Eye of Round - Pit Beef Sandwiches

If you think of the most common meal item consumed in America (and I have no proof whatsoever when it comes to this assumption), I have to imagine it has to be the sandwich.  It has to be the most common lunch item to be sure.  For three years in high school, I worked at my section of Boston's best sandwich shop, Steve Slyne's deli.  Steve himself was a landmark, a mecca of my hometown.  But so was his deli.  And I was one of the lucky few teenagers who fortunate enough to land a job there.  What did I do?  Pretty much everything.  In the early days, stocking soda refrigerators, cigarette displays and chips displays, sweeping floors and handling returned bottles/cans (Massachusetts had just instituted the "bottle bill" where the consumer can return a can or bottle for $0.05).  As I worked my way up the food chain (which happens quickly), I landed behind the counter, slicing meat, making sandwiches and constructing party platters.  I loved that job.  Anyhow, it was as a young consumer, and eventual employee of Steve Slyne's deli where my love of meat and of the hearty sandwich began.  Good times!  I went through phases of my favorites.  They had phenomenal meat, so you couldn't go wrong.  But back then, I frequented the Roast Beef and the Corned Beef, but it's where I developed my love of Pastrami.  Theirs was coated in a flavorful rub.  We sliced it, cooked it, and melted some muenster cheese on it and put it on a Bulkie Roll (known everywhere outside of Boston as a Kaiser Roll) with spicy mustard.  Hands down, still the best Pastrami sandwich I've ever had.  Great sandwiches, great memories and great friends.

One thing I noted yesterday while I was preparing Pit Beef Sandwiches, was that other than the Lamb Burgers I made a few weeks back, I had not made a sandwich during this Year of Meat.  So, let's give it up for Paulina's Eye of Round and the Big Green Egg forum online.  I married a bunch of suggestions from a bunch of well established Egg Heads, and created a sandwich that hearkened me back to the days of thick rubs and hot sandwiches at Steve Slyne's.

I started with a 2 lb Eye of Round (I must confess I asked for the 4 lb one to be cut in half), which was plenty for my wife and me, and left enough for a leftover meal or two for yours truly.  I coated it (which is putting it kindly) with a concoction of rubs I've accumulated throughout the year, including a rub which I mixed myself for brisket purposes.  I laid it on thick.  And then I added some more.  I let it sit in the refrigerator for a couple of hours with the rub, and took it out about an hour before cooking.  I had the Big Green Egg set up for cooking over indirect heat at 375 degrees, with three good sized chunks of damp Hickory in there for smoke.  I put the Eye of Round on the grate, closed the lid, and let it do its magic.  Because I had a very small cut, I knew I needed to check the temperature after an hour (normally, it would be closer to 90 - 120 minutes).  Sure enough, after one hour, the temp was at 115, which was exactly where I wanted it.  I tented it (not wrapped, but tented tightly), for two hours.  The first 30-60 minutes is to let it keep cooking.  The last hour or so was simply to keep it warm until we were ready to eat.  I cut it extremely thin, almost shredding it, and served it on a Bulkie Roll (gotta go back to my roots) with some BBQ sauce AND Horseradish sauce.  I put the two on the plate and dipped the sandwich into them, depending upon which bite I wanted next.  These Pit Beef Sandwiches were top notch!  If Steve Slyne's deli was still around, and if I still worked there, they'd be on the menu to be sure.

37 down, 24 to go!