A sheet-pan shortcut for sausage sandwiches
I was well into my 20s when I found out that if you order a hot dog outside of Chicago, it will just be a steamed link in a bun, though the vendor may offer you things like sauerkraut or onions or relish or mustard. When you order a hot dog in Chicago, where I grew up, you have to specify what you don’t want on it, or else it will come with sliced tomatoes, sport peppers, sweet relish, chopped white onions, a pickle, mustard and celery salt. It’s a balanced meal!
Other things you can order in Chicago: Italian beef (roasted beef, sliced very thin, dripping with juice and the flavor of onions and garlic), a Polish (Polish-style sausage in a bun with whatever you’d like) and an Italian sausage, with sweet onions and peppers, and hot pickled peppers or giardiniera on the side. One bite of that sandwich takes me back to lazy afternoons at Portillo’s, a Chicago mainstay, where my family would order a big mess of food and share orders of fries and onion rings. We’d debate the merits of each between sips of lemonade or soda, lots of giardiniera on the side.
Inspired by Chicago’s meaty sandwiches is this sheet-pan meal – which you could also make atop the stove, in a castiron skillet, if you wanted. Italian sausages – sweet or spicy, your choice – plus sliced