I have watched the John Wick movies more times than you have. Certainly, there are some people out in the world who have seen these movies more than I have, but not you. Because of this, and since I’m such a humble, self-serving sandwich blogger, I decided to create a sandwich for the character John Wick.
In crafting the idea for this sandwich and arranging this blog post, I have written more than a couple of paragraphs about my enjoyment of the John Wick movie series. I am aware that this content might not be for everyone who loves sandwiches, so I have added some quick jump buttons to move to the sandwich content or directly to the recipe if you want to skip all the good stuff.
Some of this content may contain slight spoilers.
I have tried not to spoil anything that pertains to the movie plots.
Now we discuss The Man You Send to Kill the Boogeyman, John Wick, and his movie franchise.
John Wick movie franchise
If you don’t know anything about John Wick-related movies, you first need to know that they are very violent action movies. Over the 4 John Wick movies (plus the associated spinoff Ballerina movie), Wick is responsible for killing at least 430 bad guys by any means necessary.
The action scenes in these movies are very fast and adrenaline-pumping, with motorcycle chases, extended gun fights, and choreographed knife battles that end up looking like dance routines. Keanu Reeves, the actor playing John Wick, gives the character a sort of heavy-footed, bow-legged fighting stance that doesn’t really seem to come from just one traditional fighting style.
There’s a chance that John Wick is a trained dancer, but his fighting in either hand-to-hand combat or gunplay is not always accomplished in a pretty, graceful manner. His motions seem intentionally purposeful. Wick’s stance when using small arms is primarily done in a Center Axis Relock (C.A.R.) system, which is a close combat stance for keeping your own gun, pulled in, closer to your chest and eyes to help with kickback recoil and to ensure that no one is grabbing your weapon from around a blind corner.
There’s a huge amount of training that Keanu Reeves has gone through to make sure John Wick’s actions were screen worthy, and in my opinion, his attention to this system of keeping the weapon close really gives the character weight in action. Wick fights primarily with a gun, but when it comes to hand-to-hand combat, he quickly switches to trying to take down his opponent with attacks to the legs, grappling, or even improvised weapons like his own belt or a playing card.
In John Wick Chapter 3 – Parabellum, Wick kills a hitman with an old Russian book, and he is known to have killed at least 5 assassins with pencils (two on camera in John Wick Chapter 2). In the second movie, John Wick uses a horse to fight off henchmen, and there’s a fairly long fight scene in the third movie where attack dogs are used by another character to brutally disable many targets.
If you’re squeamish or you don’t like action/violence, maybe John Wick isn’t the franchise for you. If you’re sensitive to that or have trigger warnings about animals potentially being injured, this might be a set of movies that you may want to skip. My wife gets uncomfortable with animals in movies, and I would never encourage her to watch these movies. Not trying to spoil anything, but just beware.
Now that we have a vague impression of what the John Wick movies are, I need to dig into Wick himself to try to figure out how I’m going to tailor a sandwich for him.
Who is John Wick?
The character of John Wick is actually named Jonathan, which is a pretty cool name; everyone just calls him John unless they’re being formal. But it isn’t until the third movie that you learn that his real name is Jardani Jovonovich and he was born in a part of the Soviet Union in the Eastern European country that is now known as Belarus.
Wick was orphaned as a child and joined an organized crime group called Ruska Roma, which basically raised him and trained him to be a deadly hitman.
The movies start many years later with Chapter 1, and Wick is at a point in his life that he thought was beyond the end of his career. We learn that he had been able to retire five years before the start of that movie from his job as a killer-for-hire by accomplishing an impossible task, thereby extracting himself from the criminal world. Soon after the movie starts, he’s pulled back in by the son of a Russian crime lord.
The way the movies are spun, John Wick is forced back to the life of a hitman, but we never really see him kill innocent people; almost all of his targets are other hitmen or criminals trying to stop him from completing his mission, or specifically trying to kill him. The movie creators have intentionally done this to paint Wick as a gray character and not a wholly bad guy, allowing the viewer to still be able to root for a killer.
The large tattoo across the top of John Wick’s back says: fortes Fortuna adiuvat, which translates to Fortune favors the brave.
We’re seeing John Wick at the end of what is supposed to be a long career as an almost unkillable hitman who can achieve impossible tasks. He’s gained a reputation among his peers that we learn about from other characters throughout the movies, and their awe of his skills has given him the nickname of Baba Yaga or The Man You Send to Kill the Boogeyman.
What is this sandwich?
Before I get into what this sandwich actually is, we need to discuss how I came up with the concepts. Since John Wick doesn’t actually eat in any of the movies, there aren’t a lot of hints as to what he likes. I found two instances in John Wick Chapter 1 that offer tiny insights into what he might enjoy.
