My Southern tomato sandwich-inspired salad

In partnership with

The Bite subscribers can now join the conversation — click the speech bubble icon to leave a comment or click the heart to like this post.

What a hot day wants for dinner

Every summer has its own particular mood — a stretch of hot weeks that live in the body as much as the calendar. In mine, there’s always a tomato. Always a moment when the heat is heavy but not unwelcome, when the air feels syrupy and gold, and dinner is less a thing to be cooked than a thing to be assembled. Bread, tomatoes, something cold to drink, and the idea that if you time it just right, you can catch a breeze coming off the porch.

This salad came out of that feeling.

Traditionally, panzanella is a rustic Tuscan salad designed to rescue stale bread by tossing it with peak-season tomatoes, olive oil, and vinegar. It’s thrifty, smart, and impossibly good — a dish that proves you don’t need much more than salt, acid, and time to make something sing. But somewhere along the way, I realized it shared a kind of spiritual lineage with another summer icon: the Southern tomato sandwich. White bread. Juicy tomato slices. Mayo. A heavy hand with the salt. No substitutions, no apologies. Both dishes are humble, sticky, deeply seasonal and full of soul.

So I married them.

This version has toasted bread — crisp on the edges, soft in the middle — salted tomatoes slouching into their juices and a tangy, mayo-based dressing that nods to sandwich logic. There’s bacon, of course. And dill pickles, which might sound rogue, but trust me: they’re the vinegary little high note that brings the whole thing into focus. A few slivers of red onion. A scatter of chopped dill. The result is something that tastes like how a heat wave feels — languid, briny and deeply satisfying.

I think I started chasing this flavor the summer I was 22. I was living in Louisville, Kentucky, just across the river from Indiana, and one sticky evening in late June, my friends and I piled into someone’s pickup and crossed the bridge to the Falls of the Ohio. We brought flashlights to hunt for fossils in the limestone beds, though mostly we just wandered. You don’t swim in the Ohio — not if you’re from there — but being near the water felt like the right kind of relief. At some point, someone cracked open a cooler in the truck bed and passed around tomato sandwiches: white bread gone a little soft, slices so ripe they bled through the napkins, a thick swipe of mayo and a sprinkle of salt. We ate them with one hand, holding beers in the other, laughing about something I’ve long forgotten.

But that sandwich — I remember that sandwich. I remember the heat on my shoulders, and the light turning blue around the edges, and the way everything felt deliciously cheap and unplanned. That’s the spirit I wanted to bottle in this recipe: the kind of summer meal that doesn’t ask for much and gives back even more.

Let it sit. Let it mingle. Serve it slightly warm or at room temp, preferably outside, with something cold and no reason to hurry.

RECIPE: Front Porch Panzanella

Ingredients

• 4 cups cubed day-old white bread or sourdough
  

• 2 tablespoons olive oil
  

• 2–3 large ripe tomatoes, chopped or cut into wedges
  

• ½ small red onion, thinly sliced
  

• ½ cup diced dill pickles (classic sandwich stackers or half-sours)
  

• 4 strips bacon, cooked crisp and crumbled
  

• Fresh dill, chopped, for garnish
  

Dressing

• 2 tablespoons Duke’s mayo
  

• 2 tablespoons olive oil
  

• 1 tablespoon white wine vinegar or pickle brine
  

• 1 tablespoon water (or more as needed to thin)
  

• Salt and black pepper to taste
  

• Optional: pinch of sugar or splash of hot sauce

Instructions

Toast the bread: Heat olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add bread cubes and toss to coat. Toast, stirring occasionally, until golden and crisp on the edges but still a little chewy inside — about 8–10 minutes. Set aside to cool slightly.

Salt the tomatoes: Place chopped tomatoes in a large bowl, sprinkle with a little salt, and let them sit for 10–15 minutes. This draws out their juices and builds the base of your dressing.

