An old-school, cafeteria open-faced sandwich, made with seasoned ground beef, trinity vegetables and pizza sauce, finished with cheese.
Jack and Jills - My Way
I've actually never heard of these sandwiches before and I don't have any memory of them being served in my school cafeteria, although some of you may.
I also have no idea how the name came about either, but it's another one of those vintage recipes that passed by on my browser start page and sounded good enough to try!
They are delicious! And bonus? They're also super easy to make.
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Here's what you'll need to make my version of Jack and Jill sandwiches:
- 1 pound ground beef
- 1 medium onion, chopped
- 1 small green bell pepper, chopped
- 1 rib celery, chopped
- 1 14.5-ounce can pizza sauce
- 1/2 teaspoon sea, spring or kosher salt, or to taste
- 1/4 teaspoon freshly cracked black pepper, or to taste
- 1/4 teaspoon Creole or Cajun seasoning, or to taste, optional
- 1/2 teaspoon garlic and herb blend seasoning, or to taste, optional
- 1 teaspoon dried parsley, plus more for garnish
- 4 to 6 slices American cheese
- 4 to 6 sandwich rolls (pistolette, hoagie, sub)
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For my recipe version, I'm including the trinity of southern seasoning vegetables - onion, bell pepper and celery - and while I've included fresh veggies in the recipe, I'm using the C'est Tout dried vegetable mix (#ad). As you may recall, I purchased this in a large bag so I've been using it alot and y'all I absolutely love this product! With produce from the local grocery stores degrading so fast these days, it's nice to have this dried version available all the time.
If you've been around the website for any length of time you know that I've been sourcing most of my meat from different ranches locally and around the country and outside of the local grocery stores. Meriwether Farms in Wyoming is one of them and look how beautiful this beef is.
I have no financial relationship with Meriwether Farms. I'm just a customer like you sharing a source of beef that I love!
Use my favorite masher (#ad) to break up the meat as it browns.
I used 1/2 cup of the dried trinity reconstituted 4 minutes in the microwave with 1-1/2 cups water. Here's what that looks like once it's drained. Tasty and fragrant like fresh but, none of that chopping y'all!
For the ground beef, you'll want to mash it up fairly fine since we're using it open faced on sandwiches. If you're using fresh veggies, add the onion, bell pepper and celery to the ground beef and continue cooking until veggies are tender, about 4 minutes, stirring regularly.
Drain off the beef. I've noticed a lot of influencers on social here lately like to dab the beef with paper towels and tongs, but I really love these Easy Greasy colanders (#ad). It drains right into the container that it sits on and I think it's ingenious!
Return the beef to the skillet. If using the reconstituted dried trinity, here's where you will add the vegetables.
Stir in the seasonings.
And add the sauce. I'm using Don Pepino's pizza sauce (#ad), another product that I have fallen in love with here recently. Dating back to a 1950s recipe, it's like homemade. I've never seen a pizza sauce that looks quite like this, but the flavor is also outstanding!
Combine until all of the meat is coated well.
Use a hoagie or your favorite sub rolls that you can either stuff or split to fill. I'm using pistolettes, which is like a mini version of a po'boy style French bread. Instead of splitting them to open, I decided to pull out some of the center to stuff the filling in, but be sure to bag that loose bread up in the freezer to use later in a dressing!
Be sure to taste the beef filling to adjust any seasonings.
Brits Cookin Garlic and Herb blend (#ad) is a seasoning that I discovered recently from an online influencer from Louisiana. I love the blend so I decided to add a bit of that.
Add the parsley.
Stuff the filling into the hollowed out rolls or spoon onto your split sandwich rolls.
Preheat the broiler. Top sandwiches with cheese.
Broil until cheese is melted and sprinkle with additional parsley for color.
For more of my favorite sandwich recipes, check out this collection on my Pinterest page!
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