Blueberry, lemon, turkey, bacon panini

Read Time: 10 minutes

This week, I stole inspiration for a sandwich from the Instagram account of a deli in a place called Durham, North Carolina. I’ve never visited their location, and I’ve also never tasted this sandwich. But the ingredients sounded like a lot of fun to combine, so I whipped up my version of this sandwich and wrote about it.

What is this sandwich?

The sandwich I’m making and writing about today is heavily inspired by but not quite a copycat of Ideal’s Sandwich and Grocery‘s BBL sandwich, which appears to be a special and not available on their menu all the time. The main reason I say it’s not a copycat is that I have no idea what Ideal’s version tastes like.

What is the BBL? No, it’s not a Brazilian Butt Lift, although my first thought was that that might jokingly be where the name came from. At Ideal’s Sandwich and Grocery, the name BBL stands for Blueberry, Bacon, and Lemon. But there’s a lot more going on here than just those three ingredients.

I have shared an Instagram post from Ideal’s below that might explain things more visually, but this is a roast turkey and bacon sandwich with a spiced blueberry and lemon mascarpone spread, Asiago cheese, fried shallots, and supposedly arugula, but I couldn’t find it in the photo, so I’m not really sure if it actually got into their version. The sandwich appears to be panini-ed in a long roll instead of a bun, so I did that as well.

Ideal’s is a deli/sandwich joint I’d really like to visit, but each time I’ve been rolling past, they have not been open due to their limited and/or holiday hours when we visit our families in North Carolina. Hopefully, soon, the timing will work out, and I’ll get to stand in line for a sandwich with the locals.

I painted this illustration of my version of the blueberry, lemon, turkey, bacon panini.

I stole this photo from Google Maps, but I bet that guy on the bench is waiting for the store to open so he can get a delicious sandwich.

Ideal’s is normally only open for lunch, but they announced recently that they were doubling their hours. They used to be limited to just 3 hours a day from noon to 3, but as of last Thursday, July 9th, they are open Thursday through Monday from 12 to 6 pm.

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A post shared by Ideal’s Sandwich and Grocery (@idealsdurham)

Part of the reason that I was interested in this sandwich initially was that it reminded me of a sandwich I wrote about back in 2024 called the Elena Ruz. That sandwich also combines savory turkey with a sweet component in the form of strawberry jam and a creamy textural experience with whipped cream cheese instead of mascarpone in the BBL. I’m a sucker for a good turkey sandwich, and I also love combining sweet and savory flavors, so Ideal’s BBL seemed right up my alley.

I made and wrote about the Elena Ruz sandwich back in April of 2024. It’s a good one if you like sweet and savory sandwiches. Click the image to read more.

Now that we know what sandwich we’re going to be making, we’ll need some bread.

Medianoche sandwich rolls

As I said, Ideal’s sandwich description really reminded me of the Elena Ruz sandwich that I wrote about back in 2024, and that sandwich is panini-ed in medianoche rolls, so my mind immediately went there for the bread selection.

A Medianoche sandwich is a sandwich made in Cuba that fairly closely resembles what we might call a Cuban or Cubano sandwich. Pork, ham, Swiss cheese, mustard, and pickles are all components of both a Cubano and a Medianoche sandwich. The main difference is that a Medianoche sandwich is built on a Medianoche roll, which is a sweet, eggy, and enriched bread roll that is very similar to challah or brioche.

Because of this enrichment, the bread will have a yellower tint than something like a typical burger bun or sliced white bread. Medianoche in Cuba will often be made with lard as the fat in the dough, but you can (and I did this time) use butter instead. If you want a true Medianoche roll, buy some lard and put it to use.

Medianoche rolls are a slight bit yellower than a typical burger bun due to the eggs and egg yolk involved.

To achieve the shiny browned exterior, you’ll need to paint on an egg wash before baking.

This recipe makes 8 medianoche rolls, so you’re just looking at half of the batch.

Medianoche rolls are typically browned on the top and shiny, which happens because of an egg wash painted on the exterior before baking. Almost always, unless you see otherwise, an egg wash will be a whole large egg and 1 tablespoon of water mixed together and painted or lightly spooned over the top of the dough.

Someone on social media told me these looked like nice potatoes, and they’re not incorrect.

If you like brioche or challah bread, you’ll also enjoy medianoche rolls.

