The culmination of three recipes…was it worth it?

Time: 25 Minutes (excluding the recipes that go into this one)

Difficulty: 1/5

Ingredient Availability:  4/5

I hadn’t ever had a Cuban before trying this recipe. This recipe, if you want it to be as homemade as possible, takes a lot of work and time. You make your own bread, mojo pork, and even pickles. All of those parts have already been made and analyzed, so now it’s time to see how it all comes together. If you haven’t read the other analyses, I’ll give you a little sneak peek on what I think of some of the other components by saying I don’t think this will be very impressive.

Key Ingredients and Omissions:

As I mentioned above, I made the bread and pickles from scratch using Joshua Weissman’s recipes for them. Obviously, you can just use store bough pickles and rolls. I also used Josh’s recipe for Mojo Pulled pork in preparation for this recipe. That part is something that is less optional, but be sure to read both that analysis and this one before you commit. Other than those few things, nothing else in this recipe is all that special. You’re asked to use boiled ham (not smoked), which may be difficult to find, but I honestly think if you use smoked ham it may be better anyway. Nothing was omitted.

Tools:

• Panini Press or two pans

Cooking Review:

Assembly:25 minutes

The assembly is pretty straight forward. I split half of a loaf of the Cuban bread and coated the insides with butter. I then toasted the bread until golden brown. While it toasted, I sliced the pickles, as I made them as spears instead of slices. I also browned the ham in a buttered pan 2-3 slices at a time. Once the bread was toasted, I coated each cut half with mustard. I then, loaded it up with the pickles, ham, pork, and Swiss cheese. I closed the sandwich and coated both sides with more butter. Due to how narrow my bread was, it made the following step somewhat difficult. I won’t increase the difficulty score, as the recipe provides an alternative to the panini maker I used. My panini maker had a hard time closing on the tall and narrow sandwich, pushing the sandwich out of the two plates. I tried my best to toast the sandwich this way, as it’s what I started with, but I think using a pan to toast the bottom and a heated cast iron pan on top of the sandwich would have been a lot easier. Once toasted to the best of my ability, I removed it from the panini press and cut it in half on an angle.

Analysis:

If you look at the analysis of the recipes that went into this one, I think you’ll have a decent idea of how this recipe will be scored. The bread was still very good and the pickles provided a lot of good sweet and acidic flavor. The ham, which didn’t have all that much flavor as far as ham goes, was still more flavorful than the pork. The most flavorful part of the sandwich was the pickles, which could easily take over the whole experience in some bites. I think that if I used more mustard, it could have helped with this problem, but really, the meats should be more front and center than they were. Now, if you use the marinade that was reserved in making the pork as a dipping sauce, it definitely improves the experience, adding some nice fresh citrus flavors. However, this is not part of the Cuban recipe. All in all, the sandwich is decent. Given all the time it takes to make the other ingredients, I think you’d probably be disappointed with he result. If you used a different recipe for the pork, maybe this would be more impressive. As is, I’m giving this recipe a 6/10. I wouldn’t recommend you go all the way like I did, but maybe just make the bread and pickles.