---
title: 'This Iconic Miami Cuban Sandwich Is the Gold Standard'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=SQSN0b1XTeo'
video_id: 'SQSN0b1XTeo'
date: 2026-06-28
duration_sec: 1325
---

# This Iconic Miami Cuban Sandwich Is the Gold Standard

> Source: [This Iconic Miami Cuban Sandwich Is the Gold Standard](https://youtube.com/watch?v=SQSN0b1XTeo)

## Summary



## Transcript

The day that I first had this sandwich,
I immediately stopped looking for a
better one. It's the best sandwich I
ever had. Eight trips to Miami, dozens
of Kubano sandwiches, and this hidden
gem, La Solas Cafe, was the only one
that truly spoke to me. And it wasn't
just the perfect shredded moho roast
pork or the salsa verde that they served
it with, but it was how they served the
sandwich. They don't cut it in half on
the bias like a normal Kubano sandwich.
They cut it lengthwise, long and skinny
down the middle, and then take those cut
halves and sear them on the griddle. The
result is something that eats more like
a hot dog. And strangely to me, reminds
me of like a Big Mac.
>> It's like a hot dog and a Big Mac.
>> The sandwich is a revelation. And today,
we're inducting it into Steviey's food
hall of fame and making it from scratch.
Real roast moho pork, homemade Cuban
bread. This is the lass solas kubano.
The best Cuban sandwich I've ever had.
Now, a Cuban sandwich consists of six
ingredients. Cuban bread, moho roast
pork, ham, mustard, pickle, and Swiss
cheese. A lot of those things, they're
taking care of for us. Two things need
our attention. The roast moho and the
Cuban bread. And those require being
prepped in advance. So, let me take you
back to yesterday. So now to make a
Cuban bread, like many breads or pizzas,
we need a starter. And a starter is
pretty simple. It's basically one part
water to one part flour, and a little
bit of yeast. So I have 120 g of water
here, 120 g of bread flour, and I'm
going to combine the two into a tall
container. Now, I've got some instant
yeast. To make the starter, I'd go with
about like half a packet of yeast in
there, which you can do. However, I
happen to have some starter in the
fridge already, some leftover. Fed it a
little bit of flour and water just to
keep it alive. There's probably like 100
grams in here. And so, since we have
like this active culture already in
here, we're just going to contribute
that into our new starter. You can even
take this residue, add flour and water
to it. 30 g of flour, 30 g of water, and
you can make new starter with just that
residue on the side of the container.
And then we're just going to mix that up
together. Going to make sure you get all
the dry flour at the bottom. It's just
well combined. What you should be
looking for is just like a very wet
dough. We're going to pop a lid on this
guy. Place it in the fridge at least
overnight, but you would keep this
going. Ideally, you just feed it a
little flour and water every day or when
it starts to collapse and you could keep
this going forever essentially. Now, a
starter isn't the only thing we need to
get done ahead of time. We need to make
a beautiful aspect of this recipe which
is the Moho roast pork or at least the
marinade for it and get that pork
marinating early. Overnight is best 2
days that works great as well too. So
the first aspect of the moho is
generally would be sour orange but we
don't have that. So we're basically
going to replicate that by using 2/3 a
cup of orange juice and then 1/3 a cup
of lime juice. That with all the spices
and garlic, some of the best pork you'll
ever have. Now, based in my experience,
2/3 of a cup is going to roughly be
three oranges. Just going to take my
fork, poke it, sort of breaking up the
fibers, allowing me to juice it a little
bit more thoroughly and easier. Sort of
rotating it, making sure I just get a
good yield out of each half. You can
also
funny story, the I had to get an MRI on
my arm the other day. kind of panicking.
I kind of slightly claustrophobic. Turns
out the MRI tech was a follower. Great
guy, Joe. Shout out, Joe. Thank you.
