Classic Reuben Sandwich

0:00It's time for a recipe of the day. A couple of months ago, I answered a query from a reporter about tips for making the best Rubin. I saw the query and I was like, whoa, I have a lot of opinions about this. And so I sent my answers and she ended up using them in her article, which I will link to in the show notes for this podcast episode. But yeah, that article doesn't have a recipe for Rubin's in it. And so I was like, you know what, I need to put a Rubin recipe on my site that incorporates these tips. So where do these tips come from? My parents had a deli when I was in my teen years and there was a Rubin sandwich on their menu that was so delicious. I used to order it for lunch all the time. So I have eaten and made more Rubin sandwiches than the average person for sure and watched even more of them being made. My mom had down pat, perfect technique, perfect Rubin sandwich. And so, you know, in answering that reporter's query, I was like, I am quite the expert

1:00on this and I didn't even know it. And so now here is my recipe with all of my overly detailed expert Rubin making tips. I promise you, if you follow my advice, you're going to have the best Rubin sandwich you've ever tasted. So the biggest issue when it comes to Rubin sandwiches is saltiness. You end up with soggy, smushed bread that happens a lot. The other issue is the temperature. You end up with a Rubin sandwich that's like nice and warm on the outside, but then like coagulated cheese, cold sauerkraut in the middle, like you're biting in and you're like, mmm, crispy, warm, oh cold, ah, like that. We don't want any of that. So I am solving both the soggyness problem, the temperature problem and also the mushy bread problem, or smushed bread problem, which is kind of related to the soggy problem, but also a problem of its own. So that is what we're doing in this sandwich.

2:00And you know what, it's not actually that hard to fix all of these problems, so it's not going to take that much longer to make the sandwich, which is a good thing, right? So I'll just quickly tell you the main part to the tips and then I'll jump into the recipe. So first you do need to drain the sauerkraut really well. Most people do know how to do this. You put it into a fine mesh sieve over a sinker bowl and you just squeeze it and push it really good to all the waters out, but the other thing that you need to do, and this is what my mom did, is lightly fry the sauerkraut. You want to toast it in a warm skillet, and that's going to evaporate out even more of the juices, and it gives a lightly caramelized flavor to the cabbage, which is just delicious. Then you're also going to heat the meat before you add it to the sandwich. I see it all over the internet and in cookbooks that when people are making rubens, they're just assembling the sandwiches like fully and then grilling both sides. If you have a nice thick ruben sandwich, there is no way that your sauerkraut and your corn beef in the middle are going to be nice and warm before the outside of the sandwich

3:02burns. So what happens? Nobody wants to burn the outside of the sandwich, so they pull it off the grill when it's nice and toasty outside and you're right, it's cold in the middle. So we're going to warm up the meat when we're toasting that sauerkraut and even add some cheese to the meat at that point, so it starts melting as well. Then the other thing we're going to do is toast the inside of the bread, not just the outside. That adds an extra moisture barrier because there's going to be some butter or margarine there, which acts as a barrier to wetness, and also the toasting helps give the sandwich a little bit more structure and keeps the bread just a bit sturdier, so it's not just mush. Okay, so those are the main tips. Now you understand why we're doing what we're doing, and I will tell you how to do it all. You will start with two slices of bread. You can use marble rye, that's pretty standard. My parents used to use pumpernigle at their restaurant, or just a regular rye bread seeded or not seeded, that's your preference. I do think it's best to hand slice it because quite often rye bread is very thin at the

4:04grocery store. You want it just a little bit thicker than that. So you're spreading a teaspoon of butter onto each side of each slice of bread, so you need four teaspoons of butter. Now before you start actually grilling anything or cooking anything, you want to make sure that you have all of your ingredients ready. So you want to have your Russian dressing or thousand island dressing ready to go. The Russian dressing is just a tiny bit spicier than thousand island because it has horse radish in it, otherwise they're pretty similar. And I actually have a recipe for thousand island dressing, a homemade version. I will link to that in the show notes for you, and you could just add a touch of horse radish to that to give it that little zip. If you want to have that ready, you want to have some shredded cheese ready to go Swiss cheese. You want a quarter cup of that packed. You want your sauerkraut well drained, like I explained. You want to put that in a sieve and really squeeze all the water out, and then you also need to have your corn beaf ready. You need four ounces of corn beef. Now if you've done a corn beaf in cabbage, say Patrick's Day is coming up, if you're

