If Porto had to choose one dish to represent it, the francesinha would win by a landslide. It was born in the 1950s at the restaurant A Regaleira, where Daniel David Silva set out to adapt the French croque monsieur to Portuguese tastes — and ended up creating something entirely its own: a towering sandwich of steak, sausages and ham, blanketed in melted cheese and a spicy beer sauce.
Every famous francesinha house in Porto guards its sauce recipe jealously, and honestly, the sauce is the whole game. The version below is an old, traditional take that gets you remarkably close — and you can keep tweaking it at home until it is exactly to your liking.
Fair warning: this is not diet food. It is rich, messy and gloriously over the top — best enjoyed with a pile of fries and a cold beer. Enjoy!
Francesinha Recipe (Porto Style)
Prep time: 20 minutes · Cook time: 30 minutes · Total: 50 minutes · Servings: 3 · Calories: ~465 per serving
Ingredients
- 6 slices of bread
- 8 slices of cheese
- 2 small veal steaks
- 2 fresh sausages (salsicha fresca)
- 2 linguiça sausages
- 2 slices of ham
- 1 onion, roughly chopped
- 1¾ cups beer
- 3 tablespoons tomato puree
- 3 tablespoons brandy
- 3 tablespoons Port wine
- 1 tablespoon margarine or butter
- 1 tablespoon cornstarch
- 1 beef bouillon cube
- 1 bay leaf
- A splash of milk
- Salt and pepper
- Piri-piri sauce, to taste
Instructions
- Start with the sauce: cook the chopped onion with the margarine and bay leaf in a saucepan until golden.
- Add the tomato puree, beer and the bouillon cube dissolved in a little hot water, and let it boil for a few minutes.
- Dissolve the cornstarch in a splash of cold milk, then pour it into the sauce in a thin stream, stirring constantly.
- Season with salt, pepper and piri-piri, add the brandy and Port wine, and let it bubble a little longer.
- Strain the sauce so it is smooth, then keep it warm over low heat.
- Now the sandwich: halve the sausages lengthwise, season them and the steaks with salt and pepper, and grill or pan-fry everything.
- Lightly toast the bread slices.
- On an ovenproof plate, layer a slice of bread, ham, steak, another slice of bread, the sausages, one slice of cheese, and the final slice of bread.
- Drape 3 more slices of cheese over the top of each sandwich.
- Bake at 400°F just until the cheese melts.
- Serve hot, generously drowned in the sauce.
Recipe Notes
- A fried egg on top, added after the oven, is a beloved variation.
- Do not swap the oven for the microwave — the result is simply not the same.
- Nobody outside the great Porto restaurants knows all the secret sauce ingredients; keep practicing until you land on a flavor you love.
- A little white wine or a teaspoon of Worcestershire sauce are nice additions to the sauce; whiskey can stand in for the brandy, and chili for the piri-piri.
- Some restaurants enrich the sauce with seafood or oxtail stock — that is part of the mystery.
- Fresh parsley, minced garlic, paprika or cumin can also deepen the sauce’s flavor.
- Serve with fries. This is not optional. 🙂