These rolls are a bit sweet, but they are soft and work well in a panini-ed sandwich.

Future blueberry, lemon, turkey, bacon paninis, right here.

Here’s my medianoche roll recipe. If you’re not going to bake, you could just grab some sort of soft 5 or 6-inch roll from the store, and it’ll work just fine in this sandwich.

Roasted turkey

I’ve written about this recipe quite a few times. It’s very simple, and if you use an oven thermometer, it’s foolproof. You literally just coat the exterior of the breast with a tiny bit of oil, dust with Cajun seasoning, and then bake until the meat hits your desired temperature. It takes about an hour and a half to finish, but after that, it’s just a matter of allowing the meat to cool a little before slicing.

Add a teaspoon or two of oil to the exterior, rub it in, and then spread some Cajun seasoning into every nook and cranny.

If you have one, this recipe works best with an oven probe thermometer. Set the target temp and come back when it beeps.

I shoot for 155 F because I know it will carry over, and the temp will rise to 165 after about 10 minutes or so after the meat has been removed from the oven.

I own an electric meat slicer, but I did not use it for this sandwich. I just sliced the turkey fairly thin and left it a bit rustic rather than uniform, because I don’t think it really matters in the finished sandwich.

If you’ve never enjoyed Turkey, maybe it’s overcooked? Remove it from the oven before it gets to 165, and it will not taste dry.

Slice carefully and as thinly as you can for a great slice of turkey to use in a sandwich like this one.

Two turkey breasts make a lot of turkey for your weekly sandwich projects.

This is my roasted Cajun turkey recipe. You could buy deli turkey for this particular sandwich, but I would ask them to slice it thicker than a normal sandwich thickness just to give the turkey a bit more substance in the finished sandwich.

Bacon

As a sandwich blogger, I make a lot of bacon, and I almost always make it in the oven. You can cook more than a frying pan’s worth of bacon at once, the bacon slices stay straight, the bacon grease that’s created during the cooking process is clean and easy to collect, and as long as you’re ok with wasting some aluminum foil, the clean-up process is a breeze.

The method is easy. Cover the sheet pan with foil. Lay out your bacon without overlapping the pieces too much. Place the pan in a non-preheated oven that you turn on to 400 F (205 C) and bake for about 25 minutes. I will typically check the pan about 13 to 15 minutes into the process and rotate the pan 180 degrees to make sure everything is cooking properly.

At the end, you might want to use a fork or tongs to flip each slice, but it’s not always necessary. Remove the bacon to a paper towel-lined plate when it’s cooked to your liking, and after about 5 minutes, you should be able to carefully remove the aluminium foil from the pan to dump out the grease. Because you cooked it in the oven, the grease will not have the black or dark spots that will end up in bacon grease cooked in a skillet or pan, so you can reserve it in a jar for use in cooking eggs or toasting buns if you’d like.

Oven-baked bacon makes flat, consistent slices.

Cooking on aluminum foil means way less cleanup than cooking bacon in a pan.

After you’ve removed the bacon from the pan, carefully reserve or discard the leftover bacon grease.

I basically already told you the method/process for oven-cooked bacon, but here’s the recipe I use. You can also cook bacon however you’d like, and it’ll work the same in this particular sandwich.

Blueberry lemon mascarpone

I’m not a mascarpone scientist, but for me, a blueberry-lemon mascarpone would start with blueberry jam made from fresh blueberries, lemon juice, and some sugar. So that’s what I did.

Just a warning and a bit of a spoiler, this stuff may have the word blue in the name, but it’s so purple. So very purple.

To make this mascarpone mixture, first cook down some blueberries, sugar, and lemon juice until they’re thick like jam. Put it in a sealed container to cool and then refrigerate.

Start with blueberries, sugar, and lemon juice in a pot over medium heat.

Cook until the blueberries burst and start to bubble.

After about 25 minutes, the jam will have thickened and concentrated into something really tasty.

Once you have the blueberry jam, mix it in a 2 to 1 mascarpone to jam ratio and then add some lemon zest.

Mascarpone is a word I really struggle spelling. I catch myself swapping around the R and writing marscapone all the time…

Mix mascarpone, blueberry jam, and lemon zest to create the purplest thing you can eat.

Here’s the finished product. So purple.