🇦🇷 Argentina · Family: Asado al Pan · Bread: pan-frances · Proteins: beef, egg
The Matambre Arrollado en Pan is the rolled-and-stuffed Argentine flank, matambre arrollado, sliced into pinwheels and laid into bread, a composed cold-or-warm sandwich built around a cut that has been turned into something closer to a terrine. The angle is the spiral: the thin sheet of matambre is spread with a filling, hard-boiled egg, carrot, bell pepper, herbs, sometimes spinach or olives, then rolled tight, tied, and cooked, so each slice is a cross-section of meat wrapped around a vegetable-and-egg core. The sandwich hinges on the roll being cooked through and tight enough to hold its shape when cut, and on the slice being thin enough to bite without the spiral unraveling. Get it right and every bite is meat and filling in proportion, held in a clean coil. Get it wrong and the roll is loose and falls apart, the meat is tough, or the filling is bland and watery.
The build is more assembled than the grilled al pan form. The bread is pan francés or a similar roll, split and usually left plain or lightly dressed since the filling already carries a lot. The matambre is butterflied thin, seasoned, spread with the egg-and-vegetable mixture, rolled along its length, tied or netted, then cooked, often poached or braised, sometimes finished on the grill, and cooled at least enough to slice cleanly. The roll is cut into rounds and the rounds are laid into the bread, frequently with mayonnaise and sometimes lettuce and tomato, treated more like a fiambre sandwich than a grilled-steak one. Good execution shows tight, even pinwheels where the meat is tender and the filling is well-seasoned and set, the slice holding together in the bread, the bread crisp against it. Sloppy execution leaves the roll loose so it springs apart in the hand, undercooks the meat to a chew, or pads the spiral with a dull, wet filling.
It varies mostly by what goes into the spiral and how the slices are dressed. The classic filling is carrot, egg, pepper, and parsley, but spinach, olives, cheese, or extra herbs all turn up depending on the cook. Served cold with mayonnaise it sits in fiambre territory; warmed and dressed with chimichurri it leans back toward the parrilla. Unrolled and grilled flat instead, the same cut becomes the simpler matambre al pan. The rolled version is the composed end of the matambre-in-bread family, the cut reworked into a sliceable spiral, and the plain grilled form it sits beside deserves its own treatment.
More from this family
Other Asado al Pan sandwiches in Argentina: