A Roast Beef Sandwich the Way the Deli Makes It

The best cut for a cold roast beef sandwich is not the beef roast served hot from the oven for Sunday dinner. A hot roast of beef wants to be marbled with fat, so that fat can melt and baste the meat with all its richness and good flavor. Think of a rib roast: fatty, juicy and sublime. But when that same meat is served cold, the fat solifies into unpleasantly greasy white veins.

Most delis roast lean cuts of meats, usually bottom, top or eye round from the cow's rump, an economical choice. The roast is cooked medium-rare and sliced very thinly against the grain.

Loin cuts, such as sirloin, are more expensive but a whole lot more tender, too, since the loin muscles are not as well exercised as the cow's behind.

Recipe for Roast Beef Eye of Round

Some of the many ways to make a roast beef sandwich:

- Rare roast beef shaved thin on two slices of white bread with mayo or horseradish sauce, lettuce and tomatoes

- Beef on Weck - a Buffalo, NY favorite served on a Kaiser roll made with a crusty topping of salt and caraway seeds. The beef or the cut side of the bun is dipped in au jus; served with horseradish, the hotter the better

- Chicago Italian Beef Sandwich (w/ giardiniera)