Have you ever wanted an Italian beef sandwich, but you’re not in Chicago? I have. and I’ve realized, there are lots of recipes for making it at home in a slow cooker. It’s really just a beef roast braised in stock and spices, so it really doesn’t seem too hard to make. So I think I will try it over the long holiday weekend in the US.
What’s the best cut of meat to use? I have a chuck roast in the freezer, but I feel like that’s probably not the best choice. Most recipes seem to recommend something like bottom round. Or some say tri-tip also works, and that’s readily available in California. I might try to pick up one of those.
Some recipes, like this one, just tell you to cook the meat for the recommended time, and then shred it like a pot roast. But that feels wrong. Every Italian beef I’ve seen in Chicago has been sliced, and some commenters recommend slicing the meat after a few hours of cooking and returning it to the liquid to finish cooking (and I think that’s how they do it in Chicago, correct?). How long should I cook it before slicing, and how long after? I assume it will cook faster once it’s been sliced, so I wouldn’t have to cook it the full time in the recipe.
I’d personally use the chuck roast - I find that the low fat content of bottom round tends to lack in unctuous punch as it were. But I’ll grant that bottom round will hold together better over a long cooking period. I’d probably do the beef in a slow cooker, over pretty high heat for a shorter time (say 90-120 minutes), evacuate and let cool just a bit to firm, then slice thinly with a long serrated blade (less likely for me to tear into chunks) and then gently return to the pot with whatever additional liquid you feel you need to braise further and absorb all the flavor through the additional surface area.
Note, that after that first 90-120 minutes, it should be fully cooked, though depending on the size of the roast it may still be medium-ish, so the rest of the cooking time is mostly about flavor absorption, so I’d guess no more than another hour on higher heat, or longer on lower.
IMHO, less time if you want the beefiness to stand out, longer if you want the broth-herbs-peppers to stand out. Oh, and if you’re using a slow cooker, I’d say in the last 30 minutes add a bit of whatever you consider the most key herbs/spices/etc. to the dish, to bring the flavors to the front after the long cooking time.
Personally, I think the tinkering with the dish is one of the most fun parts of cooking. You get a good baseline then figure out how to make it better, or at least, better to your personal tastes.
Mm, I’ve been wanting to try an authentic Italian beef sandwich. I googled ‘authentic Italian beef recipe’ and found this recipe, below, which seems very authentic-- the author brags of being a culinary arts instructor who’s a 25+ year Chicago resident, and says:
I do not say this lightly (but I do say so humbly), my husband and I both agreed that this recipe rivals some of the top spots in Chicago. Those are strong words but I would not post anything here on my website if I couldn’t back it up.
But whoah, is there a lot of prep involved-- like 2-3 day’s worth, and there’s a separate recipe for making the ’ Chicago Style Hot Giardiniera’ as a topping. This seems like how they made Italian beef sandwiches on The Bear.
I like a good complicated meal-making challenge, but I wonder if @iiandyiiii 's Instant Pot recipe posted above is 80-90% as tasty / authentic-tasting with 10% of the effort…
My sister (the furthest conceivable from a gourmet cook - and purt near vegetarian to boot) cooks what she calls Italian beef using chuck roast in a crock pot. The meat falls apart w/ a fork. Been a while since I bought one “in the wild.” As best I recall, my sisters is not the same, but is a tasty sammich.
Going biking with her shortly. I’ll ask for her recipe. But, as I said, it ain’t “authentic.”
I’ve never had a homemade beef really get it all right. They’re usually good, sometimes great, but not that same Perfect Soggy Mess that we love but can’t properly export.
A beef po boy, pot roast, weck, French dip, cheesesteaks (kind of), are sort of similar wet beef sandwiches and also hard to nail. But the attempts are usually good nevertheless.
When I asked what cut of meat she used, she said, “Whatever is on sale!” She described it as “just a big hunk of muscle, without a bone, tied with string.”
Her precision method is to put it in the crockpot, dump in 2 packages of McCormick seasoning - au jus and some multi-seasoning like for salad dressing. Add enough water to cover the meat, throw in some sliced peppers and onions, and cook it “forever.”
Plus, she said you can cook it in the crockpot, serve it from the same pot, and just stick the pot with the leftovers in the fridge.
Like I said - not gourmet - but sure is good eating w/ good rolls and giardinera.