First was his breakfast that he feeds himself and his brand new dog, Daisy (who nothing bad ever happens to). That breakfast is a bowl of Multigrain Flakes cereal and whole milk. Daisy digs in, scarfing down the food, but the movie never actually shows Wick take a bite.
Later, in that same movie, we see Wick in his room at the New York Continental Hotel with what appears to be a mostly eaten steak on a table in front of him. This is his hotel room, so we have to assume it’s the food John Wick has eaten. It’s also not 100% clear that this is steak, but it certainly looks like it to me.
In John Wick Chapter 2, there’s a scene where John is fighting another hit man named Cassian, played by the actor and rapper Common. The fight is broken up because they end up in the Rome Continental Hotel bar, which is off limits to “business,” so the two end up consuming a contentious cocktail together. Cassian confirms that Wick’s drink of choice is bourbon. There are at least two scenes showing Wick drinking different labels of Blanton’s brand of bourbons.
So we’ve gathered that Wick enjoys bourbon, might like a steak, and also purchases and eats multigrain cereal flakes. And that’s about it throughout the whole four-movie franchise. I didn’t really feel like I could make a sandwich that’s bourbon, steak, and cereal flakes, so I looked to another source, which was an interview that Stephen Colbert has with actor Keanu Reeves (video below). In that interview, Reeves reveals that his favorite sandwich at the time happens to be a crunchy peanut butter and honey sandwich on toasted toast. Yes, he says, toasted toast.
Reeves’ summation of that particular peanut butter and honey sandwich is one that I personally think about in all my sandwiches: “sweet and savory and crunch.”
So if we combine all of these components, we have the sandwich that I invented for Jonathan Wick. It’s a seared and sliced New York Strip steak with a bourbon brown sugar glaze, cooked rare and placed on top of a bed of homemade honey roasted peanut butter, drizzles of honey, and super crunchy multigrain cereal flakes. All of this is sandwiched inside of homemade multigrain flake honey wheat bread slices that have been lightly butter-toasted on one side only.
The sandwich contains sweet and savory elements, the steak is tender, and the peanut butter is savory and slightly chunky, and the multigrain cereal flakes bring a sharper crunch than you might imagine. Altogether, this is a somewhat fancy sandwich that’s actually not fancy at all. The Baba Yaga sandwich fights fair, but will stab you if provoked.
A visual look at John Wick
I painted John Wick based on a John Wick Chapter 1 movie poster. I swapped out his dark shirt for the light one that he wears through much of the 2nd and 3rd movies, and I gave him the bullet wound he receives from the violinist in Chapter 2 on the wrong side of his body, just so it would be visible in the painting.
I’m still messing around with some art, and I’m having fun doing digital paintings, mostly because I can do them quickly (this one took about 2 hours while “watching” TV), and I can supplement my sandwich blog posts with extra visual content that some people might find enjoyable. Sometimes it can even be educational (see below).
But more importantly, this is a creative outlet that might or might not be keeping me from going insane.
Now that we know what sandwich we’re making for the Man You Send to Kill the Boogeyman, let’s talk about the ingredients.
Honey and Multi-grain cereal flakes
The two most important components of this sandwich are the honey and multigrain cereal flakes. They are technically just two components that are added raw directly into this sandwich, but they’re both used in more than just this one way.
Honey is in the bread, in the peanut butter recipe, it’s in the bourbon brown sugar glaze, and it’s also drizzled inside the sandwich on top of the peanut butter. With all this sweetness, you might expect the sandwich to be overwhelming, but the savory steak and peanut butter more than balance things out.
Multi-grain cereal flakes are used as a component of the bread loaf dough and as a crunchy topping, and I also use these crunchy flakes as a texture element by placing them between the peanut butter layer and the steak.
Multigrain flake honey wheat sandwich loaf
This is my honey wheat sandwich loaf recipe that I added multigrain cereal flakes to. The flakes were added right into the dough, but in the end, they didn’t contribute much to the flavor or texture of the dough. But I also encrusted the top exterior of the loaf, which gave each slice a bit of interest in appearance.
I have shared the recipe with the flakes inside the dough, but as I said, they do not contribute much. I do really like how the exterior of the loaf looks and how the slices appear in the final sandwich.
It’s an easy move to simply make my regular honey wheat loaf and just sprinkle some flakes on top before baking, if you want, or you can just buy your favorite sliced bread for the sandwich if you want to go the store-bought route.
The pan I’m using is a USA Pans small pullman pan, which is basically a 9 x 4-inch pan with super straight sides. You can make this recipe in a 9 x 5-inch loaf pan, but you will end up with wider slices, and the loaf will not rise quite as tall. Those USA pans are great if you think you’ll be baking bread often. They’re not very expensive, and you can get additional lids for them in case you would like to try to bake a square Pullman loaf.