Made me feel at ease. Was able to get
the the MRI. No problem. I'm going to
start taking care of it. All right. So,
we've got our orange. Then we can do
this with the limes. Three limes. Three
oranges works. So, now I've got like
this little hotel pan. This is what
we're going to roast the pork in, but
we're going to marinate it in plastic
and just kind of hold it in there. So
going to go in with the orange juice and
lime to that a/2 cup of olive oil
roughly. We got our spices. We got some
oregano, Mexican oregano if you've got,
but regular is fine. Tablespoon of onion
powder. Can eyeball it. Tablespoon of
garlic powder. Teaspoon of coriander.
Teaspoon of cumin. Some fresh cracked
black pepper. Bay leaf. Now we got a
whole shebang of garlic here. Right.
Going to take a bunch of whole garlic.
Going to add them in. I'm going to hold
back some of the larger pieces and then
I'm going to grate them. Grating in
about like six cloves. Throwing in
another six whole. So now we've got our
marinade. We can just sort of juzj up.
Here we have a boneless, skinless 4 lb
pork butt here. This should be enough
for about four sandwiches. You notice we
didn't salt the marinade. It's cuz we
can't control it that way. I like to
salt the meat itself because salt is not
a spice. It's an essential thing, right?
that needs to be dialed in. So, I don't
really add salt to my marinades, we're
going to go straight onto the pork. You
want to be generous.
So, the way that I kind of go is just
once it's kind of completely dusted all
over the place, almost like a frosted
doughut, that's when I know it's ready.
So, now we're going to take the pork and
add it to the bag of marinade. Close it
up 2/3 of the way and then start to suck
some of that air out and just rub it
around.
lay it down. Then we're going to put it
in the fridge. And every few hours, I'm
just going to flip it. Make sure it gets
nice and uh evenly marinated on all
sides. Now, all we have to do tomorrow
is throw some ingredients in the mixer.
Get a little dough going. Empty this bag
of plastic into this bin and toss it
into an oven. You're halfway there. So,
I'll see you back here tomorrow. All
right. So, it's the next day. Our pork
has been just bathing in all of that
amazing moho. Just going to
slide that all in. Such a amazing smell.
Then simply all we've got to do take a
little parchment and I'm just going to
cover the top. It's very acidic. Acidity
and meats in general sometimes just
don't react well when it touches
aluminum foil. The parchment's also
going to steam it, cook it really
nicely, and protect it from the foil on
top. You could also do this in like a
Dutch oven. So now I've got my oven
preheated 300°. We're going to cook it
nice and slow for about 4 hours. At
around 3 hours, we're going to remove
the top. We're going to put the heat up
a little bit higher. That's going to
both brown the meat and prep the oven
temp for when we ultimately are going to
bake the Cuban breading, which is what
we're going to start on now. Now, the
flour for this recipe, it's going to be
bread flour. So, I got me some of that
organic stuff. I actually got a flour
mill. We're going to start milling our
own flour eventually. Now, outside of
the starter we made yesterday, that
flour and water is going to be factored
into the equation today, but we need 450
g of this bread flour measured out. Now,
to that, we've got our starter from
yesterday. I mean, look at that. She's
beautiful. Now, we don't need all of
this. I only need uh 250 g of it. That's
going to leave us with some leftover cuz
I made extra yesterday. I have a pizza
recipe in mind. So, I'm just going to
keep that leftover and we're going to
feed it and just keep it going. And
that's what you should be doing with
this type of thing. 45 g of lard. Lard
is what makes Cuban bread Cuban bread.
Gives it that crisp outer shell that
doesn't sort of shatter, but kind of has
stability and that fluffy pillowy
inside. Allows it to get smooshed down
and gives it that iconic texture. Then
we got 15 g of salt, 15 g of sugar. Salt
going to be the last thing that gets
added. And then we got the rest of that
half pack of yeast that we used to make
the starter. We've got our bowl. To the
bowl, we have 225
g extra of warm water. We're going to
add that straight to our mixing bowl.
