The first Kentucky Hot Brown I ever tasted came in a foil dish at a folding-table stall on the Chow Wagon row in Louisville, around midnight, Derby week. The vendor had hands the colour of brown sugar and he did not say much. He pointed at the chalkboard, held up two fingers, and went back to the broiler.
I gave him eight dollars. He pulled the dish out with bare hands he should not have used. The cheese was still moving on top.
Louisville, the Chow Wagon, and a Vendor Who Did Not Talk Much
Waterfront Park during the Kentucky Derby Festival is louder than I expected. Forty-something stalls strung along the river, country music coming off three different stages, the Belle of Louisville hooting somewhere out in the dark. His stall was the one with the queue. No menu. Just HOT BROWN, $8, scrawled in chalk and half rubbed out by the rain that morning.
He worked alone. I watched him for a while before I ordered, partly because I was hungry and partly because his rhythm was beautiful. Toast under, turkey heaped on, two tomato halves tucked in beside, ladle of sauce over the whole thing, into the broiler, count to four, pull, crossed bacon strips on top, paprika, parsley, out. Forty seconds maybe. Again and again.
When he handed me mine, he made a little flicking gesture at his own mouth and pointed at the foil. Eat it now. Eat it hot. I sat on a wet bench and ate it with a plastic fork while the parade music came across the water. I have thought about that fork-load every few weeks since.
Where the Kentucky Hot Brown Actually Came From
The dish is not really street food, not originally. It started in a hotel ballroom in 1926.
Chef Fred K. Schmidt was working the kitchen at The Brown Hotel in downtown Louisville. The hotel hosted dinner dances most nights, sometimes more than a thousand guests, and around two in the morning the crowd would drift into the restaurant looking for something more interesting than ham and eggs. Schmidt borrowed the idea of Welsh rarebit and built it bigger. Toast underneath. Sliced roasted turkey on top. A thick Pecorino Romano Mornay poured over the lot, two strips of bacon crossed on the surface, broiled until patches of the sauce went brown.
It became the most ordered dish in the hotel restaurant, by some accounts ninety-five percent of tickets. The Brown still serves the original recipe almost a century later.
A few things most people get wrong about it. There are no pimentos in the 1926 version, just two halves of a Roma tomato hiding under the bacon. The cheese is Pecorino Romano, not cheddar. The orange cheese-sauce versions you sometimes see in roadside Kentucky diners are a later drift. And it is open-faced, finished in the same dish it is served from, not a closed sandwich and never pan-fried.
Bringing the Kentucky Hot Brown Back to My Apartment
I did not cook one for almost a year after I got back. Partly because I could not find a Pecorino Romano I trusted, and partly because I did not want to ruin the Louisville version in my head.
The Pecorino I use now comes off the cheese counter at Eataly in Century City, sliced from a wheel, never the pre-grated tubs. The roasted turkey breast I just do myself the night before, salted heavily and rested cold in the fridge. Deli turkey works, technically. It comes out wet. The two broiler-proof gratin dishes live on the lower shelf of my pantry and they get pulled down about three times a year. Always for this.
What Goes Into It
- 4 slices of Texas toast, crusts trimmed
- 12 oz roasted turkey breast, sliced thick and warm
- 2 Roma tomatoes, halved lengthwise, seeds left in
- 4 slices of thick-cut bacon, cooked crisp
- 4 tbsp unsalted butter
- 4 tbsp all-purpose flour
- 1.5 cups whole milk, warmed slightly
- 0.5 cup heavy cream
- 1 cup Pecorino Romano, finely grated, plus 2 tbsp more for the top
- a pinch of freshly grated nutmeg
- kosher salt and black pepper
- sweet paprika and finely chopped parsley to finish
The Mornay, Narrated From Inside the Pot
The butter foams first. Big lazy bubbles that look like they are about to climb the pan. That is when the flour goes in. Whisk hard. The roux moves from gritty to pasty to glossy in maybe two minutes. Do not let it brown. We are not making gumbo.
The warm milk goes in slowly, splash by splash, and the sauce seizes for a second each time before it smooths out. That is the starch grabbing the liquid. By the time the cream is in, the whole thing is loose and pale and starting to thicken. Five minutes of gentle simmer and it coats the spoon properly. Thick. The kind of thick where you draw a line through it with a finger and the line stays.
Off the heat, the cheese. Handful by handful, whisked in. It melts unevenly at first and then settles into a glossy, faintly grey-cream colour. Nutmeg, salt, pepper. Taste before you add more salt. The Pecorino is already salty enough to embarrass you.
Then the build. Toast in the dish, turkey heaped, tomato halves cut side up, sauce poured generously over the whole top, more cheese scattered over, under the broiler. Three minutes if your broiler runs hot. Five if it does not. You want bubbling everywhere and patches of golden brown that look almost burnt.
Out. Bacon crossed in an X across the top. Paprika. Parsley.
Things I Got Wrong the First Time
The first time I made this I used a sharp yellow cheddar, because Pecorino felt wrong for a Kentucky dish, like I was importing the wrong country into it. It came out heavy and orange and slightly bitter. Throw that instinct out. The Brown Hotel chose Pecorino Romano on purpose in 1926 and it is the whole reason the sauce tastes the way it does.
I almost layered in some ham once. Do not. The original is turkey only, and ham makes it muddy in a way that is hard to explain until you have done it. And serve it in the same dish you broiled it in. The sauce skins over in about ninety seconds on a plate, and the bottom of the toast goes from crisp to soft about as fast.
I miss Louisville a little when I cook this. Not quite enough to fly back this April. Almost.
Kentucky Hot Brown
Ingredients
Equipment
Method
- Cook the bacon in a large skillet over medium heat until deeply crisp, about 8 minutes. Transfer to paper towels to drain and set aside.
- Position an oven rack about 6 inches below the broiler element and preheat the broiler to high.
- Toast the Texas toast slices until lightly golden on both sides. Trim off the crusts if you have not already done so.
- Make the Mornay sauce. Melt the butter in a medium heavy-bottomed saucepan over medium heat until foaming. Whisk in the flour and cook the roux, whisking constantly, for 2 minutes. Do not let it brown.
- Slowly whisk in the warm whole milk and heavy cream a little at a time, smoothing out any lumps as you go. Bring the sauce to a gentle simmer and cook, whisking often, for 4 to 5 minutes until thick enough to coat the back of a spoon heavily.
- Remove the saucepan from the heat. Whisk in the grated Pecorino Romano a handful at a time until completely melted and glossy. Season with the nutmeg, salt, and black pepper. Taste and adjust.
- Assemble the Hot Browns. Place two slices of toast side by side in each broiler-proof dish to form a base, trimming as needed. Pile the warm sliced turkey generously over the toast, mounding it slightly higher in the center.
- Tuck two Roma tomato halves, cut side up, alongside the turkey in each dish.
- Ladle the hot Mornay sauce over the entire surface, covering the turkey, toast edges, and tomatoes completely. Sprinkle the extra 2 tablespoons of Pecorino Romano evenly over the top.
- Slide the dishes under the broiler and broil for 3 to 5 minutes, watching closely, until the sauce is bubbling vigorously and patches of golden brown appear on the surface.
- Pull the dishes from the oven. Immediately lay two crisp bacon strips across the top of each Hot Brown in an X.
- Dust with sweet paprika and scatter the chopped parsley over the top. Serve at once, in the same dish, while bubbling hot.