I recently added rapper Snoop Dogg’s first cookbook to my shelf and while reading through it I found his fried bologna sandwich. Snoop claims this sandwich was something he made in his youth during simpler times but he remembers it fondly.
If you don’t know who Snoop Dogg is and you’ve been watching the 2024 Olympics this week you’ve likely seen him having the time of his life working with NBC, fooling around in the pool with Michael Phelps, and taking selfies with people like Billie Jean King. Mr. Dogg is not just a famous sports commentator but also one of the original gangsta rappers from the early 1990s. As I recently learned, he’s also a cookbook author. #followthedogg
Table of Contents
Snoop’s O.G. bologna
The Maximum-Effort version
What is this sandwich?
I wrote about and made a bologna sandwich or two a couple of years ago and Snoop Dogg’s version is very similar to the one that I made. Snoop’s sandwich is made from three pan-fried or pan-seared bologna slices, three slices of American cheese, a bit of yellow mustard (on only one slice of bread), and a handful of crunchy BBQ flavored potato chips packed between two slices of butter-toasted white bread.
In this sandwich blog post, I plan to work through Snoop’s recipe for his O.G. bologna sandwich and then I will proceed to take a simple sandwich and make it a heck of a lot more complicated with my Maximum-Effort bologna sandwich. Read on to see where we end up.
Tha Boss Dogg’s O.G. bologna sandwich
I wanted to first try this sandwich like Snoop Dogg would have made in the 1970s and/or 80s. Snoop was born in 1971 so he definitely could have been making sandwiches during the 70s and since he’s Gen X he was certainly using a hot skillet at a young age.
As for ingredients, the two that I strayed the most from what Snoop might have used in the 1970s are the bread choice and the cheese choice. Since I’m an active baker and like to make my own bread, I didn’t really want a whole loaf of Wonder Bread lying around my house. So I bought a half loaf of something that looked like a pretty basic white bread loaf.
The OG of Bologna or maybe it’s the OM. Snoop name drops Oscar Mayer in his recipe. 
I struggled with the bread selection. Snoop probably used Wonder Bread or a well known white bread brand available in the 1970s or 80s. I purchased the smallest loaf I could find so I didn’t have a lot of waste. 
Snoop also probably used the American cheese slices wrapped in plastic wrap. I buy this stuff. It’s better. 
French’s is the name when it comes to yellow mustard. 
Snoop also mentions that Barbecue Lays are his favorite chip.
As for the cheese; I have written about sliced American quite a few times and you really should be buying your American cheese from the deli, or buying “deli-style” American because it is simply better cheese. The plastic-wrapped slices might have been the only American cheese available when Snoop was growing up, so use that if it’s what you can get your hands on for this one.
My attempt at Snoop Dogg’s recipe
Snoop Dogg’s bologna sandwich requires you to fry/toast two slices of bread on both sides in a skillet with butter. Then you remove those slices and fry the bologna.
Once the bologna has picked up some browning on both sides, top each bologna slice with a slice of American cheese and stack everything up so that the cheese gets melty from the hot meat while still in the pan.
Add the stack of bologna and cheese to one toasted slice of bread, top with a handful of barbecue potato chips, then spread some yellow mustard on the top slice of bread and lay it on top of the chips to finish the sandwich.
At first, I was skeptical about the lack of mayonnaise in this sandwich. I initially thought the whole sandwich would be a bit too mustard-forward, but the fact that the mustard is only on one side of the bread probably helps that situation.
There’s also a whole bunch of cheese in this sandwich which more than makes up for any sort of creaminess that you might have gotten from a spread of mayonnaise.
The barbecue chips bring some big crunch that otherwise would only be coming from the toasted bread. I typically find that bologna can be very salty and many of the other ingredients are also sodium heavy. But the mustard cuts through some of the creamy, savory, and fatty flavors in the cheese and meat.
Overall, this is a fun sandwich that is likely similar to sandwiches you might have had as a young person if you grew up in the United States. Nostalgia tastes pretty good when served as a sandwich.
I made Snoop Dogg’s O.G. Bologna sandwich and filmed it for an Instagram reel. It’s a super easy sandwich to make, so give it a shot next time you’re feeling nostalgic for simpler sandwich days.
Snoop Dogg's throwback bologna sandwich (copycat)
Some days call for a nostalgic sandwich that reminds you of your youth. This bologna sandwich is one of Snoop Dogg's favorites from his cookbook: From Crook to Cook: Platinum Recipes from Tha Boss Dogg's Kitchen.