Now, we're going to get all set up here.
We're going to get the dough hook in.
Going to add the sugar, the yeast. I'm
going to start mixing in the flour, but
I'm going to add it a little bit at a
time. This allows that flour to slowly
get introduced into the water. Make sure
it gets nice and hydrated.
Add a little bit more. Get that dry
flour from the sides worked in.
A little bit more.
Now, I'm just going to take some of our
starter and measure it out cuz I don't
need all of this. Just 250 g. Get that
worked in. And then the rest of the
flour. Now we can add in our lard. Room
temperature of course. Once it's all
come together, I'm just going to raise
the speed. And we want to just allow
this to knead for a good 10 minutes, 15
minutes or until you can kind of stretch
it into what they call a window pane or
just basically means stretching a thin
layer of it without it tearing
immediately. So, what we're going to do
is just let it go about 10 minutes or so
and then begin testing it. You're going
to see the dough smooth out and kind of
pull away from the walls and turn into a
nice soft dough. Forgot one thing. Now,
we got to add the salt. Salt always goes
last.
Over time, as you could see, all that
stuck on bits around the bowl sort of
gets sucked into the dough and the the
bowl almost cleans itself. And that
shows the dough is getting less sticky.
It's getting some structure built. It's
a good sign. Now, let's check for the
window pane. You see how it stretches
and it kind of pulls thin, but just at a
certain point, it breaks in several
places. That's telling me we're on our
way and almost there, but not quite
there. So, we're going to go a little
longer.
Now, after about 13 minutes, I'm going
to stop it. I'm going to give it like 2
minutes to just relax. Sometimes the
dough needs a minute to relax, to really
assess it. After a couple minutes, I can
feel it's definitely relaxed a bit more.
Let's give it a test. You see how much
more extensible it is? It's got enough
extensibility and elasticity to hold a
little bit of a window pane before it
eventually tears. I just got a bowl. I'm
going to hit it with some spray oil. I'm
just going to knead it into a smooth
ball.
We're going to cover it and we're going
to allow it to rise until it about
doubles in size. Probably going to take
about an hour. Put this back here by the
warm stove. That leads us back to our
residual starter. Right, we've got, I
don't know, 50 g in here left. So, this
is how you would feed a starter. Keep it
alive and keep it going. Here I have 50
g of bread flour, 50 g of water. I'm
going to get that old starter, the new
water, and the new flour all mixed in.
So, now we got new starter in here. We
can just cover it up, and then this can
just live in our fridge. It will
eventually double in size. And if you
ever see it then deflate back or get
watery or sort of break. The yeast has
just eaten through everything. And
that's what feeding it is. You're just
adding more flour, more things for the
yeast to eat through, fart a little bit,
create the bubbles, and then that's the
thing that makes bread and pizza dough
great. It's been 3 hours of cooking for
the pork, so we're going to take it out.
See where we're at. It's actually still
a little bit tougher than I would like.
So, we're just going to cover it again.
We're going to let that go for basically
it's stuck around 170 175, which is kind
of, if you know anything about pulled
pork or barbecue, where the stall hits,
which is basically when evaporative
cooling is taking place. It's like the
meat sweating, like you when you run and
sweat, that's meant to cool you down.
Same thing's happening with the pork,
which is preventing it from pushing past
that point into the tender zone.
Depending on the size of meat, that
might happen at different points. And
it's again why I'm not going to tell you
exactly the amount of time to cook it.
I'm going to teach you how to know when
it's done. So, in the meantime, we're
going to work on something that I don't
know is like super traditional to this,
but La Solas Cafe does this, so that's
what I'm doing. It's actually nice to
serve this sandwich with a condiment,
split down the middle, easy to dip. So,
we're making a raw salsa verde that
involves, you know, eight tamatillos.
