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Feature article
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Pressed for time, busy moms turned to ‘iron’ sandwiches
By Fred Sauceman
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| Wanda Sauceman’s iron served double duty: shirts and grilled cheese sandwiches. (Fred Sauceman photo). |
It was the pre-panini era. A time long before George Foreman started making grease-draining grills.
When I was growing up in the 1960s, my mother, Wanda Sauceman, made “iron” sandwiches. She says she got the idea either from a television program or out of the paper. This was long before our newspaper, The Greeneville Sun, started carrying the “Rookie Cookie” recipes for children.
They were, in actuality, simple cheese sandwiches, but calling them “iron” sandwiches carried more elementary school playground cachet.
Perhaps the practice has its beginnings in pioneer cookery, when flatirons were heated in a fireplace.
Donald Frantz, who now lives in Aurora, Indiana, tells me his grandmother cooked with an iron on hot summer days when she was already doing the laundry, so she wouldn’t add to the heat in the house by firing up the stove.
“She would use whatever meat was left over from the previous night’s dinner, slice up some homemade bread, add some local cheese, wrap it up, and while she would do her ironing, would toast the sandwich,” Donald remembers.
“Grandpa, who worked for the phone company, would come home for lunch, and there would be a hot sandwich or two waiting for him. They would take their lunch together out under the big tree in the front yard, watching the Ohio River go by.”
Donald says his grandmother did draw the line, though, when it came to making her husband’s favorite sandwich with her iron: Limburger cheese with onion on dark rye bread.
At our house, “iron” sandwiches began around the time of Permanent Press. My mother recalls the sandwiches ending up “flat as a flitter and not greasy at all.”
I suppose you could take a highbrow approach, with a French baguette, artisanal cheddar cheese and homemade mayonnaise. But those elements would be at odds with the working class profile of the sandwich. Wonder Bread, singles of Kraft American pasteurized prepared cheese product and Miracle Whip make more sense.
“Have the iron on pretty high,” my mother instructs. On our 30-year-old GE, the “cotton” setting produces the right amount of heat.
Coat the insides of the bread with Miracle Whip and place one slice of the cheese between the bread. Butter the outside if you want. I daub salted butter in five spots, like the pattern on a die.
“Use as little foil as possible,” my mother continues. In other words, one layer only. If your foil is 12 inches wide, roll out 12 inches to make a square. Fold the ends over the sandwich just until they meet, then roll up the other ends to make handles to keep you from burning your fingers.
Place the hot iron on top of the sandwich and listen and smell. On our “cotton” setting, two minutes per side and the bread is browned.
“Heat it until it suits you,” my mother says. “Check it, and if it’s not brown enough, put the iron back on.”
Is the memory better than the sandwich? Well, when I tested the recipe for this column, I hadn’t eaten an “iron” sandwich in probably 40 years. I ate three.
--------GoTriCities--------
Food writer Fred Sauceman, author of the book “The Place Setting: Timeless Tastes of the Mountain South — from Bright Hope to Frog Level,” is senior writer and executive assistant to the president for public affairs at East Tennessee State University. E-mail him at sauceman@etsu.edu.
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