Get RecipeBologna frying cuts
Round deli meat will cup up when fried. When the meat cups up, it will become hard to sear because cupped meat will not stay flat on the pan. There are many ways to slice round deli meat—like bologna or pork roll—but the two named methods that I am familiar with are the Pac-Man cut and the fireman’s badge cut.
Snoop Dogg’s recipe encourages the Pac-Man cut which requires just one cut from the outside of the meat to the center. The fireman’s badge cut requires four cuts but in my experience, this cutting style ends up having less open area between the meat after cooking. Basically, it’s up to you. Experiment and see which works best, or just do the Pac-Man cut and be done with it.
That’s Snoop Dogg’s version of the bologna sandwich. You can stop reading here if you want to be a quitter, but I’ve decided to apply Maximum-Effort to the ingredients in this sandwich to see if we can improve on anything. First, as always we need bread.
Japanese milk bread
I have shared this recipe a few times and have made it probably 10 or 20 times at this point. It’s a really soft loaf of bread; it can almost be too soft. Getting a good slice isn’t hard, but the slices can be so soft right after you bake this loaf that it seems to work better if the loaf is baked the day before.
Tangzhong
The production of Japanese milk bread uses a process known as tangzhong to prepare part of the dough. Tangzhong is the process of combining liquid and flour and heating them together until they form a paste. This process incorporates some of the flour from the full dough recipe and forces the starch in the flour to absorb a lot of the hot milk. For reasons I attribute to “science,” flour will absorb more liquid during the cooking process which means your resulting bread will retain more moisture leading to a softer final loaf.
If you’d like to learn more about the science of tangzhong and milk bread in general, I covered that a bit more in my tonkatsu sando post that I wrote a couple of years ago.
The tangzhong is allowed to cool and then it’s treated as another ingredient in the main dough.
Snoop Dogg’s version of this sandwich requires some soft white bread. Japanese milk bread is the softest white bread that I know how to make. This recipe also requires the slices to be toasted, so I did that too.
Toasting the bread and resting it
The slices for this sandwich are toasted in a pan with a bit of butter until golden brown.
If you make a lot of sandwiches like I do, you end up toasting a heck of a lot of bread. One thing you’ll notice when you’re toasting bread either in a toaster or in a skillet with butter, the toasted bread will steam itself if you move it from the heat and immediately place it on a plate or a cutting board.
Buy a cheap cooling rack if you don’t have one already and leave it on your toaster or in an easily accessible area. Yank it out when the toast is almost complete and let the bread rest on the rack until it cools off. This means your toast has a chance to cool without steaming itself and it doesn’t become soggy.
Japanese milk bread loaf (shokupan)
Soft and light white bread, made even softer with a quick tangzhong, blend of flour and milk. Perfect bread selection for a tonkatsu or even something as simple as a tomato sandwich or BLT.
Get RecipeHomemade spicy beer mustard
It’s hard to beat French’s mustard when you start talking about plain ole yellow mustard so I didn’t even try. I simply worked on an existing mustard recipe I’ve shared and changed it slightly to be a bit closer to a yellow mustard. A lot of mustard recipes require you to cook/boil the mustard powder in a liquid. I have done that before and it will literally turn into a mustard bomb in your kitchen.
This recipe requires no cooking, it just requires time. The mustard powder will not immediately absorb all of the liquid and the mustard will be very thin and liquid-y when you first make it. But after at least 24 hours in the fridge, the mustard will thicken and you will then be able to spread it around on bread.
As for which beer to use in the recipe? I used an IPA that I had on hand, but you could pretty much use any beer. If you were boiling this recipe I would suggest that you stay away from hoppy beers because I have found that they intensify in a bad way when boiled, but since this isn’t cooked off, you can use whatever beer you have available (or just use water). I’m guessing this means my beer mustard has a bit of a percentage of alcohol in it since it hasn’t been cooked, so you might not want to feed this spicy beer mustard to any babies you might have or find.
Spicy beer mustard
This slightly spicy mustard is easy to whip together and full of flavor. This mustard does require a bit of time in the refrigerator to fully come together but you'll be spreading it on your next sub sandwich or cheeseburger before you know it.
Get RecipeSmoked bologna chub
I bought a whole 3.7-pound tube of bologna from my normal grocery store for this sandwich. I’ve done this once before and neither time was the deli counter person quite ready for the request. They handled it fine though, they just were rather confused about what I wanted. Bologna is fully cooked so you can smoke a bologna chub in under 3 hours.
The goal of smoking bologna like this is to get a flavored exterior crust and to get a bit of smoke to penetrate the outside of the meat. You will not smoke the meat all the way through due to the length of time of this cook but you can add extra flavor and excitement to a somewhat boring deli meat.
