This Peruvian Sandwich Mixes Sweet Potato And Pork Belly — And You Can Eat It For Breakfast

The world of breakfast sandwiches has long been dominated by the formula of egg, cheese, and ... something. Sometimes it's bacon, sometimes sausage, maybe even roasted jalapeños. But this cherished formula has a South American challenger, and it's a doozy. Hailing from Peru, pan con chicharrón — also sometimes called sanguche de chicharrón — is a traditional breakfast sandwich that crams a roll full of crispy pork belly, tasty sweet potatoes, and tangy, pungent salsa criolla. While the combination of flavors might strike American breakfast purists as a bit odd, it is a Peruvian food that you need to try at least once, and it's one that you will understand with your very first bite.

We won't try to draw too many parallels here to a standard breakfast sandwich, but you can think of the chicharron as essentially being an extra large, extra thick serving of bacon. After that, the rest of the standard formula is thrown out the window. Fried sweet potatoes bulk out the sandwich and add a touch of sweetness, while salsa criolla balances the flavor profile with onion-y tang. If you haven't heard this type of salsa explained before, Peruvian salsa criolla is made with red onions, cilantro, lime juice, and aji amarillo — a type of Peruvian chili pepper. With the ingredients laid out, you can start to see how this sandwich would come together as a perfect complement of flavors and textures, especially when stacked up on a nice roll.

Pan con chicharrón is a very popular sandwich in Peru, so there are plenty of opinions about how it should be made. Beyond the combination of pork belly, sweet potatoes, and salsa criolla, there's a lot of room for interpretation, with the style of each ingredient varying from one cook to the next. So, you might need to try a few different preparations before you dial in your perfect pan con chicharrón.

Most Peruvian cooks prefer to use a thick slab of pork belly that is cooked and then sliced. In general, Peruvian chicharrones are made by first boiling the pork belly in water seasoned with ingredients like garlic, pepper, and cumin, then frying it. This gives the pork belly a crisp exterior with a tender melt-in-your-mouth center.

The form of the sweet potatoes in pan con chicharrón can vary quite a bit. In some iterations, the sweet potatoes are just thin fried slices beneath a pile of pork belly. In others, nice thick slabs of sweet potato add a tender counterpoint to the crisp pork. The chicharrón is definitely the star of the show here, so don't overdo it with the tubers, but they do provide a nice contrast of texture and flavor.

Salsa criolla, too, varies between kitchens, with the most significant changes coming in which peppers are used. For traditional Peruvian flavor, you'll want to use aji amarillo, but if you can't get your hands on that, a Fresno, jalapeño, or serrano pepper will do just fine as well. And that's really all there is to it. Pile those ingredients up on a nice French-style roll, and you might just have a new favorite breakfast sandwich.