The Original State Fair Spiedie Sauce
I found this stuff at the big box grocery, in Virginia, far from the Spiedie trail. Wasn’t looking for it, particularly due to product overload blindness. You know, the sea of bottles begins to spin and you stumble back, overwhelmed and exhausted. Condiments, dressings, marinades, goo. Just before the lights dimmed my fingers wrapped the Spiedie Sauce bottle. Then blackness.
I think I got snookered. The sauce is your basic vinaigrette. Olive oil, red wine vinegar, garlic, oregano, basil. This sauce was already in my kitchen, just needed wrangling.
I’ll Have What They’re Having is my source for spiedie history. A friend in Wisconsin, a friend who will drive quite a distance for one odd food, insisted that my library include this book, whose largest chapter is devoted to sandwiches. Spiedies, bierocks, beef on weck. It’s a celebrity round up.
Although I have yet to eat an actual spiedie, I have smelled the sauce and am hot on the trail. Expect to tree it before the week is up.
This is what you do, according to the State Fair Spiedie Sauce website: Make up one inch cubes of your favorite meat, marinate overnight, then roast on an open fire with skewers (included in our Spiedie Survival Kit), serve on a slice of Italian bread or small sub roll…and there you have a Spiedie Sandwich.
The website may sell other stuff, but a hunch tells me their kingdom was founded on Spiedie sauce. Domain name: spiedie.com
Spiedie Survival Kit? Anything to do with treeing a spiedie? Does a spiedie fight back? Perhaps with skewers? I’m going in camo. Camo in the hues of meat and bread.
Spiedie Fest in Binghamton, NY., August 1, 2, 3, 2008. And balloon rally!
The Lunch Encounter 
Thanks, Lisa, for the link.
You are right that spiedie marinade is essentially a vinaigrette. Salamidas is nothing special, but it is good; it can be doctored-up with some fresh ingrdients, like garlic and rosemary, a bit of lemon juice.
Vinegar and/or lemon juice break down the fatty or connective tissue in the meat. 24 hrs. is fine for most meat, but 3-4 days for venison and you’ll never look at Bambi with the same feeling again.
Originally, spiedies were lamb (from the leg), and it wasn’t until the ’80’s that anything other than a red meat was used. Lamb is a real pain to cut into cubes from the leg, but well worth it. Beef is OK, same with pork. Chicken? There’s better ways to grill it. 4 years ago we had a party for a bunch of us from the Binghamton Diaspora; about 130 attended. I had cut up 9 lamb legs (about 50-60 lbs), and had about 20 lbs. of chicken breast cut up. At first, everyone wanted the chicken- health conscious, dontcha know- but after the first wave was eaten, and the more fragrant lamb’s grilled fragrance took over, the chicken never got a second look, from anyone. The aromas from a grill have been known to attract nosy, and finally demanding crowds who become slathering mobs the cooking spedies smell so good!
And the ‘secret’ is not merely the meat, and a good, fresh marinade: it’s the bread. A crust too hard or too soft, a center too dense, and it just ain’t right. In Binghamton, Roma’s or DiLascia’s bread makes the grade. You put the skewer onto a slice, wrap the bread around it and pull the meat off.
Thanks for putting this subject up there!
Hi Chris,
Thank you for the great story! Let me know if you might like to write a sandwich post for my blog sometime. Or…I could put your Spiedie story up front. Lamb IS delicious!
Lisa
Despite the crash of the economy, we’ve decided to stick to our vacation plans and go back to a rental cottage at Oquaga Lake in July, which is about 35 mi. from Binghamton. I may have to ‘pass the hat’ to feed the crowd this time, but spiedies will be served! My mom had a great recipe that involved all the ususal ingredients, but her secret was to use crushed fresh rosemary, and to heat the marinade (less the oil) quickly to a boil, and then to cool. I’ll look up her recipe and reproduce it here in the future. Isn’t it nice when your mom’s cooking is appreciated by others just as much as you do/did?
Oh- and on cooking them, just in case someone here is adventurous: how you put the meat on the skewer varies the taste, too. Some pack the meat cubes tightly on the skewer; that method takes the meat longer to cook, and it does it a bit unevenly. I leave the cubes just barely touching: the outside tips may get charred here and there, but they’re done quickly. Spiedies do not have to be cooked ‘to death’ as the vinegar/lemon juice acids have dealt with any pathogens (as long as it has marinated overnight >24 hrs.); this ain’t hamburger. Small cubes, a little togetherness on the skewer (not packed), hot-hot fire, gotcher self a little bit heaven.
Please do post the recipe. That would be great, Chris!
This sauce inspired one of my most recent pizzas. Check it out: http://girllovespizza.com/2010/12/24/spiedie-pizza-recipe/
What a clever idea for a pizza. Yum. Fun blog. Thanks for posting!