Now, when you want to shop for
tamatillos, you want to look for
tomatillos with like really fresh husks,
not dried out, not torn or brown, nice
and green. These are all examples of a
nice fresh tomatillo. When you open it
up, you get a nice green tamatillo. It's
perfect. It's not blemished. It's not
rotting anywhere. Once you've got the
husks off, there's a little sticky film
on them. We're just going to rinse it
off. So, I've got my little bullet here.
We're going to go in with like a third
of a white onion. Whenever you're making
like a a salsa verde or something like
that with a red or for that matter like
Mexican recipes in general, you always
use a white onion. White onion is just a
little bit more palatable, especially
for raw application. To that, we have
two garlic cloves. Just going to smash
those. Now, since it's raw, I'm going to
get those harsh things in there. Then,
I'm going to hit it with the lime juice
and use that lime juice sort of mellow
those flavors out. Also, salt to them
helps as well. Now, while those simmer,
I can kind of shave a little bit of a
serrano or jalapeno in there. Just the
cheeks. If you don't want it too spicy,
sort of limit the amount of seeds you
get in there. Some fresh cilantro.
One avocado. When you're picking out
avocados, you always want to press down
here. You want it to be soft. And if you
want it to stay super green, you want to
make sure you see that the stem is in
there, not fleck off. Kind of like that.
That allows air to get in there. That's
what helps it oxidize and turn brown
when you open it. So, I'm guessing this
is going to look pretty nice and green
inside. There you go. If it's ripe, the
seed should pop right out. Dice it up
inside of its shell. Scoop it into the
blender. Going to add another lime to
neutralize any oxidation that might
occur on the avocado. Now we can cut the
tomatillos.
A little more salt for the ingredients
we just added. Little olive oil. We're
just going to close it up.
Now, I must say this is completely
optional, not necessary or traditional,
but it's how I like it. And I think it
actually goes well. So, if you're Cuban,
don't come at me. Now, it looks like our
bread's doubled inside. Nice and jiggly.
Let's degass it. Get it onto the board.
Got a nice large sheet tray here. Just
going to get it spread out like that.
Cut it in half.
Then, we're just going to take one side
and spread it out into a rectangle.
Flatten it out. use your thumb and fold
over.
So, you're pushing almost a third into
the dough and you're kind of folding and
pushing your palm into it. Right? Then,
we're going to rotate the dough and
repeat the same motion.
Now, you've got this long strip of
dough. We're going to measure it out
till it's about the length of the sheet
tray. And then, I'm just going to
lightly flatten it. And we're going to
transfer that onto the sheet tray. And
then we're just going to repeat with the
other one.
I think it looks pretty good. Let it
rise another time. I like to take one
side at a time and wrap it and almost
use the cling wrap to sort of help keep
its shape. As it rises, it'll sort of
create some tension and hopefully allow
it to raise up rather than out. We're
just going to let that rise. So, I let
it go for the four hours.
Way more tender. Now, just want to set
this on the meat side up. We're going to
base this sucker. We're going to now
jack the heat up to 400°, which is the
temperature the bread is eventually
going to bake at. And while that comes
up to temperature, we're going to brown
this meat. Just give it a check every
few minutes. Rotate it around until it's
beautifully browned and caramelized.
with that marinade that gets caramelized
on top of the beef. It's such a yummy
flavor. You just eat it plain, forget
the sandwich, throw it on some rice, you
got a meal.
And you see how they doubled in size.
Beautiful. All we've got to do, take a
very sharp knife. We're just going to
use the tip of it. We need to score the
the bread so it has a place to expand.
So, we're just going to take the knife
and very quickly cut down the middle.
Now, our oven has hit our preheated
400°. So, while that meat's in there, we
can throw these in. All I want to do,
little bit of spritz of water on top.
We're going to pop it in. That's going
to cook for about 25 30 minutes. We're
going to rotate it halfway through. And
we're really just looking for like a
little light golden brown. We don't want
to go too dark. We're going to be
cooking this in lard on the griddle.
