Crock Pot Italian Beef

If you're not from Chicagoland, you probably don't have easy access to good Italian Beef sandwiches.  In Chicago and the suburbs, I would bet you're never further than a 5 minute drive from a good Italian Beef.  Out here in Ohio, sadly, things are not the same.  All is not lost, however - it's easy to make a good beef sandwich in the crock pot at home.

Italian Beef sandwiches are traditionally wet-roasted to medium rare, then shaved thin on a deli slicer and finished in "the juice," then served on dense, chewy bread and topped with sweet peppers, hot peppers, or giardiniera (or some combination of the three).  I don't have a deli slicer handy, so my own version is shredded rather than sliced, but the result is much the same.  This recipe is an easy, delicious way to feed a large group - but make plenty, they may want seconds.

Here's what you'll need: 3-4 pounds of cheap beef (sirloin butt, top round, or bottom round), a couple of sweet onions, a couple of bell peppers, some beef broth, worcestershire sauce, garlic powder, italian seasoning, salt, and pepper.

Start by chopping the peppers and onions into large pieces.  Too small, and they'll either end up mushy or disintegrate altogether after cooking all day - and that just won't do.

Cover the bottom of the crock pot with a little more than half of the chopped veggies.  The rest will go on top in a minute.

Next, nestle the star player into the pot on top of the veggies, and cover that enormous hunk of beef with the rest of the chopped vegetables.  My cut of beef was a little bigger than I usually use, so it just barely fits in the pot - it took a while longer to cook, but it still turned out just fine.

With the beef and vegetables in place, it's time to add the cooking liquid and the seasoning - add the Worcestershire sauce, beef broth, Italian seasoning, garlic powder, salt, and pepper to the pot.  Be sure to lift up the beef a bit to make sure that the liquid gets all the way down to the bottom of the pot.

With your liquid and seasoning in place, your beef is ready to cook.  Set the crock pot to low and cook 6-10 hours - the amount of time can vary quite a lot depending on the particular cut of beef you get.  The good news is that it's pretty tough to drastically overcook this beef, so if it goes an "extra" hour or two, no big deal.

You'll know the beef is done when it shreds very, very easily with a fork.  If it's at all tough to get apart, put it back in the pot and try again in an hour.  Once the beef is tender, shred it with a couple of forks until it's in nice, bite-sized pieces.

To assemble a sandwich, pile plenty of beef onto a good, chewy sandwich roll.  Drizzle with extra juice and/or serve with a cup of juice on the side.  Top the sandwich with roasted sweet peppers, giardiniera, hot peppers, or any combination thereof.  This time around, we used these Pickled Hot Peppers to great effect.

While this sandwich may never entirely stave off my craving for a Portillo's sandwich, this recipe is a nice approximation of the Chicago classic.  Enjoy!

Recipe: Crock Pot Italian Beef

Prep Time: 10 Minutes | Cook Time: 6-10 Hours in Crock Pot | Difficulty: Easy | Servings: 12-16

Ingredients

• 3-4 lbs Beef (sirloin butt, top round, bottom round)
• 2 large Sweet Onions
• 2 large green Bell Peppers
• 4 cups low-sodium Beef Broth
• 3 tbsp Worcestershire Sauce
• 2 tbsp Italian Seasoning
• 1 tbsp Garlic Powder
• 1 tbsp Salt
• 2 tsp Black Pepper

Instructions

1. Chop onions and peppers into large pieces.
2. Line bottom of crock pot with half of chopped vegetables.  Set beef atop vegetables, then cover with the other half of the onions and peppers.
3. Add Worcestershire sauce, Italian seasoning, garlic powder, salt, and pepper to crock pot.  Add enough beef broth to cover all of the ingredients.
4. Cook in crock pot 6-10 hours on Low until a fork can easily pull the beef apart.
5. Shred beef into small pieces with two forks.
6. To assemble sandwiches, pile beef atop chewy sandwich rolls.  Drizzle with additional juice and/or serve with a side cup of juice.  Top with sweet peppers, giardiniera, and/or hot peppers.  Serve hot.

Goat-Cheese Meatballs

Is there anything more comforting than good, traditional Italian food?  Pasta isn't just an easy, standby meal - it can be a treat with just a bit of effort.  I like to fit some protein into my pasta meals, and what better way to do it than with meatballs?  Now there's nothing wrong with a standard, run of the mill meatball - but this week,  I was looking for a way to take things up a notch.  I pawed through the kitchen for something interesting to add, and realized that we had some goat cheese.  Inspiration!

