Stuffing and Rolling Up The Braciole
I have placed below some important steps of how I prepare the braciole. Braciole is a magical stuffed and rolled up steak that cooks in the sauce all Sunday afternoon and we would always fight for at the table because there was never enough of this yummy stuff! The Braciole only showed up on special occasions, like Christmas, Easter and Funerals.
This is the meat I used for Braciole. You can see on the label that it is called Angus Beef Round London Broil. There are many names for this type of meat. Top Round, Flank Steak and London Broil. I usually ask for London Broil. This is not something your average grocery will have on the shelves. I always call ahead, ask for the meat department and ask them to cut up 2 lbs. of London Broil into 1/4″ slices.
Braciole meat. London Broil sliced 1/4″ thin.
Here is the Braciole meat all pounded out and ready for the filling. You need to have a nice heavy metal meat pounder for this job, also called a meat tenderizer.
Here we have the important step of rubbing olive oil over all the meat and adding fresh chopped garlic. Press the garlic into the meat. Also add fresh ground pepper at this point.
This is the important step of adding fresh shopped parsley. I like using the flat leaf Italian parsley. Use a lot of it like you see in the photo here.
Now add some Parmesan cheese and drink some wine. The wine is a tremendous help with the preparation of Braciole.
This is a very important step and a deep dark family secrets that took me decades to find out about! I thought I was making the sauce just like grandma did for years until one day during some casual conversation with my mom and uncles the secret about the salt pork slipped out! It was a special day. That was the missing step to a perfect Sunday Gravy! The secret is you fry up the salt pork for the grease. Then you brown all the meats in this magical grease. You also dry the fried salt pork bits and then chop them up and add them to the Braciole filling. This ads amazing flavor and help keeps the Braciole moist while cooking in the sauce.
Here we have the last step for the Braciole filling. Adding the fried salt pork bits! YUM! This Braciole is now ready to roll and tie. In this photo you can also see the butchers twine, this is the special string you will use to tie up the Braciole after you have rolled them up. We have also used thread as well. When we use the thread, we call the Italian dental floss. 😉 If you use the thread, it’s much harder to remove the thread after the Braciole has cooked in the sauce for 3 hours. The butchers twine make the process of removing the string after cooking much easier. is also easier to tie.
…and here is a blowup for a closer look. Just look at all the goodness!
Here is the Braciole all stuffed, rolled up and tied. A lot of work to get to this point but hang in there, there is still more work to do! After you have the Braciole all tied up like you see here, it is time to brown them. This is also called searing the meat. This is an important step because it seals in the meat juices. You are not cooking the Braciole, you are just browning them in a very hot pan. I like to use heavy cast iron pans for the browning process because you can really crank up the heat.
Here we have a glorious sight. All the meats (Meatballs, Italian Sausage and Braciole) all browned and ready to go into the sauce to cook for 3 – 4 hours. All of these meats where browned in the salt pork grease that was mentioned about. Very important step!
OK, you have worked all day to get to this point. You lovingly prepared the meatballs, sausage and Braciole. Each of which have their own detailed preparations. Now that you have all the meats added to the pot, you can now relax and cook the sauce for 3 – 4 hours occasional stirring the sauce as you go. Well, you probably have to clean up your trashed kitchen while this is going on, but that’s OK, it’s worth all the effort!
Here is the Sunday Gravy ready for simmering will all the meats. This is a wonderful sight! This pot is not going to simmer for 3 – 4 hours hours. At first you will simmer with a very small about of bubbling. Every now and then you will let it sit with no stirring for about 15 minute or so. You want some of the grease to rise to the top so you can remove it with a spoon. Then stir some more. Important note: Once all the meats are in the sauce you must stir gently. You do not want to break apart the meats. That’s it! Well done and congratulations, you are now cooking like an Italian grandma! Yay! Mangia!
That was awesome! Please take me back to the main recipe so i can figure out how to start making this amazing sauce!
Anthony's Italian-American Recipes 