Bologna Salad - Delicious!

 

When Joe and I were first married, I delighted in fixing his favorite meals.  I’d mention things that I knew how to cook, and he’d say “Yes, make that” so I would.   He  and I both had grown up with mothers and grandmothers who were good cooks … and frugal cooks.  He used to talk about having to take bologna sandwiches every day for his school lunch.  I walked two blocks home for lunch, so we didn’t have that in common, but we did have bologna in common.  We also had bologna salad in common.  The first time I made it, he was thrilled.  The second time I made it, he pulled a prank on his least favorite aunt.

His Aunt Billie and her husband came to visit on a Sunday.  They just dropped by to see where we lived.  In reality, they were hoping for a free lunch.  Billie was an arrogant woman, and she didn’t hesitate to let her presumed superiority be known.   She went all through the house, even opened the bedroom closet, and Joe was not happy.  Realizing they weren’t going to leave until we fed them, he suggested that I make them a sandwich for lunch.  I was happy to plate bologna salad sandwiches with chips and a dill pickle spear for each of them.  Billie proclaimed that her sandwich was the best ham salad she had ever had.  Joe smiled ear to ear as he told her, “That’s because it’s bologna salad.”

Growing up, my mother had certain menu items that she repeated every week.  During high school football season, Friday nights included supper of hamburgers, chips and soda.  That was a treat because of the soda and chips, but I’m not sure it was the best meal for my football playing brothers. 

Lunch meat sandwiches weren’t on the menu much because Daddy wanted cooked food.  However, in the heat of the summer months especially when Mother was in the midst of canning, bologna salad was a favorite Saturday lunch menu item.  Think of those primary color Pyrex mixing bowls.  The biggest yellow one was filled with potato salad.  The green one was filled with bologna salad for sandwiches.  The red one was filled with creamy slaw and the blue one remained empty to hold any leftovers!  In those days, we didn’t have food processors, so we chopped everything for the bologna salad with an old fashioned food grinder.  At our house, the only place we could fasten the grinder was on a basement step!  Our kitchen counters and kitchen table did not have an edge where it would work.  It was a project!

Mother came from a big German family, and I suspect her recipe for bologna salad came from one of her many relatives.  Wurst Salat is identified as a recipe that came to America with German immigrants.  Families in many regions, heavily populated with families of German descent, enjoy it still today.  It is kind of like potato salad in that every family has its own recipe!  The variations are many.

Bologna originated in Italy, specifically in its namesake city, Bologna.  We know it as Mortadella.  It is made from beef and pork and is studded with little chunks of fat.  Italian immigrants brought it to America, shared it with German sausage makers and bologna was Americanized to be what we love today. In Germany, Wurst Salat is made differently in regions.  It is typically julienned.  Strips of Swiss cheese, pickles, onion and sometimes pimento are added.  Dressings range from a vinegar and oil base to a mayonnaise base.  A quick internet search will lead you to recipes and pictures.  It is served as a salad with rustic bread, boiled eggs and radishes.

We see this style of salad in German communities in the United States.  We find it made with German bologna which has a nice garlic flavor   Amish and Mennonite communities favor Lebanese bologna, which originated in Lebanon County, Pennsylvania.  This beef bologna is heavily flavored with spices like black pepper, white pepper, mace and nutmeg.  It is smoked and I think it is more like a summer sausage than typical bologna. 

I’m happy to share my recipe for bologna salad today.  We love it on soft white bread and on crackers.  My husband could eat a whole sleeve of saltines with bologna salad.  I enjoy it for breakfast/brunch on white toast.  Find your favorite way to eat it and adjust the recipe to your own tastes.  Enjoy!

