The BLAST sandwich (The Brown Sack copycat)

This great take on a BLT sandwich is inspired by the B.L.A.S.T. sandwich you could find at the Brown Sack restaurant in Chicago before it closed in 2014. See notes below the instructions for the optional Danny's Way BLAST.
YIELD
Instructions for 1 sandwich
PREP TIME
schedule 20 minutes
COOK TIME
schedule 40 minutes
TOTAL TIME
schedule 1 hour

Ingredients:

Oven baked bacon and shrimp
  • 3 or 4 slices uncooked bacon
  • 6 to 8 large, thawed and deveined shrimp
  • 1 teaspoon olive oil
  • a pinch of salt and ground black pepper
Sandwich assembly
  • 2 slices of white, wheat, or rye bread
  • 1 tablespoon butter
  • 3 to 4 tablespoons mayonnaise
  • bacon (from above)
  • 14 to 12 cup lettuce, shredded
  • 3 to 4 slices avocado (about 1/3 avocado)
  • shrimp (from above)
  • 1 to 2 slices tomato
  • salt and ground black pepper
Optional Danny's Way ingredients
  • 3 to 4 tablespoons chipotle mayonnaise (optional - replacing regular mayonnaise)
  • 2 or 3 tablespoons giardiniera (optional)

Check below recipe directions
for additional notes.

Directions:

Bacon and shrimp cooking: both the bacon and the shrimp can be cooked in the oven at the same time because they cook at the same oven temperature. If you want to cook them at the same time you will need two sheet pans and make sure you don't cook bacon and shrimp for the same amount of time because you will overcook the shrimp. 

Bacon: cooks on an aluminum foil-lined sheet pan at 400 F (205 C) for 25 to 30 minutes. 

Before cooking the shrimp, toss the cleaned and deveined shrimp in a bowl with olive oil, salt, and pepper to season the shrimp. 

Shrimp: cooks on an aluminum foil-lined sheet pan at 400 F (205 C) for 7 to 8 minutes. 

You can move the cooked bacon and shrimp to sealed containers in the refrigerator until it's time to sandwich. 

Sandwich assembly: toast or griddle the bread slices with butter. Place two teaspoon-sized pieces of butter in a medium skillet over medium to medium-low heat. Once the butter is just starting to become fully melted add two slices of bread on top of the melted butter and spread the bread around to ensure that you got it fully buttered. Cook the first side of the toast for about 3 minutes, checking after 2 minutes to see if it's browning rapidly. 

Once you start to see some browning on the first side of the toast, remove it from the pan to a plate and then add two more tablespoon-sized pieces of butter back to the pan to melt. Repeat the toasting process on this second side until you have both sides of two slices of bread toasted in butter and golden brown. Let the toast rest for a bit on a cooling rack while you prepare the rest of your ingredients. 

Spread mayonnaise on one side of one piece of bread. 

Break each piece of bacon in half and layer the half slices on top of the mayonnaise. 

Add a pile of shredded lettuce on top of the bacon layer and then top the lettuce with avocado slices. Season the avocado slices with a tiny pinch of salt if desired. 

Next, add a layer of shrimp followed by the tomato slices. Season the tomato with a pinch of salt and ground black pepper. 

Add another spread of mayonnaise on the second slice of toast and place it mayonnaise side down on top to complete the sandwich.

Notes:

Danny's Way was an optional addition on the menu that added chipotle mayonnaise and giardiniera to the Brown Sack BLAST. 

Chipotle mayonnaise is easy to make from the linked recipe. Giardiniera is made from pickled vegetables and should be available online or via this recipe I created. Add the chipotle mayonnaise in place of the regular mayonnaise in the recipe. If you want to add giardiniera, I found it best to add it on top of the lettuce because the oil in the giardiniera seasoned the lettuce like salad dressing.


Have you made this recipe? Tag @beerinator and let him know!



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