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Have you ever been to Chicago during Lent? Most importantly, have you ever had a pepper and egg sandwich? If you haven't, you have not eaten in Chicago.
I'll tell you all the beef stands in Chicago on Friday serve these pepper and egg sandwiches because obviously Italian beef isn't selling on those days. Now, what are they? Soft scrambled eggs, stewed green peppers, amazing French bread, just to die for it. If you never have one, you have to get one when you're in Chicago. And they don't even serve them outside of Lent. They only do it for this little period. It's like the Shamrock Shake of Chicago. Unbelievable. So, in this video, I'm going to show you how to make the pepper and egg sandwich, Chicago style. Let's get started.
All right, so let's make pepper and eggs. You see these kind of ridges here? This is where we want to cut the pepper because that's the perfect size for the pepper inside the egg. So I'm going to come down and cut this in half. Pull the middle part out because obviously we don't want all those seeds in there. You gotta rip out some of this membrane too. You could just use your hands and rip it right out. Flip this over and I'm gonna cut the pepper in three. On this one, I'm going to cut it in two. And then we're going to make, take nice decently thick julienne strips. Remember, these are going to shrink up a little as they cook. Perfect. You can see the size here. Looking great, nice and thick.
Next up, we're going to saute these up. You got a nice amount of olive oil on the bottom of the pan, a nice even coating. Heat it over a medium-high heat. Once that's nice and heated, we don't want it smoking or crackling, just heated. We're gonna drop our peppers in. What we're looking to do is let these kind of soften a little bit and release some liquid before we add our seasoning. The whole point of this is to soften these up to kind of bring out that sweetness and that stewed pepper flavor. You can use roasted peppers, but they're just not as good. It's got to have that Italian beef kind of sweet green pepper to it.
Once the peppers have started to soften a little, we're going to season them with salt, black pepper, dried oregano, and granulated garlic. So, yes, this is the exact same way I make my peppers for Italian beef. These things are smelling unbelievable. See, I'm not as concerned about texture as I am about sweetness. So I'm going to let these stew down. This whole process takes about six, seven minutes. So we're not looking for color on these, we're looking for sweetness. Like I said, I want to take the raw green pepper flavor out of here. We don't want them brown. We don't want them to have that kind of burnt pepper look, you know, nice and stewed.
So at this point, now that they're starting to soften, I'm going to turn the heat off. There shouldn't be a lot of color on the bottom of your pan. If there is, it means that your peppers are running at a little too high of a heat. Once these have gotten nice and soft, as you can see, they're a little bit bendy and soft, we're going to place them in a container. Now, I put these in a container to let the flavors kind of marry, let them absorb some of the seasoning and oil. And I also let them cool down because that also helps the marrying process and the absorption. I'm going to cool these down and let these sit overnight. Ideally, they are the best the next day. But if you're not going to use them the next day, at least try and wait a good hour before you cook with them.
We're going to start by cracking four eggs. Yes, four, because this is a big sandwich. Like any sandwich, it all starts with a really great bread. For this one, I'm using a Torano extra-long French baguette. These things are unbelievable. They're light, they're fluffy, but they have a great crust to them, perfect for this kind of sandwich. So I'm going to take my bread, slice it three-quarters the way through, just so it opens up to be like a sandwich, obviously. And then we'll set this aside till we're ready to use it.
Next, over medium-high heat, we're going to preheat our pan. And I want to make sure the pan has enough time to heat up. It's going to help prevent the eggs from sticking and give us much bigger ribbons of the eggs as they cook. Once our pan is hot, I'm going to add extra virgin olive oil. I want a nice coating to the bottom of the pan. Make sure I move it around so it gets in any open crevices as the metal expanded. Next, I'm going to take my eggs and pour them right in. While the eggs are cooking, I'm going to just push them throughout the pan like this. That's going to help give big ribbons. And once they start to set a little, we're going to take these peppers that we made yesterday and add them right in.
Once we get to about this point where the egg's three-quarters the way cooked, we're going to add a little bit of butter, turn the heat off, and lightly break the eggs up. So making sure we're keeping them in big ribbons. This is going to make the sandwich a lot easier to eat and a lot more enjoyable. I'm going to set these aside and prepare the bread.
So once our pan's heated, while it's dry, I'm going to place the bread down. I want to just warm it up on the outside. The inside's going to warm up when we add the eggs to it. What that's going to do is kind of soften the outside a little and dry it out, giving you a better flake on the crust of the bread. Perfect. Once that's done, we're going to open our bread up, take our super moist and delicious pepper and egg mixture, and pour right inside that bread. That looks insane. I promise you, making your peppers the day before is a game changer. I mean, they're still going to be great if you do the same day and wait a little bit, but the day before takes it completely over the top.
Not enough talking because I want to eat this thing. Peppers are sweet with a little bit of crunch. It's pouring out the sides of the sandwich like it's supposed to. The eggs are super soft. I mean, this is Chicago right here in a bun. And if you've never had it, you've got to try it. Thank you guys so much for watching. I have new recipe videos coming out about weekly. So click the little subscribe button, hit that bell so you get notified when a new recipe comes out, and keep cooking.