A sheet-pan Italian sausage sandwich recipe that channels the Chicago classic for a quick dinner
This recipe comes from the Eat Voraciously newsletter. Sign up here to get one weeknight dinner recipe, tips for substitutions, techniques and more in your inbox Monday through Thursday.
I was well into my 20s when I found out that if you order a hot dog outside of Chicago, it will just be a steamed link in a bun, though the vendor may offer you things like sauerkraut or onions or relish or mustard. When you order a hot dog in Chicago, where I grew up, you have to specify what you don’t want on it, or else it will come with: sliced tomatoes, sport peppers, sweet relish, chopped white onions, a pickle, mustard and celery salt. It’s a balanced meal!
Other things you can order in Chicago: Italian beef (roasted beef, sliced very thin, dripping with juice and the flavor of onions and garlic), a Polish (Polish-style sausage in a bun with whatever you’d like) and an Italian sausage, with sweet onions and peppers, and hot pickled peppers or giardiniera on the side. One bite of that sandwich takes me back to lazy afternoons at Portillo’s, a Chicago mainstay, where my family would order a big mess of food and share orders of fries and onion rings. We’d debate the merits of each between sips of lemonade or soda, lots of giardiniera on the side.
Advertisement
For easy printing and scaling, view this recipe in our Recipe Finder.
Inspired by Chicago’s meaty sandwiches is this sheet-pan meal — which you could also make atop the stove, in a cast-iron skillet, if you wanted. Italian sausages — sweet or spicy, your choice — plus sliced bell peppers and yellow onions get doused with olive oil before they’re roasted in a hot oven until everything is cooked and a little browned. Then, stuff it all into your preferred bun — I like a crispy, crusty loaf; others might want something softer — and serve with pickled hot peppers, plus fries or chips, if you’d like.
It's a sheet-pan dinner that's filling and features a range of flavors — salty, spicy, tart and meaty — and it takes me back to the Chicago of my childhood every time.
Chicken or vegan “Italian-style” sausages work well for this. You know what also works surprisingly well? Carrots, cut into 7-inch sticks and then halved lengthwise, rubbed with olive oil, salt, pepper, dried parsley, dried oregano, garlic powder and ground fennel seed — plus chile flakes, if you like it hot. The sweetness and density of the carrots holds up really well in a bun!
If you don’t like onions or peppers, you could roast garlic cloves, still in their jackets, until they’re soft and squeeze the roasted garlic onto each bun. You could roast sliced fennel or kale leaves, letting them sweat and crisp on the sheet tray. Whole cherry tomatoes, chopped zucchini, some cute button mushrooms? All good options.
Where to Buy: Find sport peppers in the pickle section of your supermarket.
Storage: Leftovers can be stored in a covered container in the refrigerator for up to 2 days.
For easy printing and scaling, view this recipe in our Recipe Finder.
ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7uK3SoaCnn6Sku7G70q1lnKedZLOwu8NoaWlqYWR9d3uRbWairJGhtqK6jKyYrquRnLJuv8Cnm7Chk516s7HCoqeeZaOdsqbAjKmYp2c%3D