Bifanas ~ Portuguese Pork Sandwiches

As I was growing up, bifanas were the specialty offering at pork butchering gatherings. The ”matança” (home-raised pork slaughtering party) brought families together, usually in November when the weather was cool enough to handle the meat products and there was enough time to home preserve these products for Christmas and the winter months. Butchering happened on day two and the loin was separated early enough to marinate pieces for the bifanas to be served for lunch as these served quite a large crowd.

Over the years, I’ve created my own version using pork tenderloin and lime juice (we used rangpur limes back home in the Azores). I’m also used to adding tomato paste in the sauce as well as adding a handful of cilantro at the end. While delicious, my recipe is quite the departure from the homemade bifanas of my youth. This recipe sounded closer to the Portuguese version and I was more than willing to add another recipe to my repertoire.

I liked that this recipe used a more economical cut of meat and that I could make it just as tender with pounding into very thin cutlets. I also liked the idea of using wine and just paprika in the sauce to be served on a papo seco versus on rice or potatoes.

I made a couple of modifications. First, I used fresh bay leaves. This was not to be creative but out of necessity, as I don’t keep dry bay leaves in my pantry. I’ve been using fresh bay leaves in all my recipes for years as I have a shrub in my kitchen. It’s very hard to go back to dried once you’ve worked with fresh.

My second modification was adding the juice of 1/2 lime to the sauce. Perhaps for others tasting this recipe, the acidity would be fine. Since I’m used to lime juice in the marinade, I missed this little bit of extra acidity and, in my opinion, this just balanced all the flavors. In the end, I also needed a bit of green, and butter lettuce did the trick. You could serve this combination of bifana on a papo seco to any bifana aficionado and get a big smile in return!

I just happened to have a dozen freshly baked papo secos, or Portuguese rolls, that were in want of a delicious filling…what a happy coincidence! I’ve never had bifanas before but I knew just from the ingredient list that I would love them. White wine, pork, a ton of garlic, and paprika? Yes, please.

I used a Pinot Grigio because that’s what I like to drink. If making these again, though, I might try with something less dry to add a little sweetness. My pork cutlets weighed just under 650 grams so we had two hearty sandwiches for dinner and one leftover the next day. If I had the foresight to pick up more pork, the given weight would have easily fed 4.

The biggest difference I found between the recipe and my version was that the pan didn’t get anywhere close to drying out while frying the pork. In fact, I had to stop cooking and pour out a lot of liquid; I was quite careful when adding the pork to the very hot pan so that it was as dry as possible but it still released so much liquid that they didn’t really “fry.” After pouring out the liquid and adding more fat (I used duck fat), they did sizzle but it was still quite wet. Because of that, I also had to let the sauce cook down a little longer— about 6 minutes to reduce by 1/3.

One of the most famous Portuguese snacks and, at football matches in stadiums, always accompanied by beer! The secret: a very thin pork steak, in a marinade of wine, vinegar, garlic, paprika, and bay leaves, fried in lard until it is golden. It’s served in a papo seco, a small oval bread, with pointed tips, which easily absorbs the sauce of the bifana. The popularity of this snack is so great that the McDonald’s chain created McBifana!

I used sliced pork top round (8 slices); I used lard. I served each bifana with one papo seco and 1 1/2 tbsp of sauce over the bread. This amount of sauce was appropriate.