I mean, I'm turning you into a Cuban and
a baker. We can't do anything to these
until they cool down. And now our pork
is done. It took longer than even I
anticipated even for any pork that I've
cooked. So again, the recipe is less
important than knowing when it's done.
And one easy way for us to check it goes
in and out easily. That's one way to
check. That's the most definitive way to
check. Also, the temperature. We can see
it's hovering around 208 209 at the
center. It's at 203. Now, of course, you
can use it, but best practice, you want
to wrap this up nice and tight and allow
this to cool down and relax. It's good
now, but if you give it time to chill
down, calm down, just chill out, it's
going to be 5 to 10 times better. Now,
since everything's pretty much ready to
go, I got my griddle over here, and I
got a nice heavy big cast iron pan. I'm
just going to lightly gently start
warming them up so they're ready when
I'm ready to make the sandwiches to get
fired up and cook. Now the pork is
cooled. And if you know anything about a
pork butt, it's consists of various
muscles connected by fat. So what I want
to do here is take this guy, put it in a
bowl, and what I want to start to do is
sort of just remove muscles and
eliminate any unwanted fat. So you're
almost just like pulling it apart.
That's all fat right there. It's not the
good type of fat. That's all fat right
there. Gristle and all sorts of stuff
like that. I mean, it's beautiful.
Squeeze it all together. Mix all the
muscles together. Combine them.
And we can take some of that juice, get
that worked in. All that flavor gets
reabsorbed by the pork. So, now we're
ready to make sandwiches. Now, one of
these loaves will make two sandwiches.
You just take the butts off.
Cut it in half. Not bad, huh? I'm going
to cut it nice and evenly right down the
middle.
Got to make my door man one, too. First
up, we go mustard on each side. Yellow
mustard. The only time I really kind of
use it. Spread it on nice and even.
And we're going to go with a slice of
Swiss cheese on the bottom and the top.
Then I've just got my ham. Some nice
deli ham. I'm going to fold it just like
that. Then we go with pickles on the
bottom. Then on top of that, the pork.
Nice even layer.
Then another piece of cheese in between
the ham and the pork. And then right on
top. Then we're going to take some
softened lard. And then we just paint
the top with it. Then we're going to
place those sandwiches right onto that
hot griddle. Place that heavy pan right
on top and weigh it down any way you
can. I'm using a wooden spoon. We're
looking to flatten that sandwich and
toast and crisp up the outside of that
bread all while melting the cheese
inside. Just like a grilled cheese,
we're going to flip and rotate it every
30 seconds to a minute until that cheese
is melted. But we want to be careful to
manage the heat cuz we don't want it to
darken too much. We want a nice golden
brown on the bread. When it's crisp and
the cheese is melted, get it off the
griddle. Now for the trick. Normally a
cubano is cut like that on a steep angle
so you get like sharp points to eat it.
The better way, maybe all sandwiches are
better this way. Down the middle, we cut
it lengthwise. Nice sawing motion.
Now, that's about as perfect of a
sandwich that I've ever seen and is
perfectly fine to serve as is. But there
is one missing step that Los Olas does,
which is after they cut it lengthwise,
they place that sandwich back on the
griddle, cut side down, and this is
where you get sort of that Big Mac
In-N-Out flavor coming out. It's the mix
of that mustard frying with the meat
that mimics that mustard fried In-N-Out
burger flavor. This is a top level
technique, and it's why I love this
place so much. Now we're ready to serve.
A little bit of salsa verde and you're
in heaven. It's the best sandwich I ever
had. Nothing beats the way this eats.
The bread is perfect. The pork is
perfect. The assembly is perfect.
Everything's perfect. You want the
recipe? It's going to be down in the
description. No traveling to Miami.
Anyway, that's all that I have today.
I'll see you next time. Until then, take
care of yourself and go feed yourself.