A Blog About Lunch Meat

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I enjoy lunch meat quite a bit and have been eating a lot of ham lately. 

I blogged about diagonal sandwich strategy yesterday, and in the process of receiving feedback, it was made abundantly clear that we need to have a deeper conversation about the meat between the bread. 

So be it. I'm up for the task.

There's 4 major categories of cold cuts: roast beef, ham, turkey and miscellaneous.

Ham has the most sub-category variety: honey-glazed, virginia baked, bone-in, Polish, Christmas, and I'm just scratching the surface. You can do a lot within the structure of a good ham. 

More importantly though, I need to first establish the criteria for analysis. Above I say pick one for the rest of your life. I think that's an appropriate question for social media, but for purposes of this blog, we should reframe the study to The Best Lunch Meat without considering long term commitment. 

The balance is critical. One Lunchmeat For Life has completely different risk parameters than The Best. 

Like getting married, the best wife isn't necessarily the bustiest Las Vegas bottle girl and vice versa. It's about teaming up with someone for the long-haul which creates many different considerations. I think that's why you see Turkey get such a favorable return in the polls. It's consistent and predictable and versatile and accepting. The tradeoff is you might cravings for a random hot roast beef every now and again but you would never eat that hot roast beef because you're committed to Turkey. 

In that spirit, I want to limit our purview to cold cuts with no strings attached. Simply analyzing the best meat and boy there's a lot.

Bresaola

Chicken breast

Chicken loaf (also known as chicken roll)

Corned beef

Cotechino

Dutch loaf

Ham

Baked

Boiled

Chipped chopped

Cooked

Éisleker

Jamón: serrano or ibérico

Presunto

Prosciutto

Smoked

Head cheese

Salceson

Meatloaf

Ham and cheese loaf

Olive loaf

Pepper loaf

Pimento loaf

Spiced luncheon loaf

Veal loaf

Mortadella

Pork roll

Roast beef

Roast lamb

Roast pork

Sausages

Bierwurst or beerwurst

Blood tongue (Zungenwurst)

Bologna, Polony

Lebanon

Braunschweiger

Brühwurst

Mettwurst

Chorizo

Devon

Extrawurst

Gelbwurst

Jagdwurst

Krakowska (Kraków-style pork sausage)

Kabanos

Myśliwska

Liverwurst

Prasky

Morcilla

Salami

Alpino

Capocollo

Finocchiona

Italian-style

Jewish-style

Pepperoni

Soppressata

Salchichón

Saucisson sec (dry, maturing, salty, savoury-tasting French salami)

Sausagemeat stuffing

Summer sausage

Teewurst

Smoked meat

Montreal-style smoked meat

Pastrami

Tongue

Turkey breast

Spam and Treet

So much that - again - we're limiting analysis to 4 major categories: ham, roast beef, turkey and miscellaneous. 

Within these categories, I'm concerned with 3 major criteria: stand alone flavor, room for error, and multi-purpose. 

A. Stand Alone Flavor

Can you play outside the structure of a team environment? Is there such thing as Too Much? Do you find yourself needing more stone ground mustard because the bird's a little dry? These are the questions I'm asking as I evaluate stand alone flavor. These are the things that keep me up at night. 

Turkey needs the most support. You need good bread and fresh ingredients and some kind of creamed-aoli or a healthy spread of artisan mayo. To me, a classic turkey on white just doesn't exist. I think Turkey is ranked last on Stand Alone flavor. 

But then we go Miscellaneous and you start to see some really heavy hitters. Salami. Summer Sausage. Soppressata. Capocolla. I'm very tempted to say Miscellaneous rules supreme but I can't get over the olive loaf or the head cheese. The average in this case is much closer to something funky and exotic, which is exactly why I have it right next to Turkey in a tie for last. 

Next up is roast beef. Sometimes you catch a bad bag from Jewel and it's got the slimy gray feel to it that reflects like old fish under the refrigerator light. You can smell it when you tear open the thinnest of resealable plastic bags. You catch a strong whiff but you won't be denied. That roast beef is in the day's lineup and you're gonna fuckin eat it whether you like it or not. May I recommend a dash of salt? 

Ham is where you get separation depending on the kind of ham. For purposes of this analysis, I'm taking the average ham score here. Off-the bone is by far the most elite Stand Alone Flavor profile in a ham. Virginia-baked is not far behind. Krakus polish is on the wrong side of the 50-yard line and it only gets worse the more processed and amalgamated we get. So I'm splitting the difference and just calling it a classic honey-glazed ham here and that's delicious. The average honey-glazed ham crushes turkey and RB in a stand alone challenge. 

So to recap Stand Alone, we have it: 

T-3: Miscellaneous 

T-3: Turkey

2: Roast Beef

1. Ham 

2. Room For Error

Does it need to be sliced precisely to the correct thickness? Are you willing to take a low-sodium alternative if it's on sale? What about prepackaged cold cuts that hang in the charcuterie section of the grocery store? Really it's just a matter about how particular you need to be when interacting with these cold cuts. 