The point of slow-cooking meat over a long time while immersed in liquid is to make good use of cheaper, less desirable cuts of meat. It becomes more tender and absorbs the flavors from the liquid & spices. And that it is sliced before eating makes it even easier to chew.
So of course you use up cheaper cuts of meat for this.
You could foolishly start with a good chunk of sirloin steak, but why would you? That would be even better tasting, and ready sooner, cooked in other ways.
This is correct. There are slow-cooked versions which are fine, but if you want to have it like the beef joints serve it here, it is made with either top sirloin, top round, or bottom round, roasted, and very thinly sliced, finished in the jus. It is not a shredded, fall apart meat sandwich. I make some at home, but I happen to have a commercial deli slicer.
Otherwise, the crock pot versions can be quite satisfying, but a slightly different experience.
Well, I just picked up an eye round roast, because that’s what the butcher had in the display case. That’s probably close enough to top round and bottom round.
I’ll be honest: eye of round is my least favorite cut of beef, and I’ve never found a way to cook it that I like. Good luck! I know others have reported doing things well with it, but I’ve never been able to, whether cooking it slowly, quickly, doing the “turn the oven off after a certain point of the way through the cook,” using a meat thermometer.
I should add: The Chicago Italian beefs are roasted to medium temps. So we’re looking 140-145, and they finish in the jus. They are not cooked like crock pot beef, which is cooked to 200+, and requires a cut with a lot of connective tissue/collagen. A cut like chuck or shank. Eye of round does not do well in long, slow cooking as it has no collagen to give up to convert into gelatin. It will eventually shred, but still have a dry texture to it. Some people don’t seem to mind, I guess, as long as there’s enough juice/gravy on it, but to me all that moisture doesn’t save an overcooked piece of meat that doesn’t have the gelatin to make up for it.
Well, I was grocery shopping and saw a bottom round roast on sale, so I decided I would try to make Italian beef at home this weekend as well, probably on the Labor Day Monday. So I bought the roast, and jars of ‘Italian style’ Giardiaria and Pepperocinis. Apologies to the OP if they feel that I’m hijacking the thread or stealing the spotlight from it at all.
I think I’m going to try a cross between @iiandyiiii 's Instant Pot recipe and the supposed ‘authentic’ recipe I found and posted upthread. The supposed ‘authentic’ recipe calls for 2-3 entire days of steps. I want to streamline the process like the Instant Pot recipe, but I want to cook the beef until not yet shreddable, thin-slice it and finish cooking the slices in the au jus, like the ‘authentic’ recipe and the way it was described to do here.
I have questions:
The ‘authentic’ recipe calls for 1-2 days of dry-brining. That seems kind of unneccessary, since the beef slices are going to finish cooking in the au jus, and could even risk making the whole thing too salty (the recipe even warns against using too much salt in the dry-brining step for that reason). I’m thinking I can safely skip the dry-brining, yes?
The ‘authentic’ recipe also calls for refrigerating the cooked roast overnight before slicing it, to allow for easy to cut thin slices, but I’ve thin-sliced many still-warm beef roasts with an electric knife and I’m thinking the overnight cooling step can be skipped as well, agreed?
Ingredient-wise, the two recipes are fairly different and I’m thinking of combining the coriander and fennel from the ‘authentic’ recipe and the pepperocinis, onion and Worchestershire sauce from the Instant Pot recipe. Does this sound like a good idea, or overkill?
I don’t know whether you’d need to chill the roast but I’ll go out on a limb that your hand carving (electric assisted or not) will fall distantly short. It should be closer to commercial lunch meat/cold cuts or (forgive me) Arby’s.
Well, mine is in the oven. I’m also more or less following the “authentic” recipe. I did salt the meat last night, but didn’t exactly do the whole “dry brining” on a wire rack in the fridge – I just didn’t have the space in the fridge for that. I just salted it and re-wrapped it in the butcher paper it came in. The only other short cut I took is that I used Better than Bouillon for the beef stock (Although IIRC America’s Test Kitchen rated Better than Bouillon highly as an alternative to making your own stock). I do plan to chill the meat and jus and slice it tomorrow – it’s a long holiday weekend in the US, I’ve got time.
I don’t have any Giardiaria on hand, but I do have some roasted red peppers and some sliced Pepperocinis. I think that will be good enough. I think that will make my sandwiches “sweet and hot” in Chicago parlance.
