Sabich - Delicious Fried Eggplants & Caramelized Eggs Sandwich - Israeli Street Food

Intro: Sabich - Delicious Fried Eggplants & Caramelized Eggs Sandwich - Israeli Street Food

Sabich (or Sabih) is a my favorite Israeli sandwich, and it is one of our most common types of street food. Sabih is traditionally served in pita bread and has three seemingly unrelated ingredients - hard boiled eggs, fried eggplants, and hummus / tahini. If you've never had it before, this combination of ingredients probably sounds a bit odd. However, sabih is considered many people's favorite street food in Israel, and it is even served in successful high-end restaurants all around the globe, some of which were even awarded a Michelin star.

So, if you're up for trying a new taste, you're in for a treat! Sabih makes for a great lunch and it is easily scalable for many people, so it can make a really nice family lunch. You can even serve the ingredients and bread separately and let each person make their own personalized sandwich :)

I hope you follow along and enjoy! let me know if you have any questions or comments!

STEP 1: Browned (Caramelized) Eggs

Sabich can be made with ordinary hard boil eggs (keeping them on the softer side is great too). However, if you want to make your sandwich extra tasty, I recommend making browned eggs. They taste completely different and it really makes a difference. There are a few ways to make browned eggs, all of which include long overnight cooking in the oven at rather low temperatures. Usually, it also includes something with sugar in it so that it caramelizes over time. The results are flavor-rich eggs with a bit of caramel in them (delicious!).

Here are a couple of ways you can make browned eggs:

1. The classic way of doing this is by putting the eggs with some potatoes and water inside a large pot, and cooking overnight at 110C/230F. Add some spices, salt and something sugary (sugar, honey or date honey are all good options). Cover to pot, and every few hours make sure there's still water in the pot.
2. I left the eggs overnight in a mixture of water, salt, and date honey. Cover the pot and cook overnight at 110C/230F. Make sure there's enough water to keep everything hydrated overnight. You can exchange the date honey with a different sugary ingredient (honey, sugar, maple syrup).

STEP 2: Fried Eggplants

• Before frying the eggplants, peel them off and cut them into half inch (~1cm) thick slices. Rectangular slices are easiest to work with.
• Lay some kosher salt on the slices of eggplant and let it rest of about 15-30 minutes. After that, remove the salt. This process adds some salt to the eggplant by diffusion, and it is also supposed to remove any bitterness that the eggplant might have.

Now we need to fry the eggplants. The traditional way of making Sabich is with deep-fried eggplants. You can coat them with some all-purpose flour before deep-frying. I personally don't like deep-frying, so I suggest two other methods (deep-fried eggplants are the best!! but it's not that good for our human bodies I guess):

1. Brush the eggplant with some oil and cook in the oven until they soften.
2. Do the same as in step 1, but later give them a short cook on a slightly oiled pan.

STEP 3: Tahini

• Mix some raw tahini, lemon juice, salt, pepper.
• Gradually add water until you have a smooth & pretty thin mixture (it should be thinner than a paste, more like a thick liquid).
• Taste and add some more seasoning if you want. Paprika and garlic are some of my favorite additions. Chopped parsley is also very common.

This is a good point to say that the combination of roasted eggplants & tahini is another Israeli classic - give it a taste!

STEP 4: Other Toppings

Cut the rest of the toppings into thin slices. Red onions, pickles and tomatoes are perfect. Other very common additions are fresh parsley and/or coriander, amba sauce (highly recommended), and boiled potatoes (you can make potatoes along with the caramelized eggs). Also, you can replace the fresh tomatoes with a simple salad (2 tomatoes, 1 cucumber, fresh lemon juice, olive oil and salt, this is often called an Israeli salad). Sometimes I add baked sweet-potatoes, sweet corn and even thin strips of fresh beetroot.

STEP 5: Assembly

It's time to assemble your sandwich.

• Spread some hummus, and put some fried eggplants.
• Lay the rest of the ingredients.
• Top off with another layer of fried eggplants.
• Pour a nice amount of tahini on top of everything else.

STEP 6: Enjoy!

If you followed along, you're all done! I hope you enjoy your Sabich sandwich!

Thanks for reading, and if you like my instructable, feel free to visit my instructables page and my website for more! See you soon!

By the way, I've been posting here on the site for a while, and after posting more than 30 instructables with over 200,000 views in total, I noticed that only 1 in 1000 post a comment! Be one of those! :) Whether it's a question or a just a general comment, I try to reply to all of them :)

Comments

[TortillaTortilla]

Alright, fine, I'll try the Sabich. But it will take some doing to get me to prefer this thing over falafels, pickles, fries, salad and hummus in a pita, with some car exhaust from Yafa for extra "flavor." LOL

[NirL]

I love falafel, we eat it probably once a week, but a good Sabich beats it any day and time :) Next time you visit Yafa, try one of these instead!
By the way, this dish is also best served in a fresh pita. I used a bun here since many people don't have a place to buy good pitas from!

[TortillaTortilla]

Will do, thank you.

[temi1]

I like eggplant and don't think any of my recipes include it. This will be my first. Looking forward to it.

[NirL]

Thanks for the comments temi1! I hope you like the recipe, let me know how it turned out! baking the eggplants would great :) I live baking it in slices with some olive oil.

[temi1]

I also won't deep fry the eggplant, but rather will bake it. This sounds good. Will pick and choose from the suggested accompaniments so as to cater to my taste. Thank you. I also wondered as to whether the egg in the oven has shell on at the time.

[GravesAndGrace]

Hello! This looks lovely! I do have a question though, for the caramelized eggs, do I start with eggs that have the shell on? I.e. raw or boiled? Because the picture looks like it has the shell on but I’m confused as to how the flavor gets to the egg… Thank you!

[NirL]

Thanks for the great question! You start with raw eggs with the shell on - I wash the eggs before putting them in the oven. The flavor gradually diffuses into them, but it takes a while! Some of the flavor comes from the outside and some comes from the long overnight cooking. Maybe peeling the shells would make things quicker but that's not how they're traditionally made and I have never tried it! If you do, let me know!
I'll add a little more details to the instructable about it, thanks!

[bicktasw]

Oh my....... this sandwich sounds (and looks) amazing!!!! I will surely try it and let you know how my family likes it! Thanks for sharing!

[NirL]

Thanks for the kind words! I can't wait to hear if they liked it. If your eggplants are tasty you can't really go wrong here! By the way, your pickled red beet eggs will probably be fit this sandwich perfectly!

[bicktasw]

I never would have thought of that!!! And, I just made a batch! Will probably try your recipe within the next week or so ...... lots of yardwork ahead of me!! Have a great day!

[jessyratfink]

Love the assembly gif! This looks great :)

[NirL]

Thanks Jessy!