This is a new creation that I came up with. I wanted to come up with a cheesesteak that is truly southern and made with ingredients that are in most households in the south. So I came up with the Tennessee Cheesesteak!
Compared to an originally Philly, which is one of my favorites, this doesn’t feature a hoagie roll because most households don’t buy hoagie buns every week. What most do have is sandwich bread. Most of my childhood one of the sandwich meats that was always an option was bologna. I used Elm Hill bologna because it’s come from a town not far from me. Another meat that I consider southern is bacon, not just any bacon, Benton’s Bacon that is made in the heart of East TN. They are famous for their country ham but their bacon is also treasured by many people. Also for the sandwich I picked multi colored bell peppers because usually in southern gardens people will grow multiple varieties of bell peppers and yellow onions too! For the cheese there are two options to make it speak Tennesseean. You can you Sweetwater Valley Farms cheese made in Philadelphia, TN or individually wrapped sliced cheese.
Now that you have backstory to the sandwich let’s make it!
What you need
2-3lbs of bologna
1 pack of Benton’s bacon (other brands will work)
3 bell peppers ( I used green, orange, and red)
1 medium yellow onion or 2 small onions
Plenty of butter
Kinders Prime Steak seasoning
Black pepper
Mustard
Sweetwater Valley Farms Smoked Cheddar
Velveta Individually Wrapped Sliced Cheese
Texas Toast or suitable sandwich bread
1. The first step is to cut the casing off of the bologna since it isn’t edible and score the bologna to help get a more even smoke flavor when you smoke it. It is very dense and greasy and won’t absorb a lot of smoke. Then rub the outside with mustard to help the rub stick to it. Then give it a good coating of the Kinders prime steak and place onto your smoker at 250-300F for 2-3 hours. You can sprits around the halfway point to help your bark.
2. Dice up all of your vegetables and cube up the bacon, and slice the smoked bologna into thin slices and cube it up. If you can get your slices around 1/8” thick that will help with building the sandwich. I cut mine into cubes and it didn’t stack well.
3. On a griddle or cast iron skillet toss in a generous amount of butter with the peppers and onion and give a good seasoning with the prime steak and pepper. Cook them to where they are starting to get soft and either move them to a cool side of your griddle or take them out of the skillet.
4. Next, cook the bacon down some to where the fat is starting to render out pretty good and then add the bologna to the bacon and mix up well
5. Then add a little more butter to the bologna/bacon mix and add the vegetables and cook the mix for an additional 5 minutes to let all the flavors mix together and ensure the vegetables are soft bacon is cooked completely.
6. Toast the bread with butter and make sandwich size piles of your meat and veggie mix and add some slices of the Sweetwater valley cheddar and velveta so the cheese can melt. The SVF cheddar isn’t a super melty cheese so the velveta makes up for it making it a cheesy sandwich. The SVF cheddar will give it a better cheese flavor. Cover for 3-4 minutes so the cheese has enough time to melt
7. Scoop up the cheese covered mix and add to your butter toasted bread and enjoy!
If your enjoyed this cook or want to see more southern inspired recipes please comment and let me know! This could also be made as a budget meal and you could substitute the log of bologna for sliced bologna and just fry it on the griddle or skillet with butter.
Also I plan on doing a loaded version of this packed with even more flavor!
Happy Grilling
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