At first, I considered trying to stuff each meatball with a cheesy center, but there wasn't enough goat cheese for that.  Still, it worked fantastically well crumbled up and added right to the mixture.  The whole meal took on that earthy flavor, and most bites were punctuated by a touch of creamy, fluffy cheese.  It was really a nice spin on a meatball, and one that I think I'll make again in the future.

Our meatball ingredients are more or less what you'd expect.  No fancy beef/pork/sausage mixtures here - I just stick to ground beef, mixed with eggs, breadcrumbs, milk, onion, and good Italian seasonings like Thyme, Basil, Oregano, Rosemary, Garlic, and a bit of Coriander.  The goat cheese adds some interest.  And, of course, you'll need some pasta to serve it over and plenty of sauce for simmering.

Meatballs are pleasantly straightforward.  Step one: combine everything but the cheese.  You'll have to dice the onion first, of course, but everything else can be more or less dumped into a large mixing bowl and mashed together.  Use your hands to mix it up well, don't be a chicken.  If it's too wet, add some more breadcrumbs.  If too dry, a bit more milk.

Now crumble up your goat cheese into pieces small enough to distribute well through the meatballs.  I aimed for roughly pea-sized, with some ranging slightly larger and smaller according to the whims of the cheese.

Combine the cheese with the rest of the mixture, again by hand.  Mix gently, as you don't want to pulverize the cheese.  The whole point is to have nice, cheesy bites, so you need those chunks to be relatively intact.

It's time: shape that mixture into some actual meatballs!  You can use an ice-cream scoop if you like, but I prefer to keep going by hand, aiming for 1 1/2 to 2 inches per meatball.  This recipe will make a lot of them.

Now into the sauce!  Most meatball recipes have you fry the meatballs first, but that's really not my preferred method.  They tend to cook unevenly or dry out that way.  Simmered in the sauce, they'll cook evenly and stay moist.  Perhaps best of all, they'll also lend a fantastic meatiness to the sauce itself.

After about 25 or 30 minutes, your meatballs will be cooked and your sauce will be transformed.  Even the jarred sauce that I used for this meal took on a much different texture and a really pleasant heartiness from the meat and cheese simmered into it.

The one real downside of cooking your meatballs in the sauce is that it makes it nigh impossible to finish the pasta itself in a pan with sauce, as is ideal.  This, however, is not the end of the world.  You'll be too busy devouring meatballs to really notice.

And that's it!  Serve hot over your pasta of choice.  Garlic bread would not go amiss as an accompaniment.

Recipe: Goat Cheese Meatballs
Prep Time: 15 Minutes | Cook Time: 30 Minutes | Difficulty: Easy | Servings: 10-12

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 to 2 lbs Ground Beef
• 2 Eggs
• 1 Onion, diced
• 4 oz. Goat Cheese
• 1/2 cup Bread Crumbs (pref. Panko)
• 1/2 cup Milk
• 1 box Pasta
• 1 family-size or 2 large jars Pasta Sauce
• 2 tsp Oregano
• 2 tsp Garlic Powder
• 1 tsp Rosemary
• 1 tsp Basil
• 1 tsp Thyme
• 1/2 tsp Coriander
• Salt and Pepper to taste

Instructions

Simmer pasta sauce in a large pot over medium-low heat.

In a large mixing bowl, combine ground beef, diced onion, milk, breadcrumbs, eggs, and seasonings.  Mix well by hand.

Crumble goat-cheese into pea-sized pieces.  Incorporate gently into beef mixture.

Shape mixture into 1 1/2 to 2 inch balls.  Add to simmering sauce.

Cook meatballs 25-30 minutes in sauce.

Serve hot over pasta.  Top with Parmesan Cheese to taste.

Coffee-Rubbed Beef with Brussels Sprouts

Kristin and I watch Chopped on the Food Network a lot.  It's a show that I didn't used to like all that much, but it's really grown on me since I've started cooking more seriously.  I can say with confidence that I would catastrophically lose in the first round of almost every competition, but it's fun to watch what the competitors do, and to try to figure out what I would do with the often-strange sets of ingredients.

