Your Pork Sandwiches Are Begging For Bánh Mì-Inspired Toppings

While both hot and cold sandwich recipes feature a zillion variations on beef, chicken, and turkey, pork products not named ham or bacon tend to get short shrift. Okay, so pulled pork on a bun counts, but apart from that, the Cuban is one of the few sandwiches we can think of that prominently features roast pork. Sure, pork goes great with Swiss cheese and pickles, but if you want to mix things up a bit and you have a leftover pork loin on your hands, you could also dress up your pigwich with some of the same toppings you'd find on a bánh mì.

There's no one official bánh mì recipe, nor even a single style, since bánh mì can have all manner of fillings. Still, if you purchase a bánh mì at a shop such as Lee's Sandwiches, you'll likely find toppings including cilantro, jalapeños, onions, pickled carrots and daikon, soy sauce, and mayonnaise. Any or all of these can be added to a pork sandwich, and if you're in a DIY mood, you can even make your own Vietnamese-style mayonnaise with little more than egg yolks and vegetable oil. Kewpie mayo makes a good substitute if you'd rather not go through the effort, even though the American version isn't quite the same as the Japanese one. (The latter kind contains MSG, which its American counterpart replaces with yeast extract.)

If you've sliced up some cold roast pork and assembled your carrots, cilantro, jalapeños, and mayonnaise, what's to stop you from going ahead and making an actual bánh mì? You'll only need one more ingredient, and as long as you've got a baguette, you're in business. After all, the phrase "bánh mì" doesn't even mean sandwich. Instead, it translates to "wheat bread" and refers to a food product that was introduced by French colonists.

While French bread became popular in Vietnam in the early 1900s, it wasn't until the middle of the century that the bánh mì sandwich seemed to have come into its own. Some of the earliest ones may have been filled with little more than liver pâté, and even today the classic bánh mì thịt nguội is made with pâté in addition to various Vietnamese deli meats. Our bánh mì recipe calls for the pâté-like Vietnamese pork roll known as cha lua, and you can certainly use this ingredient to supplement your sliced roast pork if you wish. If you can't find it or don't care for its somewhat spongy texture, though, it's okay to omit it (as well as the liver pâté) since the baguette is what makes a bánh mì.