Tin Soldier – The Meatball Sub

This is a love letter to the greatest creation of the sandwich world, the MEATBALL SUBMARINE SANDWICH. Juicy ground beef, mixed with just a little bit of pork for flavour, is rolled up into meatballs just the way that Grandma made them. Maybe even better, if saying something like that isn’t considered sacrilege. Conversely you could use the meatballs out of a Chef Boyardee can, or just crush up a DVD of Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. The bread for this marvelous creation needs to be expertly crafted. A moist, yet firm, Italian style loaf provides the greatest synergy with the other ingredients. Plain white bread is also very tasty.  Next is the sauce. A thick and somewhat spicy marinara is just what the sandwich doctor ordered. This needs to be a sauce that is so delicious you could drink it by itself. Smooth and tasty, you need to be able to take a bottle of this bad boy to the gym with you, to guzzle between hitting the treadmill and the bike. Think of all of those nutrients being absorbed into your muscles, healing them even as you break them down. Literally any marinara sauce can be used though. I know you’ve got a jar of plain old Ragu sitting around somewhere. The cheese you use makes a huge difference in this sandwich. I don’t care if you’re so lactose intolerant that eating a single chocolate chip will send you to the E.R., you’ve got to have real, mozzarella cheese on this sandwich. This is what really brings the whole thing together. It’s the binding agent. The Chewbacca or Pippin of the sandwich. You could have it without it, but is it really worth it? A good mozzarella lights the way for the rest of the tastes to combine. A simple Kraft slice would work too though. You can probably see where I’m going with this at this point. The last part to the sandwich is the toppings. I deck my meatball sub out with everything that I put in my pasta, spinach, hot peppers, Parmesan cheese. Total bliss comes out of this combination, a taste so heavenly it can hardly be described. You can also have nothing else on it and it still tastes great. What I’m trying to say here is that the meatball sub is the greatest sandwich ever, no matter what it’s made up of. It’s the sandwich of the gods.