Turkey BLT

A BLT, you usually see it on most cafe menus and you certainly see it on room service menus, but they never taste as good as making it at home. So I'm going to show you my version of a BLT. I'm gonna change it up slightly by adding some delicious shaved roasted turkey. Now you need to start with some gorgeous fresh bread. Now a lot of BLT recipes call for toasted square bread, but I actually like really nice crusty sourdough that's nice and soft in the center. So what does BLT stand for? Well, that's bacon, lettuce, tomato. So you have to have them in your BLT, but like I said, I'm gonna add a few extras to it. Let's get onto the bacon first. I'm using some streaky bacon. I love the fat to meat ratio with streaky bacon. And this one in particular has been smoked with Australian hardwoods. It's got a lovely smoky scent to it and of course the flavor. I like this one too because it's rindless. So I'm going to start with a pan that's not on. I always like to start with it cold and then slowly bring up the heat so we render out the fat so we're left with a really crispy bacon. So heat goes on and we'll just let that cook for a minute or so on each side. Now onto the mayonnaise that's going into the BLT. I like to add some good quality whole egg mayonnaise into a bowl. To that, I'll add the zest of some lemon. I want the freshness of basil. Now have a look at this basil. Huge, flavoursome basil. It's so aromatic. I'm just going to use two of these leaves because they are that big. And the best way to chop up your basil is just to line it up and roll it really tightly. And by doing that, we're going to be able to chiffonade it which is just the easiest way to thinly slice it without bruising the basil leaves too much. So really thinly slice it with a sharp knife and the perfume that comes out of this basil is so good. I really love the flavour of turkey, basil and bacon. They go so nicely together. That's looking good. And we'll add all of that to our mayonnaise. Give that a bit of a stir and I'll also add just a small pinch of salt. Let's pop that to the side. We'll also prepare some tomato. So some nice juicy tomatoes. We'll just thinly slice that. We want it to be as thin as possible just to make sure we get a lovely even sandwich. You don't want big chunks of it because as soon as you bite into it, everything's going to fall apart. So really thin slices. That should do it. We've also got some lettuce. And again, we just want to thinly slice this. So just pile them up, nice crisp leaves. If you like, you can change up the lettuce leaves. You could use some rocket for a nice peppery flavour. It's up to you. OK, we'll just turn the bacon rashers over. And this will take a few moments on the other side. In fact, I'll turn the heat off because the residual heat in that pan will render the fat on the other side. So we'll just have a bit of paper towel on standby just to drain off the excess fat. Now on to the best part, which is building the BLT. We'll just take our bread and we'll start with some hummus. I love the nutty flavour of the hummus. And I really like a BLT that's super saucy. So we've got our mayonnaise and we've also got some creamy hummus. So a generous amount of hummus and really spread that to the edges of our bread. To that, we'll add our shredded lettuce, pile it up and tomato on top. And always, whenever you put tomato on a sandwich, do season it with some salt to really bring out its flavour and some freshly cracked pepper. OK, lettuce, tomato on. And now for some oven-roasted turkey. It's also shaved so it's super thin. I just love the texture of it, particularly in a generous sandwich just like this one. So nice, thin slices. We're going to separate the pieces. Drape the turkey over the top. See how it's nice and thin? That's what we're after. So we want at least four to five slices over the top. And it's a great deli cut just to have on standby in the fridge for a really quick lunch. Alright, next, our bacon. We'll take it out of the pan and we'll just drain it on some paper towel. And then we can layer the bacon on top. And that's also going to warm up that turkey. So lots of bacon. And don't forget about the mayonnaise that has that lovely basil throughout it. Again, generous with it. Spreading it all the way to the sides. Oh, it's going to be a seriously good sandwich. We'll pop that on top. Just press that down slightly. I'll grab a plate. And then on it goes. And that right there is one very impressive BLT, particularly with the addition of the turkey, the hummus and that basil mayonnaise. Alright, I'm going to cut into this to have a taste. Give it a bit of a squish. Cut straight down the centre. Ooh, and have a look at those layers. So good. Probably should be wearing a bib. But anyway, let's go for it. Mmm. Certainly not pretty food to eat, but who cares because that is the tastiest BLT you'll ever make. Yum!