How to Make a Horseshoe Sandwich

If you're not sitting down, I would suggest you do, because today we're making a kick-ass horseshoe. And if you don't know what a horseshoe is, according to Wikipedia, wait, was it Wikipedia or Wikipedia? Who cares? According to- I think you said Wookiepedia, by the way. I never said Wookie, **** you. Are you sure you said Wookiepedia? According to W-pedia, the horseshoe is an open-faced sandwich originating in Springfield, Illinois in the United States, consists of thick-sliced toasted bread, a hamburger patty, fries, and cheese sauce. Sounds positively delicious. We're making a version of that today, my version. There will be hamburger patty, but there also will be an alternative horseshoe with ham. And instead of just thick-sliced toasted bread, we're gonna make thick-sliced toasted garlic bread, because why not? Because we did it in the grilled chicken parm. We marvel at the gorgeousness. Holy ----. We did it in the, what was the other one? Garlic bread steak sandwich. The garlic bread steak sandwich. Wow, look at this. What have we done? Yes, you could just use toast for this, and that's the way it's done. But I always talk about adding extra layers of flavor. We made something a while ago that was in a hamburger roll. I used an onion roll. There's no more work involved. It's just extra flavor. Garlic bread toast is gonna add tons more flavor than just toast. I got that off my chest. I feel good about this. Okay, we're gonna start by making a cheese sauce and a hamburger patty, kind of simultaneously. We'll start with the cheese sauce. So it starts by us making a roux. I mean, look, you could buy your own cheese sauce, but ours will start with us making a roux, and that means we start to melt some butter in a little pot. Not with a little pot, stoners. In a little pot. And once it's melted, we add just basic flour, and we mix. So the goal is to incorporate the flour into the butter, make a smooth paste, cook it for about a minute so you get rid of the raw flour flavor before we continue to add. And when we're there, we keep going with 3 1⁄4 of a cup of cream, a tablespoon of Dijon mustard, teaspoon of Worcestershire sauce, and we mix for now. Beautiful and smooth, just how we want it. We leave it for a second to grate six ounces of white cheddar cheese, and six ounces will look like, not this. Stop it. Will look like this. And we put it in. Mix. And I know what you're thinking. You're looking at this going, gee, Sam, that's gonna be awfully clumpy, thick cheese sauce for this horseshoe. And I will say to you, it would be if this is all I added to it. But I have one more secret ingredient to make it not just amazing cheese sauce, but, are you ready? Beer cheese sauce, because we're adding some Guinness. Talk about flavor. Look, you could add any beer you want, but this is the one that I like. So of course I grab my Sam the Cooking Guy Speed Opener. I open the bottle. We add about a half a cup, which to me looks like, let's swap out the spoon for the whisk, and get back at it. Oops. The smell, the cheesy gorgeousness is really incredible right here. We're gonna add a little bit of hot sauce. I like Cholula. A little more flavor. Some kosher salt and pepper. Check this out. Okay, we don't have time to dawdle. We have to make a burger. So I will start with, sorry, a third of a pound, which doesn't seem like a lot, but it's going on not a huge piece of bread, a little patty. So, right, let's season it. Of course we could use salt and pepper. I'm gonna use Montreal steak seasoning. We'll just give it a really beefy kind of thing. And I'll keep it fairly short, but thick. It was short. I didn't mean that. I meant narrow, what did I mean? What do I wanna say here? Small this way, but not this way? Okay, whatever. Diameter, narrow diameter, but thick this way because a patty that way's better. Okay, a little oil on the flat top and on we go. There you go, sweetheart. Wanna cook that beautifully medium rare. While that is cooking, let's make a little garlic butter, shall we? Start with a little bit of butter, softened preferably. We'll add some garlic and one more because we want it garlicky. Of course, we'll always put links for the stuff that we use. Parsley, I love the way it looks. Some kosher salt and we mix. That's the key right there. Soft butter. One of the things that I always like to give it a little shot of oil just for a little richness, perfection. Okay, let's check out our bread. And here's what we're using. This gorgeous, let me get a couple in here, thick sliced Italian bread. Oh, holy crap. This is gonna be off the hook. So let's do this. Let's get our garlic butter. We're gonna give the bread a little on each side. Of course, we can't do the second side until we put the first side face down. We're almost ready to assemble. Let's check our burger. And it's looking beautiful and ready to be flipped. So look at this little crust it made on top. Look at it. It's about a third of the way cooked. And if you do that on this bottom side, the center third is gonna stay nice and beautifully medium rare and make everybody happy. While the burger finishes, we're gonna take our garlic bread thick slices, put them on the flat top, give them a little push down love because we can. Now's the time to add the garlic butter to this top side. The smell, the smell's insane. Burger's almost there. Not quite, but gorgeous. So the burger's ready. I'm gonna pull the burger off, get it on a plate. Then we have our other meat to add, and that's ham. So then I'm gonna take a little pile of sliced ham and throw it right here. Could I put it in cold? 100%. Do I want to? No percent. Because heating this is gonna make it way better. So while that's starting, let's turn our bread. Lovely. Lovely-er. Give the little pile of ham some love. And you see here's this thing, this color that it's starting to get is really intensifying this ham flavor. And that's what you want. Cold ham, good. Ham heated up on a flat top like this, even better. I'm gonna get my fries, and it's game time. Okay, so let's build. Here's how you build a horseshoe. Take one, and we take two. Perfect. Ham on one side, our beautifully seasoned burger on the other. Okay, so at this point, you could just stop and go, holy crap, this looks pretty freaking tremendous, but that's not the point. The point now is to add the ridiculousness of fries. And I believe there's a couple schools of thought. One school of thought says you put the cheese, then the fries. My school of thought says, since I'm Canadian, I understand the concept of poutine. You gotta go fries, then cheese. And that's what we're doing. And then we come in with our Guinness beer cheese sauce that looks like this. And then two things. We go with a little smoked paprika because it just adds so much. And finally, can't help myself, I need just a little bit of green, a little pop of color, so just a little parsley. And there we are. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you from Springfield, Illinois, the horseshoe. Hamburger patty one side, ham off the bone, griddled on the other side, and a Guinness cheese sauce over the top. That's just mental. There's something wrong with that. As you get close, you smell the cheese, but you also smell the smoked paprika. So try a fry first with this Guinness cheese sauce. Mm, mm. You have to like Guinness. You could use another beer, but I'm telling you, something dark, a stout, the Guinness is tremendous. And now let's have a bite of the whole thing. It should be complete, right? Crispy garlic bread. The burger. Still rare in the middle. Oh goodness gracious. Peace. Hold on. Fry. Some of that. Some of the sauce. I lost the fry. Garlic bread. That's a perfect bite. On the burger side. It's probably terrible for you. Awful. But it's so good. Please use the garlic bread component of this. If you do nothing else, if you don't do ham and hamburger, or make this particular cheese sauce, do the garlic bread component, because it's ridiculous. And dare I say, I think we may have elevated something that seemingly can't be elevated. It's so far down in the culinary world. What I mean by that is it's as basic as it comes. It's almost caveman-like in its components. We've elevated it. Holy. Garlic bread. Okay, so maybe make it, but don't eat it all yourself. That's the key. Make it to share. Okay? Okay. I ran into someone yesterday at my restaurant, and they were going on about how much they enjoyed these episodes. I said, you know, at the end of it when I say how much we appreciate you being there, you gotta know that comes from right here. My quickly clogging heart. But it really does. It means a lot to us that you have subscribed, or liked, or commented, or just the fact that you're there watching. Thank you for that. And you'll thank me for this, as long as you don't eat the whole thing yourself. See ya.