Many of us carry snacks when we’re fishing, but sometimes we’ll be away from our vehicle (and cooler) long enough that it would make sense to bring lunch — specifically, a sandwich — in our fishing vest or pack. The problem, though, is that some sandwich ingredients can begin to spoil within a couple of hours if unrefrigerated, and this is especially true of mayonnaise, which provides both flavor and lubrication for many types of sandwiches. The goal, therefore, is to have a sandwich that can be carried without ice for part of the day and remain both safe and enjoyable to eat. Here are some ideas you might want to consider when planning a long day on the water.
The Deconstructed Sandwich
This minimalist approach has you assembling your sandwich in the field and requires two only items: bread and cheese or salami. I usually end up bringing a length of baguette, plus cheese and salami, as well as a pocketknife to cut whatever might need cutting.
For the cheese, you might follow the example of backpackers, who tend to stick with firm or semifirm, aged, low-moisture cheeses, because these usually remain safe and pleasantly edible for several days unrefrigerated, sometimes even longer. For a single day on the water, most cheeses other than cheese spreads should be fine, although they may exude oil once they come up to air temperature. One backpacking website, by the way, suggests cheddar cheese, which has a high fat content that can help you maintain your energy.
Your local supermarket’s deli section will have salamis and summer sausages that don’t need refrigeration. (Clue: look for products displayed outside of the refrigerated shelves.) I prefer to bring these meats presliced, because cutting them in the field can be a hassle. A nifty addition is an apple — slices will pair well with the cheese and meat. Or if you want to go the European route, bring an onion to slice.
You may have noticed that I did not mention a condiment. This frankly rustic sandwich doesn’t use one, although mustard would go well with it. That said, I’m not familiar with the food-safety considerations for prepared mustards, so if you absolutely need to have this condiment, perhaps play it safe and pick up a bunch of those small mustard packets at the store.
Martha Stewart’s Onion Sandwich
Speaking of onions, a while back, I was fishing the Middle Fork Stan with a buddy who, when we stopped for lunch, realized he had left his bag back in the now very distant car. I had brought along one of my favorite sandwiches, which consisted of rings of onion and slices of cheese between two pieces of bread that had been slathered with mustard and mayo. (At that time, I didn’t know that mayo was an unwise addition.) My buddy was astonished that someone would consider eating such a thing, but he was hungry enough to take half, and gentlemanly enough to say he liked it.
When researching sandwiches for this Forage, I came across an eminently packable onion sandwich on, of all places, Martha Stewart’s website. It’s also incredibly simple. Butter a slice of bread (she uses white bread), layer it with three or four slices of sweet or red onion, sprinkle with course salt and freshly ground pepper, then top it with another slice of bread. Hey, if Martha likes it, it’s worth going for.
The Lube Job
Martha Stewart’s onion sandwich relies on butter for its lubrication. Other lube/condiment options recommended on several hiking websites include mustard, pesto, hummus, cream cheese (which is a different beast than “cheese spread”), and chutney. I asked Bud Bynack, our copyeditor and occasional Forager, for his thoughts, and he suggested an oil-and-vinegar salad dressing. Which makes perfect sense, because this sort of dressing has long been applied to Italian-American submarine sandwiches, grinders, and hoagies. As Bud puts it,
Depending on the bread — a relatively impermeable surrounding crust is necessary — a moderate application of vinaigrette (oil, vinegar, garlic, mustard, maybe oregano), especially when lettuce and/or tomato are present (and tomatoes weep wetness) can draw everything together. That’s the principle of the Philadelphia hoagie. The conundrum is that you don’t want a dry sandwich, but you don’t want one that disintegrates because the ingredients are too wet, either. Bread moistened with a bit of acidic dressing contained in a good crust, though is really pleasant. A lot depends on the bread, which depends a lot on some fairly ineffable things — East Coast sandwich rolls that look the same as West Coast rolls have a very different texture inside and out. What defines a hoagy roll is a somewhat tough, but chewy thin crust and a homogeneous interior with a relatively fine texture — tiny holes, not big ones. The interior works like a sponge, while the crust contains the moisture.
Thinking of the bread as an impermeable container leads to other ideas sliced focaccia, for example, and pita bread. Perhaps spread the inside of the latter with hummus and fill with slices of cucumber and tomato, pitted olives, and diced feta cheese soaked in an oregano-forward vinaigrette. . . .
Given the liquid involved, make sure vinaigrette-reliant sandwiches are well wrapped or bagged in plastic before you put them into your vest, especially if they include moisture-laden veggies such as tomatoes or cucumbers. You might seed these first to reduce the hazards of wet-sandwich disintegration or leakage.
Going Old School: PB&J
A sandwich that will never leak is one that I suspect most readers of this magazine are very familiar with: the peanut butter and jelly sandwich, a staple of school lunchboxes nationwide. Yes, we ate them as children, and surely some of us overdosed on PB&J long ago and would prefer never to see one again. But consider: a sandwich composed of bread, a nut butter, and a jam or jelly is basically an energy bomb that will not spoil on a day trip and in fact can be gussied up into something really interesting that extends beyond mere nostalgia. Wikihow.com suggests additions such as “granola, pretzels, or Ritz crackers,” and other options found on the web include nuts, seeds, potato chips, cheese, and sriracha hot sauce. You can go even further and play around with the sandwich’s basic elements. To give you an idea of the PB&J’s possibilities, a restaurant in San Antonio, Texas, named PB&J with Tay, serves only peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and their menu has items worth swiping for your own delectation. Their “Texan” sandwich, for example, uses peanut butter, jalapeno jelly, and bacon. The “Hawaiian” has bacon, too, and coconut flakes and pineapple jelly. Their “PB&P,” apparently no longer on the menu, was even more extreme, substituting pickles for the jelly. By the way, the favorite sandwich of the noted angling writer Ernest Hemingway was peanut butter and onion. Clearly, the PB&J concept is open to customization, even radically so.
The Deli Route
Rather than make your own sandwich, you can of course pick up a sandwich at a deli. Again, if you’re carrying it around outside of a cooler for a while, try to skip mayo-based dressings and understand, too, that cold cuts are also susceptible to spoilage. If there’s any question of risk, consider freezing a plastic bottle or two filled with water and putting them in a plastic bag with your sandwich. It’ll help keep your lunch cool, and you’ll have something cold to drink while you fish.
