Name: Paul Fehribach's Winning Breakfast Sandwich
Prep time: 15 min
Cook time: 20 min
Total time: 35 min
Cuisine: American
Ingredients: 8 slices thick-cut applewood smoked bacon; 8 large eggs; 4 English muffins, split; 4 oz sharp cheddar cheese, sliced thin; 2 tbsp unsalted butter, divided; 1 tbsp whole grain mustard; 2 tbsp mayonnaise; 4 leaves butter lettuce, rinsed and dried; 1 medium beefsteak tomato, sliced into 4 thick rounds; 1 tsp kosher salt; ½ tsp freshly cracked black pepper; 2 tbsp neutral oil for cooking

Paul Fehribach

Breakfast Sandwich

Photo: Andy Li · CC0 · via Wikimedia Commons. Illustrative — breakfast sandwich, not the plate from the episode.

Paul Fehribach runs Big Jones in Chicago, a Southern-food restaurant in Andersonville that has been there since 2008 and that Fehribach wrote a book about (The Big Jones Cookbook) because he is the kind of chef who researches heirloom rice varieties for fun.

His weapon was a breakfast sandwich. Which sounds like a deli order but, in Fehribach's hands, is a Maillard-and-egg-cookery exam. The bread is house-baked and toasted to crackle. The egg is fried in the bacon fat — not butter, not oil, the rendered bacon fat — so the white crisps at the edges while the yolk stays loose. The cheese melts on the bread, not the egg, so it forms a moisture barrier. The bacon is thick-cut and laid in a lattice so structural integrity holds bite to bite.

Bobby brought a breakfast sandwich. Fehribach brought a breakfast sandwich that had been thought about.