren’t around these parts last January, I declared it to be Meltuary and made nothing but melts for the entire month. My favorite from Meltuary was this riff on a “sandwich” that Pizza Hut invented. Get the recipes to make your own at home and also grab my Pizza Hut-inspired parmesan breadstick recipe while you’re at it.

White beans and green melt

This sandwich was inspired by a couple of different sandwiches and was slotted into Meltuary with a big flavor-packed entry. January is a good month for getting your veggie on and this sandwich will make you feel comforted for sure.

French onion au jus melt

What happens when you turn French onion soup into a melty and crunchy sandwich? Luckily, we found out.

Fried chicken paczek sandwich

February contained my version of a new Paczki Day sandwich which was a fried chicken thigh on homemade jam-filled doughnuts. Fat Tuesday will never be the same!

Buns 101

I spent some time in February working on a simple buns recipe and listed out some tips that I would teach the class in a Buns 101 course at your local Community College. Go get your education on.

Mississippi pot roast sandwich

Someone invented a thing called the Mississippi pot roast which contains 5 ingredients and is cooked in a slow cooker. It shocked me with how savory and delicious it turned out and it made for a very fine sandwich with the addition of cheese and crispy fried onion strings. This one was a banger.

Steak and egg bagels

In April I took one of my 2 or 3 yearly visits to McDonald’s for this sandwich blog and attempted to recreate their Steak and egg bagel sandwiches. I stuck my finger into things and then spent a great deal of time looking at online listings of ingredients to come up with my copycat version of McDonald’s breakfast sauce.

Suprêmes de volaille aux champignons

This bad boy was inspired by Julia Child’s recipe for chicken supremes in a mushroom sauce. I cooked my first-ever recipe from Child and turned it into a very easy-to-make sandwich that will leave you craving another savory bite.

Muffuletta and The Buffuletta™

In May, I invented the Buffuletta sandwich which is a muffuletta with buffalo-focused things inserted inside the homemade roll. This was a heck of a sandwich filled with crispy fried chicken thighs tossed in buffalo sauce topped with Buffalo mozzarella and a homemade pickled carrot and celery tapenade. Oh, and I also made a muffuletta too!

Two hamdogs, please. One for me, and one for me mate.

Some Australian patented a thing called the Hamdog and I recreated it and shared my experiences and recipes for the custom-shaped bun. This one was a big hit on Instagram and was also a ton of fun to make and eat.

Can you sandwich a Detroit-style pizza?

June was when I shared my personal pan Detroit-style pizza recipe. My recipe is built for a 4 x 8-inch loaf pan and results in a pizza that works great for a very hungry person or probably better portioned for two eaters with a small side salad. And then, as usual, I turned everything into a sandwich.

Porto’s favorite sandwich

I tackled Portugal’s Francesinha sandwich in the early summer of 2023 and survived to tell the tale. This is a big sandwich and required quite a few tests to get finalized for the blog post. Luckily, I enjoy testing sandwiches.

Play-at-home version of the Magic Kingdom’s Handwiches

Things got a bit weird in July and I kicked things off by making “sandwiches” that were invented by a chef named Mickey Mouse. These bread cones are easy to make with storebought pizza dough and then you can stuff them with whatever you want. Great fun if you have kids that might want to help in the kitchen.

The pinkest burger ever?

July 2023 saw the release of the Barbie movie and I had to make a perfect burger to honor the pinkest person alive. This was my first attempt at making cheese slices and let me tell you, I am a big fan.

Sweet and savory pulled pork and onions

I made another version of a pulled pork sandwich that capitalizes on the fact that you cook the pork slowly while it is balanced on a bunch of sweet onions. The pork and the onions share some time in each other’s loving embrace and result in a combined sandwich component that wins every time.

Hoagies of Cincinnati

Who knew that Cincinnati had a long cheeseburger on all of their pizza parlor menus? Not this guy. But we know now because I spent a week making two different versions of the Cincinnati-style steak hoagie.

Z is for zapiekanka

I was asked to recreate a Polish street-food open-faced sandwich experience in September and that’s how I learned about the zapiekanka. I also created the Maxwell Street version of a zapiekanka by combining this Polish delicacy with the toppings on a Chicago-style Polish sausage.

Crunch lady land

October saw me creating some very cheesy and hammy sandwiches in an attempt to make and eat the sandwich of Paris. This was the week I ate a few croque madames and enjoyed every minute of it.

Go! Go! Breakfast sandwich

I’ve made a lot of breakfast sandwiches for this sandwich blog over the past three years and this was one of the more unique versions. I attempted to recreate a sandwich that is served at a small cafe near my house that has garnered a bit of sandwich media over the past year. You can get the recipes I used to make your own at home.

A tribute to Olga

My good friend, JP, who is also a member of the Bounded by Buns Patreon community, suggested that I write about a sandwich that she remembers fondly from a few years back. This was a chicken schnitzel sandwich from Olga’s Delicatessen that closed for good when the eponymous Olga died in 2016. And it was tasty.

Flank steak, gorgonzola, and pear

This steak sandwich blog post got a little nerdy with me digging into how I create sandwiches based on what I call sandwich component balance. Also, I created a sandwich with steak in it.

Buffalo chicken dip melt

I turned the well-known buffalo chicken dip into a melty cheese and bacon sandwich and it was glorious. 2023 taught me that all dips are just begging to be turned into sandwiches.