I can promise you this, if you ask your Italian grandmother how to make a braciole it won’t be this way……….but, I can also promise you this, after you make and eat my Braciole you won’t care, you’ll just be happy you tried it!! (Just so you know its pronounced bra-zhole, you might even see it spelled Brajole)
There are a lot of different cuts of meat you can use for Braciole, I like to use Eye Round because of the uniform size, it makes the slices pretty much all the same. But you can use Top Round if you like. I have also made them out of good sirloin and if I truly wanted to impress even Filet Mignon.
I couldn’t find a small eye round, so I ended up with a filet, my wife has never had my Braciole, so I thought it would be nice to make it extra special! (some stores sell braciole meat already cut thin and pounded, feel free to use this if you can find it!)
Braciole
1 1/2 lbs of eye round trimmed
8 oz Ricotta Cheese
1/2 c Grated Romano Cheese
1 Large Egg
4 oz of baby spinach
1/4 cup roasted red peppers (optional)
season to taste:
granulated garlic
granulated onion
black pepper
egg wash (beaten egg and milk)
flour (1 cup with salt and pepper)
Seasoned bread crumbs (2 cups)
Sauce:
10 oz sliced mushrooms
1/2 cup Sambuca
1/2 cup grated Romano cheese
3 cups Marinara
re-season to tastes
Before we start on the steak, we are first going to mix our stuffing. Start with the Ricotta cheese, then add your baby spinach, roasted pepper, egg, and cheese. Mix well and season with salt and pepper to taste. Place the mixture in the refrigerator while you prepare your meat.
First you want to trim any excess fat, grizzle from what ever cut of meat you do use. Now slice the meat, against the grain, just like you would cut it if it was a roast. You are going to pound out these slices, and while there isn’t any rule for the size, its always nice for them to be consistent. The slice shouldn’t be much more than a 1/4 of an inch. (of course if your market carries thinly sliced pounded Braciole meat, by all means skip this step!!) For this recipe, we are going to make 2 braciole’s for each of our guests and lets plan on serving 4. So we want about a 1 1/2 pounds of trimmed meat. (at my restaurant one braciole would fill the plate, so size is up to you)
Now that your meat is sliced, you need to use a meat hammer and pound it thin, this will also help tenderized the meat, your meat hammer should have a ridged side that helps with the tenderizing. As you pound the steaks, don’t just pound straight down. You need to hold the piece and almost push it outwards as you hit the meat trying to stretch it as you pound. Once all your pieces are pounded you can begin to stuff them with our ricotta mixture.
While stuffing the steak, don’t be afraid to fill them nicely, but not so much than they cannot be rolled properly, as you tuck in the meat you want to try and close the ends in. If they don’t close all the way, its not the end of the world, some of the cheese mixture will ooze out during baking, but you can always push some back in, or just serve it with the braciole. I like to shape the braciole into small football shapes. Once they are all formed we need to getting our breading station ready. One is flour seasoned with salt and pepper, egg wash ( beaten egg with milk), and seasoned bread crumbs (your own or store bought). First dredge the steak in the seasoned flour (this is a good time to help reshape the braciole, the flour will help you close it up a little more), then in the egg wash, and then in the seasoned bread crumbs. Repeat the process until all the braciole are breaded.
At this time you want to get your oven ready, preheat it to 350 degrees. Now get out a saute pan, let it get hot, add some olive oil to the pan and add your braciole. Don’t be in a hurry to turn them over, you want a nice crust on the braciole and good colour. Turn your braciole over and allow the other side to brown, repeat the process to the sides if you can. (Stacking them along side of each other when you do the sides will help keep them upright). Place all your finished braciole’s in your baking dish and place in the preheated oven for about 20 minutes.
While the braciole is in the oven, we will begin our sauce.
We are going to assume you have made your marinara and your ready to finish your sauce. We need sliced mushrooms for this sauce, Those of you that have an aversion to fungus may leave them out….but please try it with the mushrooms first before you decide you don’t like them….you may be surprised. Add your sliced mushrooms, into a saute pan with a little olive oil, browning on both sides until partly done, add your splash of Sambuca(trust me on this one, just use the Sambuca) and allow alcohol to burn off. Now add your marinara, a nice handful of grated Romano cheese and re season with garlic, onion and black pepper. Allow this sauce to simmer briefly, then turn off heat until the braciole are ready to be served. Before serving add one more shot of Sambuca to enhance the taste…if the sauce has thickened up to much you can add just a little water.
Dress your serving dish with some of the sauce, then place the braciole on the dish and top with the remaining sauce……your guests will come back to the serving dish to get more sauce!!
