You Should Give Your Turkey Sandwich The Reuben Treatment

Are sandwiches too convenient for their own good? On any given day, 47% of Americans eat at least one sandwich — and more than 96% of those are made by someone else. "Americans eat so much of their meals not sitting down at a table. They are eating in their cars or at their desks, so sandwiches are easy," Erica Kenney, from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health told The Wall Street Journal. We understand that not every meal can be the gastronomic event of the season, but there are easy ways to improve your next sandwich experience.

Transforming a familiar lunchbox classic like a turkey sandwich into a moment of lunchtime magic is exactly what registered dietician and Mashed recipe developer Kristen Carli did when she developed her healthy turkey Reuben sandwich recipe. Trying to home-make a deli classic isn't just about adding some tang to your turkey breast. Taking the time to toast the bread, sauce the slaw, and heat the whole thing through will help turn a mindless turkey tidbit into a plate of Thousand-island-flavored bliss. 

Pastrami purists will likely be skeptical about a Reuben made with turkey. However, Carli's recipe has its roots in the early days of this sandwich. There's some debate about the Reuben's origins, but one story says it came about in 1914. Arnold Reuben of New York City's Reuben's Restaurant and Delicatessen was making a sandwich to impress Annette Seelos, a famous actress at the time. Reuben's daughter recalled that he took some "rye bread, cut two slices on the bias, and stacked one piece with sliced Virginia ham, roast turkey, and imported Swiss cheese, topped off with coleslaw and lots of Reuben's special Russian dressing and the second slice of bread." Moreover, two of our contenders for the absolute best Reuben sandwich in the U.S. offer turkey as an option. Clearly, the Reuben treatment isn't just corned beef or pastrami.

When we asked Carli about her Reuben recipe she told us her "favorite part is the mustard and the thousand island," and the interplay between the two condiments certainly is key to the sandwich. Since Thousand Island isn't typically as tangy as Russian dressing, the mustard gives the sandwich enough acidity and piquancy to cut through the dark bread, the meaty turkey, and the nutty Swiss to give your lunchtime turkey sandwich the deli-style makeover it deserves.