Why Making a Kitchen Sink Sandwich Will Save You Money

It’s the day before grocery shopping, and you’re missing key ingredients for a complete meal with a protein and two sides. But at the same time, you do have a few odds and ends lingering in the refrigerator that you know you need to use. 

Those last few slices of bread, the end of a hunk of cheese, some carrot sticks that have gone uneaten, and a bag of chips that are almost stale will all be inedible in just a few days, and you’re starting to worry they might go to waste. This is precisely the time to skip the expensive takeout and make a kitchen sink sandwich.

Content creator Erin Hogaboom (@erin_marie_) began sharing her weekly kitchen sink sandwiches on TikTok in a series that has racked up millions of views and inspired other accounts to follow her lead. If you’ve heard of kitchen sink cookies — treats that use up whatever nuts, dried fruits, candy, and other sweet mix-ins you have on hand — the concept is similar. 

Hogaboom shows followers how to dig through their refrigerators, find scraps, jars, and remnants of ingredients that need to be used up, and then turn them into a sandwich. The goal of the kitchen sink sandwich is to prevent food waste, and as this creator has demonstrated in her weekly clips, the results can be unexpectedly delicious.

There’s no precise formula for the sandwich — the beauty of the dish is that it’s different every time — but you will need some form of bread to serve as the vessel. From there, Hogaboom offers a few guiding principles that’ll help you get creative and make sure your final sandwich meets expectations.

Anything goes on a kitchen sink sandwich

To make this dish for yourself, you need to set aside any preconceived notions about what does and does not belong on a sandwich. Here’s just one example of an assemblage of ingredients that Hogaboom transformed into a sandwich: cheddar-sourdough bread, cherry jam, corn and chili salsa, sliced bell peppers, ground turkey, an espresso-dusted Parmesan cheese, thinly sliced grapes, hot honey, and jalapeño-lime chips.

This combination does seem a bit haphazard, but Hogaboom gives it rave reviews. (And she’s not afraid to admit when a sandwich doesn’t turn out well, which has happened once or twice.)

Condiments and proteins are where you may have a more difficult time coming up with what to put on a kitchen sink sandwich, but you don’t need deli meat, mustard, and mayo to make one. (Although when you need to use those up, they definitely work!) 

Leftover meat, beans, or tofu from dinners can be your protein on a sandwich, and this creator uses hummus, salsas, jams, and tzatziki as condiments, along with more traditional options when they’re in her fridge.

Add something sweet

While it’s not a specific ingredient, there’s one attribute you’ll notice all of Hogaboom’s sandwiches have: she always adds something sweet. Jam is one of her favorite condiments, and she often drizzles a bit of honey.

Somewhat controversially, the creator adds fruit to most of her sandwiches. One example features wheat bread, hummus, blueberries, pomegranate seeds, red onion, cheddar cheese, sliced pear, grilled chicken, turkey, arugula, and hot honey. It’s not a combination I would have thought of, but when you consider it, the flavor profiles in each bite resemble a cheese and charcuterie spread.

A key part of this strategy is making the fruits fit the sandwich. She’s not putting whole blueberries or grapes in between slices of bread. Instead, she mashes the former into a jam-like spread, and she slices grapes so they don’t slide out or take up too much space.

Always toast your sandwich

The home cook puts every sandwich she makes into the toaster oven, partly because she “loves a toasted sandwich,” but the heat also serves a purpose. Since Hogaboom’s kitchen sink sandwiches often have fairly loose ingredients like pomegranate seeds or a corn salsa, melting cheese on top of them (with the two sandwich halves face-up) helps keep everything in place.

To keep things simple, she toasts almost everything together, except for greens like arugula and some fruits she prefers fresh, such as sliced grapes.

You might discover your own rules of thumb as you try making a few kitchen sink sandwiches — you’ll learn your taste as you go — but using Hogaboom’s technique to reduce food waste and save money is a great place to start experimenting.