Ask Chef Dennis
Blogging
It’s that time of week again, and I have a few things to share with you this week. Over the last few weeks we have talked about all of the Foodporn sights that are out there, and we also talked about the importance of driving traffic to your blog. Now I understand that not everyone cares about driving traffic to their site, and that’s ok. But if you are interested in having more folks stop by your blog, continue reading.
I had mentioned a new sight last week, FoodBeast and as it turns out a few of our friends checked it out and had their posts featured on Foodbeast! So Check it out!
Now I have another sight for, its Food Porn Daily, or as they like to say click, drool, repeat! I can vouch for this sight because they featured my buffalo chicken wings from last week, and let me tell you it drove quite a bit of traffic to my site! They only pick one image a day to feature, so if your the lucky one, watch out!! Check it out, and tell Amanda who runs the site that Chef Dennis sent you!
Now here’s a little pet peeve of mine, I love to leave comments for as many of my friends as I can, but sometimes I am slowed down by having to enter a word verification. If you use blogspot as your blogging domain, they have an excellent spam filter and you really don’t need to use the word verification……please! You can set it so that they will not publish any comment left on any post older than 14 days, and it seems that is where the spammers concentrate their efforts. Blog Spot will recognize a lot of spam as spam, but if its not sure they will leave it for moderation. I very rarely have any spam get through their new filter.
It may not seem like much, but if your leaving 20 or 30 comments in a sitting, it can really slow things up.
Also the dreaded waiting for moderation before being published……again the spam filter gets rid of almost everything non related, and how often do you really get a comment you don’t post?
Again your call, just my take on things!
Do You Tweet?
If you love to tweet, I may have just the tool for you. It’s called Tweetdeck Check it out, its free and kind of fun…..although I really haven’t quite gotten on board with understanding everything on Twitter, but I had fun playing with Tweetdeck!
Photo Editors
last week we talked about photo editing and some of the different programs that you can use. Now it just so happens that one of our friends Trish from Dish by Trish announced last week that her husband had developed a new photo editing program (that she uses) called SharpShot. Here’s the best part, its free!!
So stop by and check out the the program, you may be surprised!
But what ever program you do decide on using, just start using one. You’ll be happy you did!
Foodbuzz
now you know we couldn’t get through an Ask Chef Dennis, with out having a few questions about the site we love, but can be frustrating at times…..Foodbuzz. Now that being said, yes Chef Dennis does get frustrated on occasion by Foodbuzz, but then he stops and remembers he wouldn’t have met most of you wonderful people without it.
I am still getting questions about linking your website, this is mostly for newbies, but if you go into edit your profile (which is on your profile page) in the personalize your profile section there is a place to add your official website.
While your there why not fill in some more of the info, add a picture of yourself, and link to facebook and twitter. Get the most our of your account.
Another question I had was how to add your newest posts to your foodbuzz page. Thats fairly simple to do. Again go to your home page, and right next to that tab is your profile tab, click on it and all of your posts listed will be hot….when you hover over them you will see Swap or Remove, when you click on Swap a list of your posts will come up. Now here is how it works. The list goes by buzz, so if its new and has a 45 then you need to go past all of the higher buzzed posts until you find it, your newest posts will be at the very end. When you find the post you want to swap with, click on it and it will say Replace, click on that and your new post is up. Now once you set up your page, you just have to add the new post, and swap out the others. The good thing is , once your post has been up for awhile and gets buzzed the score will be higher, you may fine that all of your new posts will show up in a row, and makes it easier to just swap them out and keep your page current. Swapping images also works for your post header, you can add 1-3 images on it.
Last but not least, I talked about having some Foodbuzz mini festivals this summer, and It looks like the one in North Carolina is moving along well. The location will now be Winston-Salem and that looks like a pretty good spot to draw from the neighboring states. I am also still trying to set one up for Philadelphia.
If you may be able to attend either or can help with either please let me know. I have some speakers and demo’s lined up for the North Carolina get together already, so lets see a show of hands who would like to come!! Just let me know if it interest you ….please.
So that’s about it for today my friends, the temperature has dropped seriously in the last few hours and we are supposed to be down to about 15 tonite with windchills to 0…..some fun.
So where ever you are, stay warm and stay safe! Thanks for stopping by and remember
john says
Hi Chef – Well, we don’t have an Italian grandmother but you are right after we made your Braciole we were just happy we tried it!! My wife and I teamed up again to try another one of your recipes. The beef was nice and tender and it was a great match with the cheese and spinach. Followed your advice to hold the beef while pounding to stretch but couldn’t make an oval slice round. The next one I butterflied and came up with a circle. Just big enough for a pixie football. The Sambuca added a great flavor to the marinara sauce and was nice on some flat noodles with the Braciole. This was not my grandmothers; it was delicious. To top it off, I made your chocolate Mousse for desert, can’t wait to try it. Cheers!
