Introduction: Sabich - Delicious Fried Eggplants & Caramelized Eggs Sandwich - Israeli Street Food

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About: Thanks for stopping by! I'm Nir, a physics PhD student studying E. coli bacteria. On my free time I enjoy making all kinds of things - from laser cutting & 3D printing to baking, cooking and doing science expe…

Sabich (or Sabih) is a my favorite Israeli sandwich, and it is one of our most common types of street food. Sabih is traditionally served in pita bread and has three seemingly unrelated ingredients - hard boiled eggs, fried eggplants, and hummus / tahini. If you've never had it before, this combination of ingredients probably sounds a bit odd. However, sabih is considered many people's favorite street food in Israel, and it is even served in successful high-end restaurants all around the globe, some of which were even awarded a Michelin star.

So, if you're up for trying a new taste, you're in for a treat! Sabih makes for a great lunch and it is easily scalable for many people, so it can make a really nice family lunch. You can even serve the ingredients and bread separately and let each person make their own personalized sandwich :)

I hope you follow along and enjoy! let me know if you have any questions or comments!

Supplies

I'll list the ingredients required to make enough food for 3 people. You can scale it up or down as you like.

Ingredients:

  • 1 eggplant.
  • 6 eggs.
  • Tahini & hummus (tahini is kind of mandatory and hummus is highly recommended). Store-bought hummus is usually great for Sabich, but you can make your own hummus if you like.
  • Pickles.
  • 1 red onion.
  • 2 fresh tomatoes.
  • Your favorite buns / pita bread / other type of bread.
  • Lemon, salt and pepper (for the tahini).

Optional:

  • Fresh parsley and/or coriander.
  • Amba sauce (this is a great addition).
  • Boiled potatoes (I don't get this one, but it's pretty common!).

Step 1: Browned (Caramelized) Eggs

Sabich can be made with ordinary hard boil eggs (keeping them on the softer side is great too). However, if you want to make your sandwich extra tasty, I recommend making browned eggs. They taste completely different and it really makes a difference. There are a few ways to make browned eggs, all of which include long overnight cooking in the oven at rather low temperatures. Usually, it also includes something with sugar in it so that it caramelizes over time. The results are flavor-rich eggs with a bit of caramel in them (delicious!).

Here are a couple of ways you can make browned eggs:

  1. The classic way of doing this is by putting the eggs with some potatoes and water inside a large pot, and cooking overnight at 110C/230F. Add some spices, salt and something sugary (sugar, honey or date honey are all good options). Cover to pot, and every few hours make sure there's still water in the pot.
  2. I left the eggs overnight in a mixture of water, salt, and date honey. Cover the pot and cook overnight at 110C/230F. Make sure there's enough water to keep everything hydrated overnight. You can exchange the date honey with a different sugary ingredient (honey, sugar, maple syrup).

Step 2: Fried Eggplants

  • Before frying the eggplants, peel them off and cut them into half inch (~1cm) thick slices. Rectangular slices are easiest to work with.
  • Lay some kosher salt on the slices of eggplant and let it rest of about 15-30 minutes. After that, remove the salt. This process adds some salt to the eggplant by diffusion, and it is also supposed to remove any bitterness that the eggplant might have.

Now we need to fry the eggplants. The traditional way of making Sabich is with deep-fried eggplants. You can coat them with some all-purpose flour before deep-frying. I personally don't like deep-frying, so I suggest two other methods (deep-fried eggplants are the best!! but it's not that good for our human bodies I guess):

  1. Brush the eggplant with some oil and cook in the oven until they soften.
  2. Do the same as in step 1, but later give them a short cook on a slightly oiled pan.

Step 3: Tahini

  • Mix some raw tahini, lemon juice, salt, pepper.
  • Gradually add water until you have a smooth & pretty thin mixture (it should be thinner than a paste, more like a thick liquid).
  • Taste and add some more seasoning if you want. Paprika and garlic are some of my favorite additions. Chopped parsley is also very common.

This is a good point to say that the combination of roasted eggplants & tahini is another Israeli classic - give it a taste!

Step 4: Other Toppings

Cut the rest of the toppings into thin slices. Red onions, pickles and tomatoes are perfect. Other very common additions are fresh parsley and/or coriander, amba sauce (highly recommended), and boiled potatoes (you can make potatoes along with the caramelized eggs). Also, you can replace the fresh tomatoes with a simple salad (2 tomatoes, 1 cucumber, fresh lemon juice, olive oil and salt, this is often called an Israeli salad). Sometimes I add baked sweet-potatoes, sweet corn and even thin strips of fresh beetroot.

Step 5: Assembly

It's time to assemble your sandwich.

  • Spread some hummus, and put some fried eggplants.
  • Lay the rest of the ingredients.
  • Top off with another layer of fried eggplants.
  • Pour a nice amount of tahini on top of everything else.

Step 6: Enjoy!

If you followed along, you're all done! I hope you enjoy your Sabich sandwich!

Thanks for reading, and if you like my instructable, feel free to

visit my instructables page and my website for more! See you soon!


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