More of a technique than an actual recipe...
How I make a Reuben sandwich at my store.
Four or five weeks before I make your sandwich, I chop about 40 pound of cabbage,
salt it, press it and wait patiently while it becomes sauerkraut.
About a week before, I take some chuck tenders and brine them with my pickling spices for five days in the fridge. I then rinse them and gently poach them with more spices for about 3 hours and chill them in their liquid overnight to get nice chunks of corned beef.
Now two days before, I use my rye sourdough culture to build a rye starter that develops overnight. I use a very flavorful whole rye flour from a small farmer owned mill in Kansas. I mix that with bread flour, water, salt and caraway and make a few loaves of rye bread. These have to mature overnight.
Also a couple of days before, I take about six pounds of my fresh sauerkraut and cook it with pork, onions, apples, schmaltz, white wine, bay leaves, caraway and juniper until the pork gets very tender.
Then I get a long list of ingredients together to chop finely and turn into 1,000 Island Dressing.
Mix them all together and this is what you get.
I take two slices of Swiss cheese and put them on a slice of rye bread.
Then I put a small handful of my cooked kraut in a pan and cover it with about 4 oz. of corned beef and steam it for a moment, covered, to heat the beef.
Meanwhile in another pan (you can do all this on a flat grill also) I melt some butter and when it sizzles I add the bread with the cheese. I carefully lift the kraut/beef pile with a spatula onto the cheese covering the corned beef with the rest of the kraut left in the pan and stick the top piece of rye bread onto that. Then the entire sandwich is lifted, a little more butter is added and melted in the pan, and the sandwich is turned over and toasted on the other side.
That’s it! Cut it in half and put it on the plate with the 1K island dressing and you’re all set.
