4 Ordering Tips To Get The Best Culver's Beef Pot Roast Sandwich

Even just with its basic ButterBurgers, Culver's has proven that it's a step above the typical fast food chain. The fact that it has full-fledged beef pot roast further hammers that perception home. Because it uses such a high-quality cut of meat, Culver's beef pot roast sandwich simply piles the juicy, tender shreds of meat in between two halves of a kaiser roll and calls it a day, without the need for any additional sauce or toppings.

Still, there are things you can do to elevate the restaurant's already tasty and satisfying pot roast sandwich. Consider combining it with a side that turns it into more of a traditional pot roast dinner, enhancing the existing sandwich, or borderline transforming it to something else entirely. These fairly easy ordering tricks will prove that this seemingly-simple sandwich has impressive versatility. Best of all, once you've tried all of these tips individually, you can combine some of them as you see fit for even more deliciously interesting variations.

True to its founding and base of operations being located in Wisconsin (also known as the Dairy State), there are a number of cheese-based items on the Culver's menu. There's also the option to just straight-up order cheese — well, cheese dipping sauce, that is. And while it's primarily intended to be ordered as a dip for the restaurant's side items like fries or the pretzel bites, it also makes a fantastic addition to a beef pot roast sandwich.

By ordering a side of cheese sauce and then pouring it over top of your pot roast meat, you instantly have a tasty, cheesy beef sandwich that's as good as any similar item you'll find at another restaurant. In fact, the argument can be made that it even surpasses the most famous of those sandwiches, the Arby's Beef 'n Cheddar, given that Culver's uses meaty chunks of slow-roasted beef versus Arby's basic deli-sliced roast beef.

Admittedly, the mashed potatoes and gravy make up one of Culver's worst sides. They just aren't particularly impressive on their own in terms of texture or flavor, and don't really pair that well with a ButterBurger. But as a side with some beef pot roast, you suddenly have a pretty solid approximation of a pot roast dinner at fast food prices. 

There are two ways to approach this hack. The first is to order a beef pot roast sandwich, order a side of mashed potatoes, get some butter to put on your buns, and then plate it all like a dinner. Unfortunately, the phasing out of the brown gravy at most Culver's locations makes this feel like less of a true pot roast dinner, though the white gravy that currently comes with the mashed potatoes still does the job.

If that's not enough for you, there's option two. This version has you opt for simply taking off the top bun and putting the mashed potatoes and gravy right on top, eating it as an open-faced sandwich. It might come off a bit more like an express pot roast dinner without all the prep and effort of the first option.

Simply changing the bread that a sandwich comes on can completely transform said sandwich. And that is certainly the case with the Culver's beef pot roast sandwich, which comes on the same toasted kaiser bun as the ButterBurgers in its default configuration. But there are other options, such as the buttered brioche bun used for the chicken sandwiches and the toasted rye bread that houses the Reuben melt. Feel free to experiment with either of those, but we recommend swapping the kaiser roll for grilled sourdough bread for your next beef pot roast sandwich.

Currently, the grilled sourdough is only used for Culver's grilled cheese sandwich. As such, it isn't offered as a regular substitution option for online ordering, requiring you to request it in person. But in our experience, it's a swap that Culver's employees are generally willing to make, and doing so changes the beef pot roast sandwich into more of a melt-style sandwich like you'd find in a fancy deli. This is doubly true if you add a slice of cheese to it, which is an offered upgrade option for the pot roast sandwich as-is. We like the Swiss, but feel free to go with whichever one sounds best to you. 

Adding BBQ sauce is one of the more popular hacks for Culver's beef pot roast sandwich. In fact, the restaurant itself nudges you in that direction when you order the sandwich online. Clicking on the "sauces" pulldown recommends adding Sweet Baby Ray's BBQ sauce as the first option (with horseradish being the second). Still, there's a chance that this option never occurred to some customers for one reason or another, so we felt it was worthy of spotlighting. 

While the pot roast sandwich is plenty juicy on its own, many people opt to make it saucy, and BBQ sauce is the perfect way to do that. It makes the sandwich taste a lot like a BBQ pulled pork sandwich — only with beef instead of pork, of course — which some would say is an upgrade. Given that even the easiest pulled pork recipes still require a substantial amount of time and effort, this is a much quicker and more affordable way to scratch that itch. There's no need to take a trip to the grocery store and spend hours in the kitchen if you don't have the ingredients yourself; after all, isn't that basically the point of fast food in the first place?