Everyday Yumminess: Perfect Reubens

I'm mentioned before that the Reuben (particularly the bastardized Emily-Style Reuben) is one of my very favorite sandwiches on the planet. A big sticking point for me with the traditional Reuben was the rye bread, since I find the presence of caraway seeds in my food to be somewhat traumatizing. When Stanley was here I ordered a Reuben at the sports bar, opting to let them go ahead and make it on rye bread so as not to seem overly-high-maintenance (and because my friend Max had told me I was crazy to never give rye bread a chance)... and it was the best Reuben I've ever had. The rye bread didn't have any evil caraway seeds, and the combination of flavors was perfection. I knew then that I would have to make my own proper Reuben someday... and that day came this weekend.
The one ingredient I had to prepare that didn't get its own post was the Russian dressing. This started with a fresh batch of homemade mayo, combined with chili sauce (Who has chili sauce around these days? That seems very old-school...), Worcestershire sauce, prepared horseradish, and minced onion (for which I substituted minced shallot, since I forgot to buy an onion...).
Stir it all together, and you wonder why you were ever foolish enough to use store-bought dressing. This stuff is good.
Alrighty. Let's get to the ingredients.
Because there's not much to say about making a sandwich, I'll go ahead and look at each ingredient individually... First up was fresh-baked rye bread, which was already rocking my world before I assembled the sandwich...
Next is that homemade Russian dressing I mentioned above... Mmmmmm....
My one shame with this sandwich is that I didn't make my own sauerkraut. I was too impatient (I wanted my perfect Reuben NOW!), but next time I'll plan ahead and give it a go. One improvement I made with this batch of Reubens was pre-warming the kraut so that it didn't chill the other ingredients while the sandwich cooked. Not sure why that never occurred to me before...
Max also told me I was an idiot (I'm paraphrasing) for using extra-sharp white cheddar on Emily-Style Reubens rather than using Swiss. Yet again, Max was right. I went with a fantastic Comté on this, and the flavor profile blended perfectly with the other components...
Finally, my beloved corned beef. So good... (And another reason I totally needed that meat slicer I bought last year!)
That's it. The sandwich is assembled...
... then pan-fried in a little (Amish) butter...
So pretty...
I sliced the sandwich, plated it up, and was soon completely content.
Seriously, people. This sandwich rocked my world. I was thinking about it pretty much from the moment I finished it last night until right now, when I am about to go make myself another one for dinner. Love.

Will I Make This Again?: You're damn right I will...
Was it Worth the Work?: Super-fast and super-easy (if you use store-bought ingredients, that is...). If this is too much work for you, then you really hate cooking... Even if you decide to make it an epic task with homemade ingredients, still totally, totally worth it... Totally.