In that case, I have ham dead last because a bad slice goes a long way. Also I'm particular about my suppliers. Boars Head and Krakus are elite. So is my local meat market's in-house private label. Those are big time players but I can't rely on them always. I'll guarantee they're not serving that quality at your locally-franchised sub shop. I promise you it's a dangerous game to be eating unverified, borderline rogue ham. Especially if it's too thick. No fucking thanks. 

Roast beef is next up. The problem here is I want my roast beef medium rare red. I can gladly stomach pink. But anything darker is bad lunch meat in my opinion. Especially because it's usually either too dry or too wet. I don't want to have to salt and pepper my lunch meat and sometimes Roast Beef will make me do that. Not a huge deal but if we're being specific then I need to make that a consideration. 

Then there's miscellaneous and obviously we got some clunkers on the board. But I don't think there's many bad forms of italian spiced meats. I don't think you get a bad meat/cheese board very often. Most of the smoked exotic stuff hits quite hard. And most of it is significantly more expensive than the Big 3. So in that spirit, I'm inclined to be less particular about presentation because flavor profile inherently carries miscellaneous cold cuts. And again - I know we got some bad boys in the conversation, but the overall average italian cold cut is miles ahead of Ham and Roast beef when it comes to Room for Error. 

But nobody comes close to Turkey. There's such limited deviation in turkey deli cuts. Off a jewel platter or carved from a 16-pound breast, you're getting a similar experience with the bird. Granted you'll need to dress it up and be more creative than your other choices but that's not our primary consideration here. Instead just think about the mistakes that can be made when eating Turkey and you realize the list is quite short and mostly limited to shelf life. Yes it will get a little greasy if you go past the expiration date but notwithstanding genoa salami, I think that's the case for everybody. 

As such: 

4. Ham

3. Roast Beef

2. Miscellaneous 

1. Turkey

D. Multi-Purpose

Something to consider is your flexibility in making the sandwich. Can you do a wrap or a pinwheel? Is it good straight out of the bag? And what's the range of condiments: mustard only or can we be creative with a truffled vinaigrette? These are the questions you should be asking with multi-purpose as it renders some obvious conclusions: 

Deli Ham is fighting for it's life under multi-purpose. I mean that sincerely. You don't have a ton of options when it comes to old-fashioned ham. It's going on white bread, adorned with American or Swiss and finished with a crisp leaf of lettuce, sliced tomato and mustard with maybe some mayo. Most of the time you're playing with these elements and rarely anything else. You can go classic American with no tomato. You can cut all veggie and just do hot ham and swiss. You can throw a dijon in the mix. But be honest, there's no growth on a ham sandwich without roping in other meats. Like your Uncle Gary that went off the grid a decade ago when his kids went off to college. There's only so much Uncle Gary can do for the family now that he's outside the typical familial structure. 

After that I'm going Miscellaneous because most of these cuts do not stand alone. Most of them need to be combined to even serve a single purpose. Individual functionality is not a strength, thus handcuffing our range of purpose. Mostly appetizing/snack related across the board. Some really solid sandwich contributors. There's a crazy range of flavors and circumstances. But ultimately it comes down to an imbalance of usage. On a sandwich, most of these need one of the Big 3 to really stand out. For those reasons I just can't find an opportunity to advance my predisposition towards bologna. 

Then I'm slotting Turkey next and this is really all temperature based. In comparison to roast beef, there is no comparison. Turkey is usually better cold unless carved fresh from the bird itself. And even then, a lot of people prefer it cold. Regardless, you can do a club. You can do a wrap. You can do roll up. You can put it on french or italian or a ciabatta. There's very few limitations to Turkey's position on the field. It's very dynamic but alas, not as good as Roast Beef in this category. 

Roast beef is king here. You can make it hot with au jus. You can throw it on an onion bun with heavy cheddar. You can wrap it with arugula and a zesty mayo. It can live on it's own. It can be the #1 in a 5-meat rotation. It's good out of the bag and plays with all cheese. You have the deepest roster of condiments including a preposterous partnership with horseradish. You can dress it up. You can dress it down. There are almost no limitations to Roast Beef provided it's got appropriate coloring. That's really the only criteria to set Roast Beef loose. 

For these reasons: 

4. Ham

3. Miscellaneous

2. Turkey

1. Roast Beef

Final Score

I'll tally this up like Cy-Young voting. 4 points for 1. 3 points for 2 and so on. 

Results: 

4. Ham = 6

3. Miscellaneous = 7 

T-1. Turkey = 9

T-1. Roast Beef = 9

INTERNATIONAL TIEBREAKER

Any time you need to break a tie, I encourage you to apply International standards. MLB started doing this recently with the ghost runner on 2nd base in extra innings. 

In this case, I'm purely thinking about global usage. I'm thinking about a good sandwich in the Swiss alps or something going to Oktoberfest and needing lunch. I'm backpacking New Zealand and studying abroad in Barcelona. 

Under this expanded mindset, roast beef wins the first sudden death playoff hole as turkey just made bogey. Close call for the bird but it really never stood a chance once we go international. Roast beef wins by a couple car lengths which brings me back to the final conclusive rankings: 

4. Ham

3. Miscellaneous

2. Turkey

1. Roast Beef

Questions/comments/concerns? Respectfully comment below. 

Thank you reading this blog.