Packed with fresh ingredients and easy to prepare, these five hearty summer sandwiches are perfect for a warm-weather outing.
By Amy Traverso
May 01 2024
This is the first menu of sandwich recipes I’ve ever created, and it presented an interesting challenge: What makes a sandwich worthy of a written recipe? A PB&J is hardly a recipe. Who wants a grilled cheese in summer? In the end, my goal was to create summer sandwich recipes that were worth a little effort, but easy enough to make in 30 minutes or less. And I wanted them to feel familiar, but with a twist.
These recipes ask you to make just one or two things. A batch of bacon for the bacon, lettuce, avocado, and tomato sandwich. A Green Goddess dressing for the chicken salad. Some sweet-and-sour peppers for the mozzarella and prosciutto sub. The roast beef sandwich has two prepared elements: fried shallots and a pimento cheese sauce. And the chicken Milanese sandwich involves frying a cutlet and topping it with a garlic-lemon-honey butter. But everything is very simple, and I guarantee your efforts will be rewarded.
Enjoy these sandwiches at home, on a picnic, or on your next road trip. Let our “Summer Travel Guide” inspire your plans, then get yourself a sturdy cooler and some cold packs—and know you’ll be well fed as you make your journey.
Acknowledgment: The wooden serving platters and cutting board in our sandwich photos are by JK Adams of Dorset, VT.
Amy Traverso is the senior food editor at Yankee magazine and co-host of the public television series Weekends with Yankee, a coproduction with WGBH. Previously, she was food editor at Boston magazine and an associate food editor at Sunset magazine. Her work has also been published in The Boston Globe, Saveur, and Travel & Leisure, and she has appeared on Hallmark Home & Family, The Martha Stewart Show, Throwdown with Bobby Flay, and Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares. Amy is the author of The Apple Lover’s Cookbook, which was a finalist for the Julia Child Award for best first-time author and won an IACP Cookbook Award in the “American” category.
More by Amy Traverso