How To Build Your Sandwich So The Fillings Don't Fall Out

Humankind invented sandwiches for a simple reason: to hold our food in place while we eat. Although we've been stacking sandwiches for centuries (the fourth Earl of Sandwich probably wasn't the first), they can sometimes feel useless when you take a bite, squeeze the sandwich, and launch a mustard-soaked onion slice directly onto your lap. For lunches more complicated than an undecorated ham and cheese sub or a classic tomato sandwich, there are strategies to keep ingredients from falling out.

Often times, the problem isn't necessarily slippery ingredients, it's layering. Think about what fillings in your sandwich are the first to fall out: wetter sliced tomatoes or cucumbers, sauce-drenched chunks of chicken, and creamy avocados which can slide out without any friction. Always keep these foods separated inside your sandwich. Make sure you've got a variety of textures when building your sandwich, and layer them so that wet foods and dry foods aren't touching each other — rough, leafy greens like lettuce should go with slicker tomatoes, for example, to secure them in place. If this ends up being too tricky of a puzzle, adding a crunchy layer like bacon or a well-placed third slice of bread can be the ace up your sleeve.

There are other bits of sandwich science which can help you keep everything in its right place. It's common knowledge that a sandwich stacked so high that it's larger than your mouth is a challenge to keep in one piece. Instead, you want a wider, flatter structure with thinly sliced fillings, and slicing ingredients into smaller pieces helps keep them manageable. If you're using tougher meats like beef, cut them lengthwise and lay out the slices on your sandwich instead of just tossing them on. The same goes for cheese and vegetables. Pre-sliced sandwich pickles have ridges for this very reason, to hold them in place; if you're working with full pickles, shaving them down into thinner slices works great.

How should you slice the sandwich itself? Some folks have a preference for diagonal cuts or straight-down-the-middle cuts based on what's nostalgic for them. Diagonally cut sandwiches give you more angles to bite into, but just cutting it into halves or even thirds in the first place will make you less likely to spill if you can't wrap your fingers around a loose corner in time. For extra peace of mind, feel free to stick a toothpick into the finished product.