The Best Thing I Ever Ate...this week

I love Reuben Sandwiches.  I'm particular about my Rebuens, I mean, I take these things pretty seriously.  I would rather make one myself than order a bad one.  With Reubens you just never know what you are going to get.  One of the best I ever had was here.  Since I live about 150 miles from there, it's more convenient to make my own. 

According to Wikipediea: The Reuben sandwich is a hot sandwich of layered meat, sauerkraut and Swiss cheese, with a dressing. These are grilled between slices of rye bread. The meat is either corned beef or pastrami, and the dressing is either Russian or Thousand Island dressing. Several variants exist.

In my opinion, a Reuben just isn't a Reuben unless it's made with corned beef, not pastrami; Thousand Island, not Russian dressing. 

**Even if you don't like some of these ingredients separately, you may find that you love them together. Case in point: 

1.  My kids are both picky and they will eat this sandwich (one does it without the sauerkraut) which is a sacrilege. 
2. I would never choose Thousand Island for a salad, but wouldn't dream of leaving it off this sandwich.

Here are my tips for making Reubens at home:

• Use a dark or marbled rye
• Before putting the sandwich together, throw the meat in the pan to warm it up, this helps insure the cheese gets extra gooey.
• Drain and rinse the sauerkraut.  Rinsing gets rid of that "tinny" taste from the can.  Draining it keeps your sandwich from being too soggy. I like to dump it into a colander and run cold water over it and just let it drain.  
• For the least soggy sammy: layer bread, meat, kraut, dressing, cheese, bread.  Building your sandwich in this order keeps the dressing and kraut from having direct contact with the bread. 
• Generously butter the bread so that it gets nice and toasty.
• Don't let your heat get too high, otherwise the bread will burn before the insides are warm throughout.

Generally, I don't like plain potato chips.  In this case however, they are the perfect accompaniment (with a little extra dressing to dip in) along with dill pickles.  So, unless you plan to make the 150 mile trek to get someone else to make this for you, run to the store and pick up the ingredients and make it yourself.