When I was trying to decide what to cook for my youngest two boys’ birthday party this past weekend I thought about a baked potato bar, pasta, and pizza, but I had done all of those before.
Then I had the idea for a “build your own sub” meal. I would provide all of the food, and people could make their subs the way they wanted. It turned out to be a really fun idea.
I knew I needed a meal that would be able to be prepared mostly ahead of time because we had to attend a ballgame that morning and everyone would be arriving at our house hungry afterwards.
This meal was an easy one to have ready the day before. All I had to do was get things out of the refrigerator and open up a few packages.
I chose to serve three kinds of cold cuts and three kinds of cheeses, but I certainly could have chosen many others. For the meat and cheese platter pictured I used turkey, ham, roast beef, cheddar cheese, Swiss cheese, and muenster cheese.
I purchased some mini subs, onion buns, and sandwich skinnies, but there are many other types of bread to choose from as well. You can choose the meats, cheeses, and breads you and your guests will like. These are just what I chose because it is what my family likes.
For the toppings and condiments I chose shredded lettuce, leaf lettuce, sliced tomatoes, sliced red onions, sliced black olives, pickle slices, and pickled pepper slices. I also had mustard and mayonnaise available.
I washed and cut all of these toppings the day before which made the day of the party go much more smoothly. I also had a vegetable tray with carrots, broccoli, cauliflower, celery, and dip, and several different types of chips.
You could also provide fresh fruit. I had grapes that I forgot to get out. They weren’t on my list which meant it didn’t get done. 🙂
Several people chose to make their own cold cut sub sandwich.
In addition to the cold cuts and cheese, I had two hot sandwich options available. I cooked barbecued meatballs and Italian beef in crockpots which made life easy on that busy day.
I cheated a little on the meatballs and purchased already cooked, frozen meatballs and just added a bottle of Sweet Baby Ray’s BBQ sauce to them. I let them cook on low all morning and they were ready when we got home for the party.
The Italian beef recipe is my own and you can find it here. I had cooked the meat overnight and just kept it on warm while we were gone. I wanted the meat to be nice and tender and I wasn’t sure that cooking it on high for a few hours would give me the best results.
This was a fun party menu and I plan to do it again someday. What do you like on your sub?
