Pepperoni Sandwich

After all the comments here about great barbecue and Phillie Steak sabdwiches, I have to ask if anyone has ever tried a pepperoni sandwich.

When I was growing up in Hudson, NY (south of Albany), many italian restuarants and sub/snack shops served what was called a pepperoni sandwich. This wasn't a cold sub or hoagy with large pepperoni which looks like genoa salami, but resembled a meatball sub made with thin slices of regular stick sized pepperoni cooked for hours in spaghetti sauce and served hot. When I came to Rochester I could not find this anywhere and now I have to cook my own to enjoy this old regional favorite.

I keep wondering if this was a specialty just in the Hudson area, or if other sections of the country also serve these. If you lilke spicy food, you'll love this.

Berndog: I grew up only 40 miles south of you in Poughkeepsie and I've never heard of a pepperoni sandwich. It sounds like it would be worth a try - any tips you might want to pass along on the preparation?

Sounds like a Hudson Valley cognate of what West Virginians know as a pepperoni roll. They cook the pepperoni inside the bread; and some break open the bread and top it with sauce. This is a sauceless one:

Michael, I have seen the pepperoni roll, or sometimes an actual bread with pepperoni slices baked in it. The sandwich I'm talking about is different. Just slice up a stick of pepperoni (or buy it presliced) and simmer it for a few hours in spaghetti sauce. For those of us who are diet/cholesterol conscious, you can boil the pepperoni slices in water for a few minutes to remove excess fat. I alwys add lots of red pepper flakes to the water when doing this to avoid loss of flavor.

Serve the mixture in a roll, or better yet a piece of french bread or baguette and enjoy. This has been our Superbowl Sunday dinner for many years.

Interesting - my husband is also from the Poughkeepsie area (Wappingers) and we lived there for a while and I've never heard of this either, neither in the MH Valley, or just across the border in CT, where I lived for years. We were addicted to something one of our local pizza places sold, though, called a "pizza roll" which was a bit like a skinny pepperoni egg roll. (Ugh, well, I didn't make *that* sound too good, huh? It probably wasn't - there was much booze involved in those days!)

Interesting, I didn't realize how small a regional specialty this was. I don't remember seeing these in Albany or Kingston, or even across the river in Catskill. Only in the little city of Hudson.

I made a big pot (6 lbs of pepperoni) for Super Bowl a week ago, and just finished up the refrigerated leftovers. There is plenty in the freezer for the future. What I like to do is hand slice it on a diagonal for larger slices, and vary the thickness from nickel thick to about 1/4".

If any of you do try this, let me know what you think.

No pepperoni for me!