The Ultimate Meaty Sub

By Addie

This sandwich is meaty but not overly salty; it's the ultimate football food. —Shanon Mayer, Mountain View, Wyoming (Taste of Home)

Ingredients

• 1 cup (4 ounces) shredded part-skim mozzarella cheese
• 1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
• 1/2 cup butter, softened
• 1/2 cup mayonnaise
• 2 garlic cloves, minced
• 1 teaspoon Italian seasoning
• 1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
• 1/4 teaspoon pepper
• 1 loaf (1 pound) French bread, halved lengthwise
• 1 pound sliced deli ham
• 2 packages (2.1 ounces each) ready-to-serve fully cooked bacon, warmed
• 4 ounces sliced pepperoni
• 1/2 cup pizza sauce

Preparation

Step 1

In a small bowl, combine the first eight ingredients. Spread over cut sides of bread. Layer with ham, bacon, pepperoni and pizza sauce; replace top.

Wrap in foil; place on a large baking sheet. Bake at 350° for 25-30 minutes or until heated through. Cut into slices. Yield: 6 servings.
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REVIEWS:

These were good... Used individual club rolls instead and didn't bother with the bacon since I didn't have the ready-to-use stuff and didn't have time to cook bacon. Oh, and just realized I forgot the pizza sauce altogether! But overall, a very good sandwich.

I made a double batch of the "Meat-atarian" sub to take to a friend's house for Thanksgiving afternoon football food. It was a big hit! Very good. Not at all salty (as you might imagine from the ingredients). A perfect blend of flavors. Loved it and will make it again. :-)

Wow! This sub is not for the faint of heart! Quite loaded with meat.

I made it as-is, but in hindsight, I agree with the other reviewer that this should be spread over 1 1/2 to 2 loaves of 16 oz bread.

Regarding the cheese mixture, I believe surface area is important. Luckily, all the store had was long, narrow loaves. The cheese ration was not bad on that loaf, but I imagine on a shorter, plumper loaf it would be.

I made these on individual sub rolls for our crew at cropping time. They LOVED them! Individually wrapping them in foil before baking made it easy to transport to the field and kept them nice and warm. I know that these will be requested often.

Please beware that the chees/butter/mayo mixture to spread on the bread is at least twice as much as you need. Everyone told me the subs were great but too much "mayo cheesey stuff." So I made it again, cutting bread spread in half. I also decided, why wrap in foil and keep the oven on so long (and my sandwiches were still not hot all the way through) when I could put them open face in the toaster oven and broil them. So a few minor adjustments to get a great sandwich!

SOOOOO YUMMY! Highly recommend this recipe!! Did make one *slight* adjustment...It seemed like too much meat for just one french loaf, so I actually stretched it (cheese spread and all) over 1.5 loaves/lbs of french bread. Still had PLENTY of meat and cheese spread on it and was delicious.