Chopped contestants often need to figure out to do with large chunks of meat in a very short time.  This prevents clever things like slow roasting, braising, et-cetera.  Oftentimes, they rub them all over with delicious coffee-based rubs, sear them off, then finish in the oven.  I've been wanting to give this strategy a try for a while, and finally did.  It turned out quite pleasant.  I'm not sure the meal would have won Chopped for me, but it was tasty nonetheless.

It's all in the power of a few good ingredients for this recipe.  The obvious requirement is a large hunk of meat.  I used a roast of about 3 pounds, so adjust timings up and down according to difference in size.  A coffee rub is nothing without coffee, so use some that's good.  Kristin nobly sacrificed the last of her batch of good whole-bean coffee to this meal (we restocked her 2 hours later, but that's beside the point).  You'll need a bit of oil for the meat, and then a whole slew of spices.

I'm using a pair of spice blends from The Spice House in Chicago: "Milwaukee Iron," a complex, hot blend, and "Back of the Yards," a garlic-pepper blend.  You can go a lot of ways with this, but what I used breaks down to these: cumin, coriander, chile powder, dried mustard, brown sugar, oregano, paprika, and lots of garlic.  Add or subtract as your heart desires.

I'd have felt guilty serving nothing but an immense hunk of beef for dinner, so I also roasted some Brussels Sprouts.  They're not a vegetable I clamor for all the time, but can be a nice change of pace.  Another simple preparation here: all you'll need is sprouts, olive oil, salt, and pepper.

Prep the sprouts first, before the beef.  That way everything should finish around the same time. Give the sprouts a good wash, then remove any dead or yellowed leaves and chop off the stem bits at the bottom.

Toss those sprouts onto a greased (or, as I prefer, parchment-lined) baking pan, and cover with liberal quantities of oil, salt, and pepper.  Throw them into the oven, and forget all about them for the next 40 minutes.  Now you're free to handle the beef with plenty of time and no risk of cross-contamination.

First, put together your spice rub.  Grind the coffee down finely, and combine with all of your spices in a large bowl.  Taste a bit on the tip of your finger and adjust as you see fit.  I found that I needed more salt than expected to combat the bitterness of the coffee.

Drizzle just enough oil over the steak to allow spices to cling, then really coat it with that spice mixture.

Now onto a pan!  Cast iron is the way to go here, as we'll transfer into a hot oven shortly.

My 3-pound cut of beef took 4-5 minutes per side to develop a nicely seared crust.  As always, adjust according to your own cut of beef and the predilections of your stove.  Once it's seared, throw it into the oven with the sprouts, which should be coming along nicely by now.

Roast in the oven for about 20 minutes, turning halfway, until the center tests done for your temperature of choice.  I pulled my beef out when it read 145 and it was just right.  Your sprouts won't be quite done yet.  That's a good thing, as you are morally obligated to let the beef rest.  Only a terrible person cuts into good meat right when it's left the oven.  You're not a terrible person, are you?

Don't answer that.  Instead, throw the beef on a plate and cover with foil to rest 5-10 minutes.  Conveniently enough, your sprouts should be done and plated right around then.

Roasted brussels sprouts can look awful, but you want them to be about this charred when they're done.  Squishy, gooshy sprouts are a bad thing.  When they're nice and brown and crispy, they're done.  It should take about 40 minutes in all.

Slice the beef fairly thin and serve it up beside plenty of nice salty sprouts.  Enjoy!

Recipe: Coffee-Rubbed Beef with Brussels Sprouts
Prep Time: 5-10 Minutes | Cook Time: 40 Minutes | Difficulty: Easy | Servings: 8-10

Ingredients

Beef

• 3 lb. Beef Roast
• 1/4 cup finely ground Coffee
• 2 tsp Olive Oil
• 1 tbsp Salt
• 1 tbsp Black Pepper
• 1 tbsp Paprika
• 1 tbsp Chili Powder
• 1 tbsp Garlic Powder
• 1 tsp Cumin
• 1 tsp Coriander
• 1 tsp Dried Mustard
• 1 tsp Oregano
• 1 tsp Brown Sugar

Brussels Sprouts

• 1-2 lbs Brussels Sprouts
• 1/4 cup Olive Oil
• Salt to taste
• Pepper to taste

Instructions

Pre-heat oven to 400 degrees.  Cover a baking sheet with parchment paper.

Rinse, clean, and remove stems from Brussels Sprouts.  Place on covered baking sheet.

Drizzle sprouts with olive oil, and salt and pepper to taste.  Place in pre-heated oven and bake 40 minutes until crispy.

