🇦🇷 Argentina · Family: Asado al Pan · Bread: pan-frances · Proteins: beef
The cold Sándwich de Matambre is the same thin flank cut taken in its chilled, sliced register: matambre cooked, cooled, and laid into bread as a cold cut rather than served hot off the grill. The angle is what cold does to this particular cut. Matambre is lean and fibrous, and once it is cooked, cooled, and firmed it slices into clean, thin sheets that hold their shape, which makes it a natural fiambre. The sandwich hinges on the cooking having been done well before the meat was chilled: tender, properly cooked matambre slices cold into something delicate and easy to eat, while undercooked or overcooked matambre that was tough hot is worse cold, dense and dry against the bread.
The build is short and assembled cold. The matambre is most often the rolled and stuffed form, laid out flat, layered with hard egg, carrots, peppers, and herbs, rolled tight, tied, cooked, then chilled fully so it sets, and finally sliced into thin pinwheels. Plainer cold versions use grilled matambre simply cooled and sliced thin. Either goes onto bread that is usually a soft pan francés or thin sandwich bread, spread with mayonnaise or left plain, with the cold meat carrying the sandwich. Good execution is matambre sliced thin and even, tender and cleanly cut so each slice bites without pulling, the spiral of a rolled piece intact and tidy, the bread fresh against the cool filling. Sloppy execution is meat that was tough hot and is now dense and dry, slices cut thick so the fibers drag, or a roll so loosely cooked it falls apart on slicing.
It varies mostly by which form of matambre is used and how it is dressed. The cold rolled version, sliced into pinwheels, is the elegant register, closer to a composed deli plate in bread; the cold grilled-flat version is plainer and more direct. A smear of mayonnaise softens the lean meat; a sharp vinaigrette or chimichurri spooned over it adds the acid the cold cut wants. This chilled form sits opposite the hot grilled matambre al pan, the same cut taken two ways, and its defining quality is a fibrous flank that, cooked properly and served cold, becomes a clean sliced sandwich rather than a hot, charred one.
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