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📍 Kentucky

Kentucky Hot Brown

· Dinner

An open-faced, broiled turkey sandwich with Mornay sauce, bacon, and tomato, baked until bubbling.

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Kentucky Hot Brown: An open-faced, broiled turkey sandwich with Mornay sauce, bacon, and tomato, baked until bubbling.
Photo: Shadle · CC BY-SA 3.0 · via Wikimedia CommonsPhoto resized, converted to WebP and cropped for display.
⏱ 35 min🍽 2 servings📊 Intermediate🏷 Commonly associated
Preparation
15 min
Cooking
20 min
Waiting and resting
0 min

History

It was created by chef Fred K. Schmidt in 1926 at the Brown Hotel in Louisville, Kentucky. Each night the hotel hosted hundreds of diners after the dance, and they had grown tired of the traditional ham-and-egg plates; Schmidt came up with this open-faced turkey sandwich with Mornay sauce, which soon became the house favorite. It is a variation on Welsh rarebit.

Ingredients

Adjust quantities

Only numeric quantities at the start of an ingredient are adjusted. Descriptive quantities, seasoning to taste and timings remain unchanged; check them when changing servings.

Preparation

  1. 1

    Fry the bacon until crisp and set aside.

  2. 2

    Make the Mornay sauce: melt the butter, add the flour, and cook for a minute; gradually whisk in the milk until thickened.

  3. 3

    Off the heat, stir in the cheese and season with salt, pepper, and nutmeg.

  4. 4

    Toast the bread and place it in individual baking dishes; top with the turkey.

  5. 5

    Ladle the Mornay sauce over it, covering the edges of the bread well.

  6. 6

    Broil in the oven until bubbling and golden; crown with the bacon and tomato.

Cooking tips

  • Keep the sauce fluid enough to coat the turkey; add hot milk if it thickens before broiling.

References to consult

References provide information about the dish, its context or a technique. Quantities in this version may differ from those in the source.

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