Homemade sandwich spread. Sounds easy enough, right? This "unique" recipe has so many variations it is easy to customize to your taste - if you choose to try it! I have also been told by my aunt that she thought she despised this dish, but it depends on the protein you use. She recently had traveled to her sister's house where this was prepared with roast beef and she found it to be quite tasty. My great-uncle also shared later via social media that it is much better with roast beef than with ham.
I was intrigued by this recipe because it is almost identical to how I learned to make tuna sandwiches on my mother's side of the family - but tuna wasn't listed as an optional protein in this recipe 😲
The ingredients are simple, mayo, SWEET pickles, leftover meat (listed options were roast beef, roast pork, chicken or turkey, bologna or left over ham). Let's make one thing clear - I DESPISE Sweet pickles! I mean how disappointing is it to grab a pickle from a relish tray thinking you are about to savor the delightful acidic bite of a dill and be surprised by sickly sugary sweet pickle! YUCK!
My husband and I had leftover Easter ham so this was an easy way to use the leftovers.
I don't have a meat grinder to grind up the meat, so I simply finely chopped up the ham as best I could into a ground meat type texture. The recipe then said to also grind up the pickles with the meat, but I chopped those up finely and mixed together on the cutting board, and chopped up the mixture a little more to try and mimic what flavor transfer would potentially occur by grinding the ingredients together (probably overthinking it)!
After grinding the meat and pickles the directions say to simply "add enough Miracle Whip to form a spread" - essentially I think the measurements for this are as needed, to taste and preference. I only needed enough of everything to make a sandwich, so I added approximately 1 Tbs of mayo and mixed together until everything was well incorporated.
Now, the hardest part (just kidding) putting the spread between two pieces of bread to make your sandwich!
I find humor in the fact our recipe ends with the statement "simple but good" because now when I read that, I think "depends on what protein you use and who you ask!" :-) I don't know how many times my aunt asked me if I liked it but she was quite curious to hear the verdict on this simply yet controversial family recipe. This wasn't as bad as I had expected it to be (as I mentioned, I heard stories and the how much this was detested by many) but it definitely seemed to be over salted. I attribute this to be due to the ham, which is inherently naturally more salty than other meats. I know I will NEVER make this with bologna, if it was this salty with ham, bologna could be the Dead Sea! I do plan on trying this with roast beef because three of the four great-siblings have said it is much better with roast beef.
Until then, I will stick with tuna!
NEXT EPISODE: GREAT GRANDMA KZ'S RECIPE - POTATO DUMPLINGS
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ORIGINAL RECIPE
HOMEMADE SANDWICH SPREAD
You can use roast beef, roast pork, chicken or turkey, bologna or leftover ham.
Grind the meat. You can grind sweet pickles or sweet pickle relish in with the meat. (You can also try a dill pickle with the sweet).
After grinding the meat and the pickles you add enough Miracle Whip to form a spread.
Simple, but good.
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