The International Slider Flight: Four Sandwiches, One Board

There's a certain kind of kitchen night where you can't commit to just one sandwich. You want the smoke, but you also want the pickle-forward crunch, and honestly you want the cheeseburger too. So instead of choosing, I built a flight — four sliders, four completely different culinary traditions, all sized down small enough to actually taste every one of them in a single sitting.

This is the kind of project that only works because sliders let you cheat the commitment problem. Full-size, this would've been four separate meals spread across a week. Sliders let it become one board, one photo, and one very full cutting station.

Here's the lineup, left to right: Coppa Culture, Smoke Mi, The Mojo Mash, and The Control Group.

Coppa Culture

The anchor of the board, and the one that leans hardest into the smoker.

• Protein: Pork coppa, dry-rubbed with Meat Church Gospel BBQ rub
• Smoke: Pecan and cherry blend
• Glaze: Crosspath Churches Awesome BBQ sauce, brushed on late for a real lacquer finish
• Slaw: A vinegar-forward slaw, more sweet-and-sour than creamy — cuts right through the glaze instead of adding more richness on top of it
• Bun: Pretzel

The Gospel rub gives it a good peppery backbone, and pecan/cherry smoke keeps things bright rather than heavy. The slaw is doing real work here — it's the acid the sandwich needs against all that glaze.

Smoke Mi

The most involved build of the four, and the one with the most going on texturally.

• Protein: Smoked pork belly, dry-rubbed with a Korean-style seasoning blend for heat, smoked with cherry and pecan
• Sauce: Kewpie mayo mixed with Maggi seasoning
• Toppings: Cucumber slices, fresh jalapeño, pickled carrot and red onion, cilantro
• Bun: Pretzel

This one's built like a proper banh mi — smoke standing in for the usual roast, but the pickled vegetables and fresh herbs doing the same job they always do: cutting fat with acid and freshness. The Maggi in the mayo adds a savory edge that regular mayo doesn't have.

The Mojo Mash

The most classic build on the board, and a nod to a full Cuban spread I did a while back.

• Protein: Mojo pork
• Additional: Black Forest ham, Swiss cheese, Cuban mustard, Wickles pickles
• Bun: Pretzel

Simple on paper, but the mojo pork carries it — citrus and garlic against the tang of Cuban mustard and the sweet-heat of Wickles. Swapping in a pretzel bun instead of traditional Cuban bread changes the chew but keeps the sandwich sturdy enough to actually hold everything.

The Control Group

The bacon cheeseburger — proof that sometimes the classic is still the classic for a reason.

• Protein: 80/20 ground sirloin, cooked on the flattop
• Toppings: Applewood smoked bacon, lettuce, tomato, Kewpie mayo
• Bun: Pretzel

Nothing fancy, just executed well. The pretzel bun ties it back to the other three so the whole board reads as one cohesive flight instead of three creative builds and an outlier.

The Takeaway

Running all four side by side made one thing obvious: the pretzel bun was the right call across the board. It held its structure under the wetter builds — Smoke Mi's pickled veggies, The Mojo Mash's citrus and juices — just as well as it did under the drier Coppa Culture and Control Group. One bun, four completely different flavor profiles, zero structural failures.

If you're looking for a way to test-drive multiple recipes without dedicating a whole cook to just one, this is the format. Pick four traditions, size everything down, and let the board do the talking.