MUW Culinary Arts Student Laura MacLellan: Muffuletta

Laura MacLellan, Junior at MUW Culinary Arts Institute:

You can watch Laura make this sandwich on the April 18 episode of MidMorning with Aundrea.

“Hello, everybody. My name is Laura MacLellan and I am a junior at Mississippi University for Women in the Culinary Arts Program.

Laura MaclellanToday, I’m going to teach you how to make the Muffuletta sandwich, which is famous to Louisiana, specifically New Orleans. So first off, we’re going to start with the olive salad. You can buy the store-bought or you can make it homemade. I like to make it homemade because you can adjust it to your taste and so it makes it just better.

So first off, you start with an equal amount of olives and an equal amount of roasted red bell peppers. So nine-ounce jar of green olives, pitted and drained, and then a nine-ounce jar of roasted red bell peppers drained. And then three cloves of garlic chopped. And then I’m just going to pulse it for just a few seconds to make sure those all get incorporated and get a little smaller before I add the olive oil.

So I’m just going to pulse it. Okay, and that’s a little chop. So now I’m going to slowly pour in the olive oil while pulsing. So I have half a cup of olive oil. And this, you’re really going to want to eyeball it and make sure you don’t put too much so it’s total liquid and not put too little so it’s dry. Instead, you’re just going to eyeball it as you’re pouring and want it to get to a spreadable consistency. So turn on pulse.

Okay, and I think that’s good. So let me open it up and I’ll show it to y’all. So as you can see, everything’s nice and chopped, but it’s not total mush and it got a nice liquid, so it’ll be spreadable, really good. So now we can move on to our sandwich. So the sandwich just starts with bread and you can use Muffuletta bread if you can find it. I know it’s really hard to find up here in the Golden Triangle area, so just a bun. I’m using a seeded, a sesame seeded brioche bun.

So we just start with a layer of the olive salad on the bottom half of the sandwich. Let me put that on. There we go. And you want this to make sure to set so all the juices can get soaked up into the bread and it’ll make it really nice and flavorful. So there we go. And now we’re just going to start with alternating our meats and cheeses. So I have three meats right here. I have turkey, ham, and salami, and then four cheeses, which are Swiss cheddar, mozzarella, and provolone. So you just alternate layers between the meat and the cheeses. So, I’m going to start with the layer of provolone and then put a layer of the ham, then a layer of mozzarella, a layer of the turkey, cheddar, salami, and Swiss.

And that’s our four cheeses and three meats. And then we just put another layer of olive salad on top. And it’s optional to leave this off if you don’t like olives. I just think it adds a really nice flavor and it can cut the acidity. The acidity cuts the fattiness of the meats and cheeses, so you can put more or less. I like it a lot because it’s really good in my opinion. And then you just stack it up and you have your sandwich. And then I’ll cut it open and show y’all all the beautiful layers.
And as you can see, you got a beautiful, all the different colors of the meats and the cheeses layer and the bright, vibrant, rusty red bell peppers and green olives. And then you can just serve it on a sandwich and serve it with chips or your favorite sides. And this olive salad will last in the fridge for two weeks. So you can continue to make sandwiches all week long for your friends and family or a party. So that’s it. Thank you so much.”

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