5:08doing corn beaf for that, you can use your leftover corn beaf, or you can get corn beaf at the deli at the grocery store. You want four ounces of it, that's a quarter pound. And you want it about an eighth of an inch thick. You don't want them to shave it or shred it. You want it a little bit thicker than that. And they will do it correctly against the grain. For sure, you don't have to ask them to do that. They know how to do that. But you need to know to do it if you are slicing the corn beaf yourself. The tricky thing about corn beef is that the most intuitive, easiest way to like hold it or balance it, tends to give you slices that are not against the grain. You have to kind of like thumble with it to get it into the right position. And I will even say that my dad used to get mad at us at the deli because we would start a new piece of corn beaf and we would put it on the meat slicer wrong all the time because the way that just seems to make sense is actually backwards. So if you don't know what I'm talking about, you just need to look at the corn beaf and

6:09you want to make sure that your slices are not going along with where the shreds would be. You want to be against the shreds. Okay. I have a video coming out about how to make a Rubin sandwich that shows how to slice the corn beaf. It's not ready yet. But when it is up, it'll be on social media and it will be in the blog post for this recipe on Cook the Story as well. So depending on when you're listening, it might be there already and then you will know. But I also have some other videos on my website for how to cook skirt steak that shows this against the grain technique really, really well in the video there. So I will link to the skirt steak as well. And then you can see what I'm talking about in that recipe as well. It really shows the grain for you. Okay. Now all of your ingredients are ready. You are going to measure just a teaspoon of cooking oil onto one third of a very large skillet or griddle pan set over medium heat. I will just note that you're going to be toasting the sauerkraut and warming the meat

7:13and grilling the bread all at the same time. And you want to make sure that none of the moisture from the sauerkraut or a little bit of water that we're going to pour on the meat get to the bread. If your skillet or griddle is not big enough to accomplish that, then use two skillets. One will be for the sauerkraut and the meat. The other will be for the bread and then that second one will also be for making the sandwich in the end. You're heating a teaspoon of cooking oil into, well, I'm just going to assume you're using one large skillet and you can adapt the instructions for whatever you're using. So into that one large skillet, you're putting one teaspoon of cooking oil into like one quarter of the skillet and then you're adding the sauerkraut to that. It's one third of a cup of well-drained sauerkraut that you're adding there and spreading out to about four inches wide to about the size of one slice of bread. So we're getting it like ready to go into the sandwich. Okay. You're going to add the bread slices in a single layer to another part of the skillet. So they're taking up kind of like another quarter or third of the skillet there and the

8:14butters on both sides of the bread. So you're just toasting that underside, which you're going to let toast for about two to three minutes. You just want it lightly browned, not very dark. We don't want it like crispy in the sandwich, just a little bit of texture. So those are going there and then to the bit of skillet that's remaining, you're adding your four ounces of corn beef spread into a pile that's about the size of a slice of bread as well. So we're starting to build that sandwich there and you're going to drizzle that meat with a teaspoon of water, being careful to not allow the water to touch the bread or the sauerkraut. Let the meat warm up for about a minute and then give it a little stir and rearrange it and then you're going to pile your Swiss cheese onto there. It's one quarter of a cup of packed shredded Swiss cheese that you spread out on that meat. Now probably around now your bread is lightly toasted enough underneath. You're going to flip it over and spread that lightly toasted side with about a half teaspoon of Russian dressing per slice of bread. If you like more dressing, do more. I don't like very much. So a half teaspoon on each bread is enough for me.

9:15So now your lightly toasted sides have the Russian dressing on them and they are facing up. Your untosted sides are on the bottom starting to toast, okay? At this point, you're going to use a spatula to transfer the meat and cheese pile onto one slice of the sauce bread and then give the sauerkraut a little stir. It should be lightly browned in places, pile that on top of the cheese and then invert the other slice of bread onto the top of the sandwich, sauce side down and you're going to continue. Now your sandwich is essentially built, press down on it a little bit which will help start fusing it together and then you're going to cook the sandwich, flipping it every now and then until the cheese is melted and the other sides are lightly browned and you're going maybe a little more browned on these outer sides. So the idea here is that we're not letting it get too dark, that's why we're flipping it every now and then and then that's distributing the heat through the middle until the cheese is melted, everything's heated and the bread is crisp outside. Transfer the sandwich to a cutting board, slice it in half and serve it with a dill pickle.

10:20So good, I cannot wait for you to try this ultimate Ruben sandwich using all the tips that I've learned from my parents at their deli. You're going to love it. I'll put the link to this recipe in the show notes for this podcast episode or you can head to cookthestory.com, slash ROTD and get it there. Everything there's arranged by date so it's helpful to know that today is March 3rd of 2026. I'm Christine Pittman from cookthestory.com, thecookful.com, cookfortwo.us and this podcast recipe of the day, I hope you have a great day. Let's get cooking.