Make the dressing: In a small bowl or jar, whisk together Duke’s, olive oil, vinegar or pickle brine, and water until smooth and pourable. Season with salt, pepper, and a pinch of sugar or hot sauce if you like. Taste and adjust until it sings.

Assemble the salad: Add toasted bread cubes, red onion, diced pickles, and crumbled bacon to the bowl with tomatoes. Pour dressing over top and toss gently until everything is well coated.

Let it mingle: Let the salad rest for at least 15 minutes at room temp so the bread soaks up all the good stuff. Before serving, give it a gentle stir and scatter with fresh dill.

Serve and savor: Serve slightly warm or at room temp, ideally outside, with something cold to drink and nowhere to be.

As you might remember, the theme of The Bite this month is, simply, tomatoes. We’ve slathered ourselves in tomato butter, discovered the delights of a no-secrets summer sauce — and next week, we’ll revisit a retro classic with a twist: The stuffed tomato. What’s been your favorite way to eat summer’s perfect produce this month? Let me know in the comments below!

Support our food journalism. Become a Salon member today!

What to make this week: No-bake truffle pie

There’s something deeply luxurious about refusing to turn on the oven in the summer — not out of laziness exactly, but principle. You’ve already made a salad that tastes like late June, so why not let dessert follow suit?

Enter: this five-ingredient chocolate truffle pie. It’s rich but unfussy, indulgent but humble, and comes together with the kind of ease that makes you feel like you’ve outsmarted the entire concept of “baking.” Just melt, pour, chill, and done. No mess, no hot kitchen, no cocoa-dusted hands.

It’s the kind of dessert you can serve in thin wedges to friends on a screened-in porch — or eat barefoot from the fridge with a spoon at 10:30 p.m., ideally while listening to crickets and pretending you don’t have emails tomorrow.

What we’re reading and watching: “Own Your Kitchen” + “Parts Unknown”

Anne Burrell died this week. She was 55 — a chef, a teacher, a Food Network icon in spiky blond hair and flame-red Crocs. She was loud, warm, precise and made a certain kind of culinary confidence feel deeply accessible. 

I’ve been revisiting her original show, “Secrets of a Restaurant Chef,” and paging through her second cookbook, “Own Your Kitchen,” a title that now lands with a surprising kind of power. It’s not just about cooking; it’s about claiming space, trusting your hands, and learning to salt with conviction. The recipes are exactly what you’d want from Burrell — high-brow, low-stress — with chapters on perfect omelets, roast chicken, focaccia. My favorite is the carbonara frittata: salty, silky and absurdly easy, like a late-night dinner you’d make for someone you love.

I’ve also been watching a lot of “Parts Unknown.” Partly because I just finished writing about a quote often misattributed to Bourdain — the one that begins, “Eat at a local restaurant tonight. Get the cream sauce…” — and partly because I, like so many others, find myself returning to him in strange and unsettled times.

Lately, I’ve had Season 8, Episode 1 on loop, “Hanoi.” The one where Bourdain sits across from President Obama in a tiny noodle shop in Vietnam. Two men, two cold beers, two bowls of bun cha on electric blue plastic stools. It’s a quiet, luminous scene — small, and yet impossibly full — and it feels almost mythic now. Like something we dreamed.

Both Burrell and Bourdain understood food as something more than technique. They understood the real reason we keep gathering in kitchens and noodle shops and diners and falling-apart folding tables outside: because we’re looking for connection. Because we want to feel held. Because a good meal — whether it’s a frittata or a bowl of bun cha — can be a tiny, fleeting form of hope.

FROM OUR PARTNERS

The Daily Newsletter for Intellectually Curious Readers

Join over 4 million Americans who start their day with 1440 – your daily digest for unbiased, fact-centric news. From politics to sports, we cover it all by analyzing over 100 sources. Our concise, 5-minute read lands in your inbox each morning at no cost. Experience news without the noise; let 1440 help you make up your own mind. Sign up now and invite your friends and family to be part of the informed.

Join for free today!