Heat a cast-iron pan on the stove to medium-high heat.

Grind coffee finely.  Mix with other spices to taste.

Drizzle oil over beef, then coat well with spice mixture.

Sear beef 4-5 minutes per side on the cast-iron pan.  Finish in the oven 10 minutes per side, or until desired level of doneness.  Rest 5-10 minutes before slicing.

Serve beef and sprouts while hot.

Burger Glop

This is a recreation of a dish I loved as a kid.  It started off as a way to use up leftover hamburger, but it's become something that I'm happy to take a special trip to the store to stock up for.  It's probably the meal I make that comes the closest to "bachelor chow" - the kind of meal somebody could contentedly eat day after day after day without severe nutritional deficiency.  I don't recommend such things, of course, but it feeds Kristin and me for a solid few days, at least.  Cheap, easy, and tasty - it may not be beautiful, but give it a chance and you'll be hooked.

The ingredients are a simple lot.  Ground beef is our protein - I usually go for 80/20 for plenty of flavor.  Bell pepper and sweet onion add some vegetable matter, along with the sweet corn which I brilliantly left out of the picture - oops.  Canned tomato sauce adds nice flavor and binds everything together.  You can stick with plain tomato sauce and spice it as you like, but I usually just start from a base of Pizza sauce for this one.  Salt, pepper, and some Italian seasoning fill out the flavor.  And, of course, we'll need some pasta to add substance.  Macaroni is my go-to here.

For starters, get your water boiling.  Use a nice, large pasta pot, as we'll eventually combine all the ingredients in it.  

This is important: Undercook the pasta!  No, really.  If the box says 8-10 minutes, cook for 7, tops.  It'll be chewy, but we'll finish it in the sauce.

Now for knife work.  Dice the bell pepper finely.  We want the veggies in small enough pieces that every bite will contain some.

Dice the onion as well, then set your veggies aside.

Brown the beef in a large skillet over medium-high heat.  A large skillet is important here - we'll be adding a lot of ingredients.

Once the beef is browned, remove it from the skillet and set it aside for a few minutes.  If there's a great deal of grease left in the pan, remove all but a tablespoon or two.  Add all of the vegetables and sautee until tender, about 5-6 minutes.  Season with salt and pepper.

Time to retrieve the beef and open up the sauce.  Once the veggies are nice and tender, add the beef and two cans of tomato sauce to the skillet.  Season with a generous amount of Italian seasoning.  If you don't keep a blend on hand, go for garlic, onion powder, basil, and oregano.

Take your undercooked pasta and drain it well.  You undercooked it, right?  Good.  Just checking.  Now that your pasta pot is empty, it's time to put everything together.

In the large pot, combine the pasta with the contents of your skillet.  Mix well and cook over low heat just a couple of minutes until the pasta is finished.  Give it a taste and adjust seasonings as needed.

Add a generous handful of cheese over the top of your "glop" as soon as you serve it, and it will have melted by the time the plate makes it to the table.  Serve hot.  It will stand up fine by itself, but some fresh fruit on the side sets things off nicely in the summer.

 Recipe: Burger Glop

Prep Time: 5 minutes   |   Cook Time: 10-20 minutes  |   Difficulty: Easy   |   Servings: 6-8

Ingredients

• 1 lb Ground Beef (80/20)
• 1 box (16 oz.) Elbow Macaroni
• 1 large Sweet Onion
• 1 large Green Bell Pepper
• 1 bag (12 oz.) frozen Sweet Corn (or 1-2 ears fresh)
• 2 cans (15 oz. each) Pizza Sauce
• 1/2 cup Cheddar/Jack cheese, shredded
• 2 tbsp Italian Seasoning
• Salt to taste
• Pepper to taste

Instructions

In a large pot, cook pasta 1-2 minutes shy of directions on package.  Drain and set aside.

Dice onion and bell pepper finely.

Brown beef in a large skillet over medium-high heat.  Set aside.  Drain excess grease, retaining 1-2 tbsp.

Reduce heat to medium.  Add onion, bell pepper, and corn to skillet.  Season with salt and pepper.  Cook 5-6 minutes until vegetables are tender.

Add beef, pizza sauce, and Italian seasoning to skillet.  Simmer 3 minutes.

Return pasta to pot.  Pour skillet contents into pot and mix well.  Cook 2-4 minutes over medium-low heat until pasta is fully cooked.

Add a handful of shredded cheese after plating.  Serve hot.