Here's the Best Thing Our Office Manager Made This Weekend

We get asked all the time: What do you cook at home? Here's a little inspiration from Adam Becker, our office manager.

I love breakfast sandwiches. When done well, they’re the perfect combination of textures and flavors. The classic egg-and-cheese (plus or minus bacon, sausage, or ham) from a bodega or street cart is one of the things I missed most when I didn’t live in New York. Whenever I make them at home, I always think about the guy in the cart on 6th Avenue—who, I learned, lives down the road from Citi Field, and can see the big screen in the stadium from his porch when the Mets play... How cool is that?!— flipping eggs, meat, and “saltpepperketchup” onto rolls all morning.

I’m of the mind that the best kind of breakfast sandwich contains fried eggs, so for this one I fried two eggs in a combination of salted butter and vegetable oil. After the fats got hot, I cracked the eggs into the pan and seasoned liberally with salt, pepper, and chili flakes. I broke the yolk with a spatula and flipped the eggs after the whites set and the edges started to get golden brown and crispy.

After flipping, I topped the eggs with slices of good old pasteurized American cheese, letting the eggs cook a bit more while the cheese melted. Though any cheese is good cheese, the flavor and meltability of the classic American cheese single-slice is perfect for topping eggs and pairs wonderfully with salty-smoky-crispy meat.

The meat on this particular sandwich is coppa (leftovers from a Food52 meeting that I snagged—#perks), which I quickly fried in the same pan as the eggs. I used a potato roll, because potato rolls are wonderful and because I had one leftover from burger night earlier in the week. The pièce de résistance was the combination of mayo and Sriracha that I spread onto both sides of the bun, which adds another layer of richness and a little kick of spice to get me going in the morning. There’s no better way to start the day.

What's your bodega order? Tell us about the egg-and-cheese of your dreams in the comments.