The process is simple. First, you check to see if your bologna chub has a casing on the outside. In my experience, removing the casing is typically very easy, just make a cut and peel it off. Then you score the outside of the bologna chub in a checkered or diamond pattern and then slather it with yellow mustard and spices. The mustard is there simply to give the spices the ability to stick to the meat. As for spicing, I have come up with my own blend, but you can buy or use your favorite barbecue spice rub blend here.
I used applewood chips for smoking because it seemed like bologna and apples would be good friends. I also bought a small steel smoker box to use on my gas grill. I do not have a dedicated smoker and I am sort of hesitant to have a fire going for many hours because my grilling area is my rooftop deck. So short smokes like this one are about as much as I’m interested in tackling at the moment. Needless to say, I got a lot of extra stairs going up and down to keep an eye on this bologna.
All gas grills are different, but for my particular three-burner grill, I could keep the temperature dialed in around 260 F the whole time with just one burner at about 3/4 power with the lid closed. Place the smoker box full of dry wood chips right on top of the burner that is lit and you should have some smoke moving around inside the grill.
Once the blogona is smoked it’s up to you how thick or thin you slice it. I did a combination of thicker slices with just a knife but for the final sandwich, I chose to use my deli meat slicer that I store in the basement.
I bought this slicer on Amazon back in 2022 on a pretty good sale, thinking that I probably wouldn’t use it that often, but it’s nice to have if you have the space. You can spend a whole lot more on one if you think you will use it, but this particular slicer seems to stay priced around 100 bucks and it will drop down a bit lower when it goes on sale.
If you roast a lot of turkey breasts or roast beef and would enjoy using those in sandwiches a slicer might be a good deal. The one that I own that is linked above is clearly not of industrial quality, but if you’re just slicing a smoked bologna chub or a couple of turkey breasts on occasion it will get the job done.
Here’s the recipe I use for smoking a 3 to 5-pound bologna chub. Give it a shot and let me know how it worked out.
Smoked bologna chub
You can add a lot of extra flavor to a nostalgic sandwich by smoking a whole bologna chub. Impress your friends with the amount of lunch meat that you can bring to the next cookout.
Get RecipeCrystal hot sauce-infused cheese slices
Instead of using American cheese slices, I figured I would make my own. At first, I considered making smoked gouda slices since Snoop Dogg mentions smoked gouda in the description of the O.G. bologna sandwich as an option he might try to change up his future bologna sandwiches. But since my bologna was already fairly smoky, I felt the cheese might get lost. Instead, I looked for inspiration from other parts of the cookbook.
In the first chapter of Snoop Dogg’s cookbook, he mentions pantry and fridge staples and one of those items was Crystal brand hot sauce. I have never tried Crystal and I didn’t even know I could buy it in Chicago until I did a little googling.
I created homemade cheese slices from a mix of the cheeses I had on hand: shredded smoked gouda, Monterey Jack, and cheddar cheese. I worked all of it into a smooth cheese sauce with water and sodium citrate and then added a liberal amount of Crystal hot sauce. Then I poured the mixture out onto a sheet pan and after a few hours in the fridge, I was able to slice it into sandwich-sized slices.
Homemade BBQ potato chips
Homemade potato chips are great once you get the potatoes sliced properly. The potatoes need to be sliced very thin, around 1/16th of an inch or even thinner. I do the slicing with a Japanese mandoline which is probably one of the more dangerous tools you can have in your kitchen. This is the vegetable slicer/mandoline that I bought 11 years ago. It’s still sharp and works well and you need a consistent way to cut exact slices if you want to fry your own chips.
Once you have all of your potato slices they need to be soaked in cold water for 20 to 30 minutes to remove some of their starch. Rinsing off the starch will enable the chips to brown better in the hot frying oil and cold water can firm up potato cells which will lead to a crispier chip.
Here’s the spice blend I use to make BBQ potato chips. It’s a touch sweet with a little smokiness that definitely brings the barbecued flavor.
BBQ french fry or potato chip spice blend
This is a great barbecue-flavored seasoning for homemade chips or fries. Goes great sprinkled on store-bought frozen fries right after they come out of the oven.
Get RecipeSandwich assembly
Just like Snoop Dogg’s O.G. bologna sandwich, this one is easy to build once you have all the proper ingredients.
Start with a slice of butter toasted Japanese milk bread. 
Next is three slices of smoked bologna and three slices of homemade Crystal hot sauce infused smoked gouda cheese. 
Add a handful of freshly fried BBQ potato chips. 
And then a liberal squeeze of homemade beer mustard. 
Finally, finish the sandwich with a mustard-side-down slice of buttered toast.
