What Is A Chopped Salad Sandwich?

TikTok has a pretty persistent habit of taking well-established foods and thrusting them into the spotlight as if they're new trends. Take pork roll, for example, or shrubs, or even olive oil on ice cream. One dish that keeps getting sustained attention from TikTok users is a creation that combines two classic staples into one delicious meal: the chopped salad sandwich. Let's dive into its sudden resurgence in popularity.

If you enjoy a good chopped salad, the kind where every component (veggies, cheese, protein) is chopped into uniformly forkable bites and then tossed in dressing, you're halfway to a chopped salad sandwich, sometimes just referred to as a chopped sandwich. It's simply any version of that same salad, just stuffed into a hinge-cut roll. The shape of the roll is crucial, as it prevents all the fillings from falling out the sides.

The Italian version is the most popular, combining Italian deli meats and cheeses with lettuce, tomatoes, red onions, and pepperoncini peppers. To prepare one, all you have to do is dump all the ingredients except the bread—yes, even the dressing—onto a cutting board, and start chopping, a cathartic bit of food prep that also distributes the dressing components into the mix. Once the filling is all blended, simply plop it on a roll and start eating. You just have to make sure to scarf it right away, since the lettuce has a tendency to wilt fast.

Nearly any filling is a candidate for a chopped salad sandwich, and that's the part that appeals most to TikTok users. Beyond the go-to Italian sub, you can create chopped salad sandwiches that contain Vietnamese banh mi ingredients, wedge salads, Caesar salads, whatever your heart desires. And that versatility means it's a goldmine for social media content.

But as I mentioned before, if you're going to make one in real life, you've got to eat it right away for the sake of the texture of the greens. That's the part the videos don't show; these things likely don't travel well and won't make a great office lunch if you pre-dress the filling. But if you're generally skeptical of TikTok trends, this is one recipe that won't let you down.