Kentucky Hot Brown Recipe

Name: Kentucky Hot Brown Recipe
Total time: 15 min
Yield: 2
Ingredients: 3 tablespoons butter; 3 tablespoons flour; 1 pint heavy cream; 3 ounces grated Pecorino Romano cheese; Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper; 2 slices hearty toast; 8 to 12 ounces roasted sliced turkey; 4 slice thick-cut bacon, cooked until crisp; 1 tablespoon minced parsley leaves; Dash paprika; 4 slices ripe tomato (optional, if in season)

Why It Works

This open-faced sandwich is the perfect way to used leftover turkey from Thanksgiving.
Mornay sauce is béchamel with grated Pecorino Romano cheese, which is poured on top of the sandwich and broiled until browned and bubbly.

The only bet I've ever won was at a Derby Day party hosted by Slice Editor Meredith Smith. The starting pistol went off just as I started on my third mint julep and Mine The Bird sprinted over the finish line before I'd even made it to my fourth, paying out 50 to 1 odds and suddenly making me $49 richer for it.

It's one-game winning streaks like this that make me think it might be fun to be a bit more of a betting man, and if I was, I'd put double or nothing on this one: despite prohibition, Fred Schmidt, the Chef at the Brown Hotel in Louisville Kentucky in the 1920's knew where to get whiskey. Nothing else could explain how he came up with the mother of Hangover Helpers that is The Hot Brown.

The fact that it happens to be made from roast turkey and that—at least at the López-Alt household—Thanksgiving is a day about giving thanks for all the wonderful family you have, then drinking copiously to try and deal with them, makes the Kentucky Hot Brown the perfect morning-after meal.

Pouring Mornay sauce on top of roast turkey and a slice of toast. — Serious Eats / J. Kenji López-Alt

The Hot Brown is ostensibly an open-faced sandwich—it starts with a piece of toasted bread (the original recipe calls for Texas Toast) and gets topped with sliced roasted turkey. But from there it leaps directly into Hangover Helper territory when a precisely measured volume (known as a morethanyoucouldreasonablyhopetoneed) of cheesy, creamy Mornay sauce is poured over the top and the whole thing is placed under the broiler to bake until bubbly.

I've been told by no less than two Kentuckians that if the edges of the plate do not look like this when it comes out of the broiler, you're doing it wrong:

Close up of a corner of Kentucky hot brown, bubbling. — Serious Eats / J. Kenji López-Alt

Once out of the oven, a couple slices of crispy bacon are placed on top, just to remind you that buried underneath that cheese is some turkey and toast. X marks the spot, and all that.

The most traditional recipe calls for a couple slices of tomato to be added, but who in their right mind has tomatoes in their kitchen in the middle of November? I skip the tomatoes and go straight for the paprika and parsley.

November 2011