Once we have the bread baked and sliced, we need to toast it, as Keanu said.
Butter toasted slices
Keanu Reeves says he wants his peanut butter and honey sandwich to be on “toasted toast.” So we need to turn some of these multigrain cereal flake wheat slices into toast. The first of these Baba Yaga sandwiches, I simply put the bread into our toaster oven and toasted it, but the sandwich turned out so much better when I toasted the bread in a pan with just a touch of butter spread on the outside.
This is the difference between dry toast and toast that’s just a bit buttered so that it’s still warm and slightly crunchy on the exterior, but the slices still retain some of their moisture.
I only toasted one side of each slice to be used as the exterior, with the softer side holding back the inside ingredients in the sandwich.
Here’s my new multigrain cereal flake wheat bread recipe. If you don’t want to make your own bread, you can buy a loaf of fairly soft wheat bread to accomplish most of what I made here, minus the exterior cereal flakes.
Multigrain cereal honey wheat sandwich loaf
This lightly sweetened white wheat bread brings a bit of texture and visual interest through the introduction of crispy multigrain cereal flakes.
Get RecipeCrunchy peanut butter
I’ve shared my honey-roasted peanut butter recipe a few times now, but this time I actually used regular roasted and salted peanuts instead of the honey-roasted version. Because of this, the resulting peanut butter was a touch more savory, and I honestly don’t think the sandwich was any better because of this.
I think if I were to make this sandwich again, I would probably buy honey-roasted peanuts because I enjoy that version better than the non-honey-roasted. If you want to make your own peanut butter using my recipe, you can make it with either type of peanut. If you taste it near the end of the processing time, you can still add salt and/or honey if you want, and pulse things a bit more, and it will still come together properly.
Just be aware that to create peanut butter, you will need a food processor, and it will take at least 10 minutes of pureeing on low for the peanuts to go from solid to something akin to sand, and then it takes on a playdough texture before finally becoming smooth. Up to around 8.5 or 9 minutes, you’ll be sure that you’ve messed something up, but the smoothness comes at the very end.
Honey roasted peanut butter
Smooth, sweet and salty peanuts are great on a peanut butter and jelly sandwich or the topping on a burger. Or you can just buy some crackers and go to town for snacks.
Get RecipeCast-iron New York strip steak
John Wick Chapter 1 starts at Wick’s house, which is located somewhere near New York City. The actual John Wick house is on Long Island, but John’s license plates are registered in New Jersey. I think it’s sort of meant to be ambiguous as to where he lives, but when he was working as a hitman, he certainly called the NYC area home. Because of this, I went with a New York strip steak as the steak of choice for a Baba Yaga sandwich.
I’ve been a big fan of the NY strip steak or just “strip steak” since I started cooking my own steaks, and because of this, I have created an easy cast-iron recipe that you really can’t mess up if you follow the steps and timing. I wrote the recipe for NY strip, but it will also work for pretty much any steak that’s between 1 and 1.5 inches thick.
The NY Strip is a cut that is part of another steak you might have heard of, the porterhouse. A porterhouse steak is cut from the rear end of the short loin (top back rear of the cow), and the t-bone steak is what that same cut of meat is called if it comes from the front of the short loin.
The difference between a porterhouse and a t-bone is based on the size of the filet. If the width of the filet portion is more than 1.25 inches, you can call that larger steak a porterhouse.
Here are probably too many photos of the process I use to sear a NY strip steak on my stove top. I’ve also created a recipe, but these photos pretty much tell the whole tale.
My steak recipe will produce a rare to medium-rare steak if you follow the steps and timing, but you can add a bit more time to cook a steak that’s a bit more done if that’s your goal. I would suggest buying a probe thermometer if you want to get serious about cooking steak.
| Doneness | Center color | Remove from heat | Carryover cooking |
| Rare | Red | 120° F / 48° C | 125° F / 52° C |
| Medium Rare | Pink | 130° F / 54° C | 135° F / 57° C |
| Medium | Some pink | 140° F / 60° C | 145° F / 63° C |
| Medium Well | Tiny sliver of pink | 145° F / 63° C | 150° F / 66° C |
| Well Done | No pink | 160+° F / 71° C | 165° F / 73° C |
Here’s my easy cast-iron NY strip steak that you can adjust to hit the temperatures you’d like.
Cast iron NY strip steak
This recipe is more of a timed process for searing a NY strip steak on a cast iron pan to somewhere between rare and medium rare. If you want your steak more well done, just add a minute or two to the cooking time. This is a great time for you to buy a probe thermometer if you don't already own one.
Get RecipeBourbon and brown sugar glaze
I needed to bring Bourbon into this sandwich, and the best way I figured I could, without just serving a couple of fingers’ worth on the side, was to create a steak sauce including it. So that’s what I did.