Bologna Sandwich Spread

1 pound of bologna, cut in chunks

1 hardboiled egg

1 stalk of celery

About ¼ of a medium sized sweet onion

2 Tablespoons of sweet pickle relish and a splash of the juice

¾ - 1 cup of mayonnaise

1 Tablespoon of yellow mustard

Salt and pepper

A sprinkle of celery seed

Use a food processor to prepare these ingredients.  Begin by chopping the onion and celery into chunks.  Add the bologna and the egg.  Continue chopping until it reaches the consistency you desire.  Complete the mixing in a bowl.  Add the relish, juice, mayonnaise, mustard, salt, pepper and a sprinkling of celery seed.  You should adjust the liquid ingredients if the salad is too dry.   You can certainly eat this immediately.  It is better if you refrigerate it for a couple hours.  This will last in the fridge for three days but doesn’t hold up well in the freezer.  I have, however, made sandwiches on white bread and frozen them.  They are great to take in a packed lunch.  Just remove from the freezer in the morning and by lunchtime, they are ready to eat.  If the mayonnaise liquifies because of the freezing, I don’t notice it. 

Homemade Sliders!

 

I can honestly say that I’ve never eaten one of those little square greasy burgers from that fast food chain that made the ‘slider’ popular in the 1920s.   Hard to believe, I know.  

During WWII, sailors made the slider even more popular by creating similar sandwiches on ship.   They created greasy little burgers that were consumed in two bites and would slide down!

In the 1970s, Silver Dollar sandwiches became a popular supermarket deli catered item.  They were typically filled with sandwich spreads made with ham or chicken.  The buns were about the size of a silver dollar.  In the 1990s, Funeral Sandwiches became popular.  You know that recipe using Hawaiian rolls filled with ham and cheese, baked with a brushing of a savory butter mixture.   These sandwiches were created out of the history of small bun sliders, just given different names.

Now, sliders have reached the highest popularity ever, but not really because of the greasy burger!  Sliders today are all about the small size of the bun.  They include any of a huge variety of sandwich fillings … hot or cold.  My granddaughter and I love to make them.  We love to eat them, but we enjoy the creative ideas in making them.  Here are some of our creations from the last year!

This first one is a simple burger made with ground beef!  I season these heavily with a grilling combination of spices typically used for steaks.  Use your favorite.  Then we dress the burger with our favorite cheese and toppings.  We love thick slices of tomato and bread and butter pickles!  I usually make 5 sliders from a pound of burger.   So simple and lots of fun.

This one is a breakfast slider.  We put a pork sausage patty on a biscuit with cheese.  We added lettuce and tomato, mayonnaise, katsup and some crumbled bacon … just because I had some left from the previous morning’s breakfast!

This catfish fillet slider is made with fried fish from the previous evening’s meal!   I frequently fry too much fish and refrigerate it for a couple of days and make sandwiches with it.  You can microwave it for about 30 seconds or put it in the air fryer for about  a minute to reheat it.   These sliders included thinly sliced red onions and tomatoes with tartar sauce.

See how good these barbequed pork sliders look.  A pork tenderloin is another item that I always have left.  There are lots of foods that I cook for one person, then have to plan the ways to use the leftovers.  Pork is easily pulled apart and frozen in small packages.  You can put it in a microwave proof dish with a little BBQ sauce on it, cover it and microwave it from the frozen state.  This makes awesome sandwiches.

Here are a couple pictures of one of my most favorite ways to use left over salmon.  There is nothing better than fresh salmon.  Refrigerate your leftovers … or freeze them for later (thaw them in the fridge overnight or at room temperature for about an hour).  Crumble the salmon and for every 2 cups of salmon add ½ cup dried breadcrumbs, a Tablespoon of dried minced onion, a dash of Old Bay seasoning and an egg.  One of these patties has lots of fresh dill added.  The other does not.  Form the patties and bake them for about 8 minutes in the oven at 350 degrees.  You can use an air fryer.  You can also pan fry them in a drizzle of canola oil.  Tartar sauce, mayonnaise, lettuce, tomatoes and pickles make these sandwiches even better.

Not every slider has to be crunchy!  Here’s a good example of our creativity.  This buffalo chicken slider is made with sliced chicken breast meat that was originally baked to have with a baked potato and a green salad.   

We reheated the meat by microwaving it for a minute, then topped it with a drizzle of bottled buffalo sauce and crumbles of blue cheese.  We added a tomato slice and off to the side had celery sticks.  All the flavor and the crunch … without the mess that wings make … made us pretty happy!

I hope these ideas help you create some sliders.  Do your best to repurpose foods in ways that are fun and totally different than the original menu!   I keep slider buns in the freezer all the time so I’m aways ready to get creative with my granddaughter!

Enjoy!