The Maximum-Effort Snoop Dogg bologna sandwich
The recipe below is officially the longest recipe I’ve ever written and I didn’t even include the bread in the full recipe. It could have been longer—you’re welcome. I don’t really expect anyone to go to the full trouble of making this sandwich but there’s a good chance that some of you reading might be as crazy as I am.
Was it all worth it?
I think the weakest point in my Maximum-Effort version is probably the potato chips. Don’t get me wrong, these are good chips. They’re crunchy and seasoned well, but I don’t think I have the scientific agility in my kitchen to match the crunchy intensity of a Lay’s BBQ chip. Because of this, the textural experience in Snoop’s O.G. version is unmatched.
Everything else though, is better. The mustard is way more flavorful and spicy. You can taste the hot sauce coming out through the cheese and there’s just enough smoke flavor from the bologna to make bologna more interesting.
Maximum-Effort smoked bologna and cheese sandwich
Inspired by Snoop Dogg's traditional throwback bologna sandwich but instead, we make it a lot more complicated with all homemade ingredients.
Ingredients:
Smoked bologna and hot sauce-infused cheddar cheese slices- 1 tablespoon kosher salt
- 1 tablespoon paprika
- 1 tablespoon fresh ground black pepper
- 2 tablespoons brown sugar
- 2 teaspoons chili powder
- 2 teaspoons ground cumin
- 1 teaspoon ground coriander
- 1⁄2 teaspoon cayenne pepper, or to taste
- 3 to 5 pound whole bologna
- 3 tablespoons yellow mustard
- 1⁄2 cup water
- 14 grams sodium citrate (a heaping tablespoon - see notes below for links to order)
- 16 ounces cheddar or Monterey Jack cheese, shredded (1 pound)
- 1 to 3 tablespoons hot sauce (Crystal brand preferred)
- 1⁄2 cup + 2 tablespoons dry mustard powder (I use Coleman's brand)
- 1⁄4 cup whole mustard seeds
- 1 teaspoon kosher salt
- 1⁄4 teaspoon garlic powder
- 1⁄4 teaspoon onion powder
- 1⁄2 teaspoon ground turmeric
- 1/8 teaspoon paprika
- 1⁄2 cup beer (any style will do)
- 2 tablespoons honey
- 1⁄4 cup apple cider vinegar (white wine or white vinegar will work too)
- 1 tablespoon brown sugar
- 1 teaspoon garlic powder
- 1 teaspoon onion powder
- 1 teaspoon smoked paprika
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1⁄2 teaspoon black pepper
- 1⁄2 teaspoon MSG (optional)
- 2 russet potatoes
- peanut oil or another neutral frying oil
- 1 tablespoon butter
- 2 slices soft white bread (Japanese milk bread preferred)
- 3 slices smoked bologna (from above)
- 3 slices hot sauce-infused cheese (from above)
- handful of homemade BBQ potato chips (from above)
- 1 to 2 tablespoons spicy beer mustard (from above)
Suggested Equipment
Directions:
Bologna barbecue rub: add kosher salt, paprika, ground black pepper, brown sugar, chili powder, cumin, coriander, and cayenne pepper to a bowl and stir to combine. Taste it to see if it's super spicy and adjust. This is your barbecue rub.
Smoke the bologna: set up your smoker or kettle grill for cooking at 225°F (105°C) with your favorite choice of wood or pellets for pork.
Check to see if your bologna has a casing around it. It should be a very easy process of making one long cut through the casing and then peeling it off of the whole bologna chub. You could probably smoke it with the casing still on, but the casing will prevent the smoke from penetrating the meat.
Once the casing is removed, with a sharp knife score the outside of the bologna. Keep your cuts about an inch apart and then make a crosshatch of scores going the other direction. Don't cut too deep into the meat.
Once the bologna has been scored, rub the outside with 3 tablespoons of yellow mustard. This mustard is going to be your "glue" to allow the barbecue rub to stick to the outside of the bologna.
Once the mustard is spread all over the bologna, clean your hands and then sprinkle the barbecue rub very well over the outside. Don't forget about the ends of the bologna. Do your best to make a consistent spread of rub.
Once your grill is set up and the internal smoker temperature is around 225 F, add the rubbed bologna and allow it to smoke for 2 to 3 hours. The bologna should take on some color, the barbecue rub should fully have adhered and after this amount of time smoking, your bologna should have taken on a lot of smoky flavors. Remove it from the smoker and allow the meat to cool.
Slice the bologna as thinly as possible. If you want to get thin slices, the meat has to be cool and if you really want to be able to slice it super thin and you don't have an electric slicer, you can put the meat in the refrigerator or even freezer for a few minutes to firm up the meat.
