Hanky Pankies for the Holidays
You won't regret making the "Polish mistake"
Midwesterners like to play with their food. In a region settled by generations of immigrants escaping the rules and hierarchies of older and less flexible cultures, the best idea still wins, and that means using cream-of-mushroom soup, chicken bouillon, or gelatin to deliver the most flavor and fun with the least cost and effort.
It can also mean that cooks in the region spend too much time exploring concepts—like dessert “salads”—that seem obviously terrible to outsiders, though they often turn out better than the skeptics think they will. As our parents used to tell us, you don’t know until you try.
Our ancestors used every part of the hog. We use every aisle at the grocery store, and all the flavors, textures, and industrial party tricks available there. We believe in better living through science—at least, where dinner is concerned. Some of the region’s critics, who balk at the industrial innovations on our tables, get the reasoning wrong. It’s resourcefulness, not complacency or poor taste.
The Atomic Age set off a convenience-food boom in the Midwest, fueled by regional manufacturers including General Mills (Minnesota), Kellogg’s (Michigan), and Kraft (Illinois). From that moment came one of Cincinnati’s favorite party snacks—a meat-and-cheese toast called a hanky panky or hanky pank, depending on who you ask.
The Cincinnati culinary historian Dann Woellert thinks the dish descends from one of the most dour, institutional meals in existence—creamed chipped beef on toast, also known as S.O.S. (That acronym, familiar to soldiers, students, and summer campers, has a few different meanings. Choose your favorite!) He imagines a World War II GI’s wife adapting the mess hall standard into a crowd-pleasing appetizer.
In Cincinnati, it became fun, with a cute little piece of miniature rye toast, called “cocktail rye” or “party rye,” as a base, and a melty mixture of ground beef, breakfast sausage, spices, and Velveeta on top. (Today, some cooks make it even more Cincinnati by using goetta, the city’s distinctive meat-and-oat sausage.) Designed for snacking, with the rich, salty flavors and stomach-coating texture that tipsy partygoers crave, the hanky panky is to S.O.S. what a comfy king bed in the suburbs is to a mildewed Army cot.
The hanky panky isn’t just a Cincinnati thing. It’s popular in other parts of Ohio and in Kentucky, just across the river, and the tradition has no doubt spilled into other states. Elsewhere, it’s sometimes called a “rye pizza” or a “Polish mistake.”
In Cincinnati, you’re more likely to find hanky pankies at a Bengals tailgate than on a restaurant menu, but restaurants and bars do serve them, including the iconic West Side steakhouse Maury’s Tiny Cove—which offers complementary dinner rolls, pickles, and time travel to the 1950s—and a new institution, the Over-the-Rhine bar Longfellow.
“We grew up eating hanky pankies on Christmas Eve,” says Longfellow chef Casey Hopkins, a Queen City native. “My Aunt Jenny always made them.” For Hopkins, hanky pankies were a Christmas treat only, so when she added them to the menu at Longfellow for the holidays in 2022, she planned to pull them at the end of the season. “Then they just kept selling, more and more and more…” she says. They’ve been on the menu year-round ever since. “People get very excited when they see them. They say, ‘Oh, you have to try this!’ or ‘My aunts used to make this!’”
Hopkins adapted Aunt Jenny’s recipe, boosting the flavor with a few cheffy additions. (Originally, the only seasonings were oregano and garlic powder.) Party rye is hard to find these days, especially outside the holiday season, so her foundation is a full-sized slice of rye from the nearby Allez Bakery, quartered before serving for easy snacking.
There is one ingredient that she has never even considered replacing—the Minnesota-made glue that holds it all together. “You can’t take away the Velveeta,” she says. “Velveeta will always be in my hanky pankies.” Midwestern cooks like to experiment, but we stick with the things that work.
Cincinnati Hanky Pankies
Adapted from Casey Hopkins, Longfellow, Cincinnati
Makes 10 toasts, serving 20 as a snack or appetizer
Prep time: 15 minutes
Cook time: 20 minutes
Total time: 35 minutes
This is a party-sized recipe. It’s awkward to break down into a smaller portion, given the sizes of the most widely available sausage chubs and processed cheese blocks, but feel free to give it a try. This is not a fragile dish. It can handle alterations.
Ingredients
1 tbsp. butter
3 shallots (90g), diced small
3 Fresno peppers (60g), diced small (If you can’t find Fresnos, use jalapeños.)
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 tbsp. dried oregano
1 tsp. onion powder
1 tsp. Diamond Crystal kosher salt (3g), plus more to taste (If you’re using Morton’s, use half as much by volume, or the same weight. If you’re concerned about saltiness, start with half. Different sausage brands contain different amounts of salt, introducing some unpredictability, and you can add more at the end.)
1 tsp. black pepper, plus more to taste
1 lb. ground beef (453g)
1 lb. spicy breakfast sausage (453g)
1 lb. Velveeta (453g), cut into 1-inch cubes
10 slices rye or pumpernickel bread
1/2 oz. chives (14g), chopped, for garnish (optional)
Preparation
Add butter to a large skillet over medium-high heat. Once melted, add shallots and peppers and cook, stirring occasionally, until softened, about 5 minutes. Add garlic and spices and cook, stirring frequently, until garlic is aromatic, about 1 minute.
Add beef and sausage, break and mix meat with a spoon or spatula, and cook until no longer pink, stirring occasionally, 5-7 minutes. Lower heat to medium, stir in Velveeta, and cook, stirring constantly, until Velveeta is completely melted, 2-3 minutes. Taste and season with more salt and pepper, if necessary.
Set the oven to broil and add rye bread to a foil- or parchment paper-lined baking sheet. Broil for 1 minute, then flip and rotate the toasts and broil for about 30 seconds on the other side, watching closely to prevent burning. The toast should be lightly browned. (Alternately, to be safe, you could give it a light toast in a countertop toaster.)
Add a scant 1/2 cup of the meat-and-cheese mixture to each piece of bread, spread it evenly over the surface, and return toasts to the oven until browned at the edges, about 1 minute and 30 seconds, rotating again after 1 minute to prevent burning. Top with a sprinkling of chopped chives, if using, and enjoy.
The meat-and-cheese mixture will keep for several days in the refrigerator and several months in the freezer, and it can be made ahead of time and reheated without issue. The completed hanky pankies should be enjoyed immediately.