What’s in a Reuben Sandwich Kit?
The Reuben Kit is full of delicious ingredients for you to make your own Reuben at home! We pack the perishable ingredients in insulated packaging and ship everything with overnight shipping to ensure the kit arrives in great condition.
Here’s a tour through what you can expect to find in your kit and how long you can savor their flavors. Kits that serve 6-8 will get double the bread, meat, cheese, and chips plus extra brownie bites.
Zingerman’s Bakehouse bread
For the crusty, toasty sandwich exterior, you’ll receive Jewish Rye Bread made with freshly milled rye flour and ground caraway seeds or Pumpernickel Bread. Keep on the counter to eat within a few days or freeze for up to three months.
The best cured & cooked meats (or tempeh)
Depending on your kit of choice, you’ll stack your sandwich with first cut corned beef, first cut lean pastrami, or oven roasted turkey. Keep the meats in the fridge to eat within five days or freeze for up to six months. For the vegetarian reuben with tempeh, cook and eat the tempeh within two to three days.
Flavorful condiments
You’ll get tangy Brinery sauerkraut, sliced Emmentaler Swiss cheese, a jar of Zingerman’s “old” garlicky pickles, and creamy coleslaw and Russian dressing made in our own kitchen. The vegetarian reuben has sliced cheddar cheese made with vegetarian rennet. Keep everything in the fridge and plan to use most of these crunchy and creamy toppings within a few days. The sauerkraut and pickles can be kept longer if they stay submerged in their brine.
Zingerman’s potato chips and Zingerman’s Bakehouse brownie bites
To round out the meal, snack on personal-sized bags of Zingerman’s potato chips made by Great Lakes Potato Chip Company and flavored with Epices de Cru spices. For a sweet treat, there are walnut-studded brownie bites and no-nut brownie bites. Eat or freeze the brownie bites within a couple weeks.
What makes our Jewish Rye Bread so great?
Excerpted from the new Zingerman’s Bakehouse Book
In order to open Zingerman’s Bakehouse, we had to be able to bake great Jewish Rye Bread for Zingerman’s Delicatessen, which was our first (and at the beginning our only) customer. It’s not possible to have a superb Reuben sandwich without authentic Jewish rye bread. We wanted our Jewish rye to be an essential part of the sandwich, not just a structural element that didn’t really add to the flavor. So right from the beginning, we used and further evolved the excellent recipe and techniques we learned from our first teacher, Michael London.
First, we use a sour starter, which is unusual these days.
It adds a little bit of leavening to the recipe, but mainly it provides depth and complexity of flavor. We created the starter in the fall of 1992, and we’ve been feeding it every day since to keep it healthy, with just the right amount of tang. This version of rye bread was the one made most often by the Polish Jewish bakers in New York and was called sour rye. It later became known as Jewish rye.
Second, we use “old” rye bread from the previous day’s bake.
We slice and soak it in water and then add it to the dough. It adds a layer of texture, flavor, moisture, and color to the bread. It’s also a tradition for Jewish bakers to take something from yesterday and put it in today’s recipes, representing the continuity and interconnectedness of life.
Third, there’s actually some rye in the recipe.
Many rye breads are made from white-wheat flour with a touch of rye added. We use lots of medium rye (rye flour that has some of its bran) in our sour starter.
Finally, we create a real crackly crust.
We brush each loaf with water before it goes into the oven and then again when it comes out. The contrast of the cool water on the hot loaf causes the crust to crack in a distinctive way that is characteristic of Jewish rye.