Store the bologna in a sealed container in the refrigerator for up to a week or freeze, wrapped in plastic wrap or freezer bags for a month or two.
Hot sauce-infused cheese slices: add a greased or Silpat lined sheet pan to your oven on its lowest setting. Mine is 150 F.
Add water to a medium-sized pot and bring to a simmer. Add sodium citrate and stir to combine.
Slowly add all the shredded cheese, stopping to stir the cheese into the sauce after every handful. Once all the cheese is added stir very well while the cheese is still simmering to make sure it is very smooth.
Add 1 to 3 tablespoons of hot sauce. Three tablespoons will have a little bit of a spicy kick but it will not be super hot. If you are worried about it being too spicy, just use 1 tablespoon. Stir again to fully incorporate the hot sauce into the cheese.
Remove the sheet pan from the oven and carefully pour the cheese onto the pan.
Once the sauce is in a consistently thin layer, cover the cheese with wax paper and move it to a refrigerator to cool.
Once the cheese is fully cool, you can carefully remove it from the sheet pan and slice the cheese into 3.5-inch squares or whatever shapes you desire. To store the cheese, place a piece of parchment or wax paper between each slice and store it in the refrigerator for up to three weeks.
Spicy beer mustard: grind the whole mustard seeds in a spice grinder or by hand with a mortar and pestle. You can also "grind" them in a plastic zip-top bag and a rolling pin. Just crush and grind the seeds until they are very small pieces but not fully fine dust.
Add the ground-up seeds to a bowl and then add the mustard powder. Next, add the other dry ingredients and stir to combine well.
Pour in the beer and mustard and stir. Allow this mixture to sit for 10 minutes and then add the vinegar. Stir again until everything is combined.
The mustard will be pretty liquidy at this point but add it to a jar or sealed container and store in the refrigerator for at least 24 hours and it will thicken up. Mustard can be safely kept in the fridge for many months or up to a year.
Fried BBQ potato chips: add brown sugar, garlic powder, onion powder, smoked paprika, salt, black pepper, and MSG (if using) to a bowl or sealed container.
Slice your russet potatoes very thin. If you're using a mandoline, watch your fingers!
Place sliced potatoes in a bowl full of cold water and let them sit for 20 minutes.
Dry your sliced potatoes by laying them out on paper towels or if you have one of those salad spinners, this would be a good opportunity to use them. The main goal here is to get them as dry as possible. Wet potatoes will cause a lot of splashing and splattering in the frying oil
Add oil to the medium or large pan at least 3 inches deep
Heat oil up to 375 degrees F (190 C). If you do not have a frying thermometer, you want the oil hot enough that a tiny piece of a potato slice starts to sizzle when it touches the oil.
Fry in batches of about 10 to 15 slices for 3 minutes or so. You need to pay very close attention because the chips will go from very pale to brown very fast.
Once the chips are turning tan-colored, remove them to a paper towel-lined sheet pan and season immediately with the seasoning blend.
Once all of the chips are fried, add to a bowl and season them all again if you want to make sure they're fully seasoned.
Store in a zip-top bag or sealed container for up to a week at room temperature.
Sandwich cooking and assembly: add a tablespoon of butter to a medium pan over medium heat. Once the butter is melted and bubbly add both slices of bread. Rub the bread around a little to make sure it has picked up some of the melted butter and then flip each slice so that the second side can also soak up some of the butter.
Toast the bread for 1 to 2 minutes per side until it starts to get golden brown and toasty. Remove the toast to a cooling rack while you prepare the rest of the sandwich ingredients. Keep your pan on medium heat.
Cut slits in the smoked bologna slices to make sure that they do not cup up while cooking. Just one slit from the edge to the very center is all that is required.
Keep the pan on medium heat add the three cut slices of smoked bologna and cook for 2 to 3 minutes.
Flip and then add a piece of hot sauce-infused cheese on top of each slice of smoked bologna. Cook the meat and cheese for an additional 2 minutes.
After 2 minutes, stack the three slices of meat and cheese on top of each other and remove from the heat.
Take one slice of toast and top it with the stack of meat and cheese. Carefully add a generous handful of homemade BBQ chips on top of the stack.
Spread a bit of spicy beer mustard on the second slice of bread and place it mustard side down on top of the chips.
Serve and enjoy.
Notes:
Sodium citrate is not going to be something you can find at the grocery store. Here is the brand of Sodium Citrate that I use from Amazon.
Check back next week
Next week we’ll be sampling some crispy fried chicken and turning it into a garlicky sandwich explosion.