Chef Dennis Littley says
Hi John
sounds like you’re really enjoying some good meals and I’m very happy that you let me know. Pounding out the beef does take a little practice, but the shape is not all that important as long as you can form them with the stuffing and they don’t unroll.
I can’t wait to hear how you enjoyed the mousse!
Cheers
Dennis
Patty says
The recipe sounds great and I would like to make it using filet mignon. Should I get the butcher to slice for me? or can I do it myself – slice thick and pound? And, lastly, I’m assuming it does not have to cook long in the sauce considering it’s filet mignon.
Thanks!
PS I realize this is a late post!
Chef Dennis says
hi Patty
I actually used filet for this version I made for my wife. You can cut fairly thin and then pound it out carefully. You don’t really need to cook it in the sauce, I lightly bread mine and saute them and let them sit in a 300 degree oven while I make the sauce and then just top the brachiole with the sauce.
Patty says
Thanks so much- that really helps!
spicegirl says
Thanks for the great advice! I really appreciate your detailed instructions…both about the practicalites of food blogging and on the braciole. This looks delicious and unique, I’ll be trying it soon.
Kath says
Do you deliver? 😉 …. I’d never heard of braciole before, but yours looks unbelievably good to this beef lover! It would hit the spot on this cold damp Seattle day.
Chef D says
hi Kath
this is not a traditional braciole but one that will definitely please the palate, especially with that sambuca red sauce!
Kimby says
Dear Chef Dennis,
Your braciole looks ravishing! (I’m sure the lovely ladies on The Culinary Lens will be discussing your recipe!) Thanks, too, for the tips on posting, comments, etc. — I’ve always favored “moderating” so I can reply before approving, but your sentiments made sense. I’ll give your suggestions some serious consideration.
Also, I’ll check out Food Beast et al. Thanks for a GREAT post!
Wendy (The Weekend Gourmet) says
Linked over from The Culinary Lens little menu linky…I always love your blog and hearing all about your adventures with your girls at the school. I don’t post as much as I should, but I will from now on! Love love love this gorgeous Italian dish…
Spicie Foodie says
Hi Dennis, Just stopping by to say thanks for participating in the YBR and sorry it took me so long to stop by.
kitchenarian says
I have been wondering how to freshen up my foodbuzz page with newer posts. Thanks!
Lin Ann says
Saw your photo on Food Porn Daily, congrats! I think I need to work on photography skills before I venture off in that direction. And I think I need a better camera too!
Maranda says
As always…amazing information. And that braciole looks delicious!
Shirley says
Chef, that looks seriously good! The golden and crunchy exterior, the sauce, the herbs … wish I had some.
mangiabella says
oh Dennis I love Braciole, it's been a few years since I've made it, I love your version!!! The last time I made it I used a flank steak that I had the butcher tenderize, layered fresh herbs, breadcrumbs and a few different cheeses on top and rolled it up like a log, tied it, seared it in white wine, and then slow cooked in in marinara for about an hour and a half or so…..when sliced it was spiraled with all that goodness and came out great….I forgot how much I love that dish….I love how you've used the spinach and red peppers…and ricotta!!! As usual you have given us a plateful of valuable advice and I thank you…truly….congrats on the buffalo wing feature, WELL DESERVED!!!!!!! I look so forward to reading your posts….it always brings me such rest amidst my usually chaotic day
FOODalogue says
I would be interested in North Carolina or Philadelphia. Since you have things lined up for Winston Salem, you must have a date in mind. Could you please announce it (even tentatively) so people could begin to think/plan. I can't commit until I know timing. I don't live in either city, but I'd be happy to help remotely…or once on site.
Spicie Foodie says
Chef Dennis you always make me hungry and my mouth water, shame on you 😉 I've never had the pleasure of trying Braciole but it sounds like I've been missing out.
Your tips are always wonderful and so useful. I recently grudgingly turned on my comments moderator because of all the spam. But I left the word verification because Blogger suggested it. Now readying your thoughts you convinced me to turn off the word verification, Thank you cause I hate them too:) Happy V-Day!
The Mom Chef says
Sooo, did YOU actually eat the braciole? 🙂
The mini foodbuzz thing will be here in W-S? Did you find someone else to help coordinate it with you or am I still helping? You went quiet on me about that.
Miss Meat and Potatoes says
Drooling. Severely. Great guests and post!
Amparo says
¡Que bueno todo! Me encanta.
Saludos.
Kate @ Diethood.com says
I love the Ask Chef Dennis posts! 🙂 I can vouch for Trish's husband's photo editor.. I tried it and loved it… I've been working with it for the past week.
5 Star Foodie says
Your braciole looks terrific indeed! An excellent dish, love it!