I turned a half cup of bourbon, brown sugar, soy sauce, honey, Dijon mustard, worcestershire sauce, apple cider vinegar, and some minced garlic into a somewhat thin but sticky glaze that I drizzled over the steak as it rested and then spooned over the steak once it was sliced and added to the sandwich.
In John Wick Chapter 1 and Chapter 2, Wick consumes two different label versions of Blanton’s Bourbon. But that stuff costs like 100 dollars a bottle, and I’m not going to cook with that…
I used Woodford Reserve.
The alcohol here is cooked off for the most part during a 20-minute simmer, but you can still detect the oaky bourbon and maybe a bit of vanilla flavor in the finished glaze and the resulting sandwich. This glaze, while sweet, brings another depth to the Baba Yaga sandwich experience.
Baba Yaga sandwich recipe and photos
Here are a few photos of the versions of the John Wick sandwich that I made this week. If you scroll just a bit further, you can get the full recipe to make a sandwich for the Boogeyman.
Baba Yaga sandwich (aka John Wick sandwich)
This recipe will show you how to combine all of John Wick's interests—other than shooting and killing—into a sandwich that's perfect to serve the Man You Send to Kill the Boogeyman. This beefy and peanut buttery experience with just a touch of honey is the Baba Yaga sandwich.
Ingredients:
Bourbon brown sugar glaze- 1⁄2 cup bourbon
- 1⁄4 cup brown sugar
- 2 tablespoons soy sauce
- 1 tablespoon honey
- 1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
- 2 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce
- 2 teaspoons apple cider vinegar
- 2 cloves garlic, minced
- 2 tablespoons butter (used to finish sauce)
- NY strip steak, about 1 to 1.5 inches thick
- kosher salt
- 1 teaspoon neutral oil
- ground black pepper
- 2 bread slices (I used this recipe)
- 2 teaspoons butter
- 3 to 4 tablespoons chunky or crunchy peanut butter (recipe)
- multigrain cereal flakes
- honey
- sliced steak (from above)
- bourbon brown sugar glaze (from above)
Directions:
Remove the steak from the refrigerator and place it on a plate or cutting board. Liberally salt the exterior of the steak, top, bottom, and sides. Let the salted steak rest for 25 minutes.
Bourbon brown sugar glaze: add all ingredients except for the butter to a small saucepan over medium heat. Bring to a simmer and let everything simmer for 20 minutes.
After 20 minutes, the sauce should have reduced. Stir in the butter and keep warm while you cook your steak.
NY strip steak: after the steak has rested for 25 minutes, place a cast-iron pan on the stove over medium or medium-high heat and allow the pan to warm up for 5 minutes.
While the pan is warming up, wipe the steak dry with paper towels. The salt should have made the exterior of the steak lose some liquid, but we need the steak to be very dry when it goes into the pan.
Add a teaspoon of oil to the pan and allow it to spread out over the pan surface a little. If you have an infrared thermometer, check to ensure that the pan is above 450 F ( 230 C).
Place the steak into the pan, and press it down all around to make sure that the surface of the steak has full contact with the hot surface of the pan.
Cook, without touching the steak, for 4 minutes.
After 4 minutes, flip the steak and cook it untouched for another 4 minutes. While the second side of the steak is cooking, you can add more salt and ground black pepper to the exposed side if you wish. You can also spoon a bit of the glaze on top of the steak at this point.
After a total of 8 minutes of cooking time, using tongs, grab the steak and press the sides of the steak onto the surface of the pan. Definitely do this if you see any large pieces of white fat on the edge of the steak. You'll only need a minute or two for each side.
Once the sides are lightly seared, move the steak to a cutting board to rest for five minutes. At this point, you can add black pepper to the exposed side of the steak.
After 5 minutes of resting time, you can slice the steak and get ready to build the sandwich.
Sandwich assembly: wipe out the pan you used to cook the steak in. Add butter to one side of each slice of bread and toast just that side in the pan until the bread is browned and crispy.
Add peanut butter to the non-toasted side of one piece of bread. Top with multigrain cereal flakes and honey.
Then add slices of the steak and top that with some of the bourbon brown sugar glaze. Close the sandwich with the other slice of bread, toasted side facing out.
Serve your John Wick sandwich and enjoy (maybe with a strong pour of bourbon).
Be seeing you…
“Be seeing you” is a common phrase uttered by several characters in the first three John Wick movies. Typically, it’s a sort of last goodbye between assassins after a battle to the death. But in my case, since this is a sandwich blog, it’s just a sort of ta-ta until the next sandwich comes next week—or more likely the week after.
Next week, you might have to make your own sandwich since I put too much brain power into this one.
